There seems to be a growing perception that promoters of listed companies are manipulating share prices and Sebi believes that Employee Welfare Trusts (EWTs) are the tools of choice for this. EWTs are trusts set up by a company for the benefit of its employees to perform a host of activities that go beyond mere purchase of shares of the company. The employer contributes money often as a loan to the EWT and the EWT invests this money so that all profits from such investments are used to provide employee benefits like medical insurance, loans, grants for training programmes, life insurance, etc. It seems that Sebi believes that EWTs and Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are substitutes for each other and has failed to appreciate the difference between the two. By its circular of 17 January 2013 (Circular) Sebi prohibited listed companies from framing any employee benefit scheme involving acquisition of the company's own securities from the secondary market. This decision came without any warning or consultation and raises important questions regarding the use of EWTs and SEBI's limited understanding of the difference between ESOPs and EWTs. ESOPs give employees the right to purchase or subscribe at a future date to securities offered by the company at a pre-determined price. This gives employees ownership interest in the company which is absent in case of EWTs, where employees get no ownership in the companies in whose securities the EWT invests. Sebi's belief of the misuse of EWTs for manipulation of the price of stock does not seem to have been substantiated by any evidence. Sebi has, in its noble endeavour to close this perceived loophole completely ignored the fact that it is very naïve to believe that promoters use EWTs to commit this fraud since it would be one of the most obvious ways of getting caught. If Sebi were to crackdown on suspicious dealings undertaken by such promoters, the records of the past dealings of the EWTs supported by the trends in acquisition and disposition of the shares by that EWT would, in all likelihood, be the starting point of Sebi's investigations. It is surprising that Sebi has taken such a drastic step without any report of widespread misuse by promoters of EWTs. Sebi has powers under the Sebi (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 1992 to investigate cases where it suspects that stock manipulation is taking place. However, instead of enforcing these regulations more effectively, Sebi has changed the law in a dubious manner and jeopardised the existence of bona fide trusts. This has resulted in all EWTs having to comply with the Sebi (ESOS ESPS) Guidelines, 1999 defeating the very objective of EWTs. Getting a few shares of a company over a period of 3-5 years at a potential discount to its then market price is no substitute for a workman who needs money to pay for his child's education. Another issue to consider is whether Sebi has overstepped its jurisdiction when Section 77, proviso (b) of the Companies Act, 1956 (Act) specifically allows companies to finance trusts to purchase their own shares through the secondary market for the benefit of their employees. While Section 55A of the Act empowers Sebi to administer the issue and transfer of securities by framing rules and regulations that may be required to give effect to the provisions of these sections, the Circular has, in effect, resulted in the amendment of Section 77 of the Act so that it now applies only to an unlisted company which, arguably, defeats the purpose of the section. Sebi could have consulted stakeholders before such an extreme decision was taken. Sebi seems to have reached the conclusion that EWTs are the primary tools of insider trading and price manipulation in the same way as forks and knives cause obesity. Sebi felt the need to 'do something' about fraudulent and insider trading and the prohibition of EWTs seems to have been the easy thing to do, so that Sebi could be seen to be doing something even if the purported remedy bears no correlation to the ills. All Sebi needed to do was to implement the provisions of the Sebi (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 1992 and Sebi (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices relating to the Securities Market) Regulations, 2003 more strictly. If the conspiracy theorists are to be believed, Sebi is implementing the government's policy of forcing the 'aam aadmi' to participate in the stock markets. Sebi has, once again by this ham handed move, undermined its standing as a regulator. Can one forget the banning of Participatory - Notes only to be subsequently allowed or limiting the use of Foreign Institutional Investor sub-accounts and then allowing Qualified Foreign Investors? Only time will tell if this Circular curbs malpractice, if any, or if this is just another instance of SEBI acting in haste and regretting at leisure.Murali Neelakantan is Partner and Nidhi Killawala is an Associate at Khaitan & Co.
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Ashit Ranjan is currently Vice-President Human Resources at Tecnova India Pvt Ltd, an international management consulting firm, which draws up and helps to deliver India strategy to global luxury brands. Before this, he headed an entrepreneurial venture in business, HR consulting and training & development. He has worked on consulting projects on restructuring, transition, organisational change management with both government agencies (Development Aid funded) and private companies in India, Bangladesh and Bhutan.Ranjan believes HR can be integrated into the core line of business only when HR folks start understanding their business better. He would prefer if HR was considered more than a support function and to do that HR employees should be made to work in other business functions like marketing, sales etc.Excerpts: What made you to choose HR as a profession?My interest in human resources began early as I was fascinated by Organisational Development as a subject in my MBA days. My conviction got further reinforced over the years as I worked on various assignments. The dynamics of human behaviour and human relations continues to fascinate me and there is always a new complexity to learn from. What has been the biggest achievement in your career?Transitioning a government department into a professionally managed corporation where HR formed the backbone of a sustained and successful transformation. The department which was a loss-making one was transitioned to a profitable business enterprise in a very short period of time. What have been the primary traits/qualities that have helped you attain your present position?Three things. First of all, truly and really understanding business. When I say understanding business, it is not just superficial knowledge but a deep nut and bolts knowledge cutting across the organisation. Secondly, I have a deep fascination and affection for people and an inner sense for helping them. And third, having the patience to listen without any bias or prejudice. What are the challenges you are facing in your organisation?Currently, our main challenge is to build a strong and high performing team and creating a pool of leaders who can take the business into the futureWhat are the steps a company should take to develop and motivate future leaders?Having a clear defined leadership path is critical. In addition, it is important that identified potential leaders are tested and mentored regularly through a sustained effort. This is to be done by regularly assigning higher responsibility to the individuals, training and an organisational support at the highest levels. What is your rate of attrition? How do you prevent it?At present, our attrition rate is about 3-4 per cent. We regularly engage with our people to help understand their problems and issues and try and create a participative environment in which people get together to solve their issues. This participation helps employees become true owners within the business. How do you retain talent in your company?Our success in retaining talent has primarily been driven by having a very open and participative culture which fosters collaboration. People draw on each other’s strength to help deliver an exceptional performance, experience and service to our clients. We also constantly engage them in leadership and training initiatives which helps them build skills and competency. What sets your company apart from other companies as far as work culture goes?Openness, participative and collaborative culture is what sets up apart. We also believe in assigning responsibility pretty early in peoples’ careers which helps in their capacity and capability building. What is the biggest challenge you face when selecting people?Finding the right talent at the right time is critical and we face challenges sometimes when we are not able to get the right talent. We try and address this by going to a lot of campuses and hiring. These freshers form a pool of our future leaders and we give them a well defined programme to build their skills and competency over the years. How do you track of employees' satisfaction or dissatisfaction?Our participative and open culture allows an employee to walk up and share his/her grievance with the confidence that it will be addressed at the right forum and in the right manner. We also have formal and informal sessions where we take employee feedback on what is working right and where are we going wrong. Accordingly, corrective measures are put into place. How HR has been important to the bottom line of the company?I believe that HR has a significant role to play in the bottom line of the company. If HR cannot contribute to the bottom line, its existence will be in question. Each activity that we engage in, is measured in terms of ROI. True HR business partnering happens when there is a revenue number attached to the HR function. How has the downturn affected HR?Downturn has affected HR. On one side, good resources are cautious to leave their present organisation and hence there is a shortage of talent pool. Further, the spends on employee activities has been curtailed. It is a challenge for every HR Manager to keep their employees motivated and encouraged to deliver superior performance in tough times. How should HR be integrated with the core line of business?HR can only be integrated into the core line of business when HR folks start understanding their business better. It is important for the HR function and its practitioners to be knowledgeable and also to a large extent, direct contributors in all other functions of the business. A recent survey has questioned HR's actual contribution in an organisation. Would you like to comment on it with particular reference to your organisation?It is true that at times HR’s contribution has been questioned and that has primarily been because of the over focus and dependence of HR on softer sides of the business and employee engagement activities. Not that they are not important, in the current time it is critical that HR evolves itself into a direct contributor to business results. HR is rightly positioned within an organisation to address the business results as it has influence over all other functions of the organisation. It, however, requires that HR starts a business engagement process with other functions in the organisation and focuses on how it can help them achieve bottom line results. If you could change three things about HR practices, what would they be?Three things I would like to change in HR practices are;Focus on random training without measurement of ROIMaking HR employees work in other functions of the business like marketing, sales etcStop calling HR a support function. (As told to Poonam Kumar)
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Two bright and accomplished personalities living in UK recently expressed an almost identical view on education system in India. A 12-year-old school girl in UK and a 61-year old professor also in UK lamented the education system in India that focused on rote and not learning. They criticised a system where memory was ranked higher than knowledge. Neha Ramu is an Indian origin school girl who scored an IQ of 162, the highest possible for her age. Dr Sugata Mitra is scientist emeritus at NIIT and professor at Newcastle University, UK. These two brilliant personalities who are generations apart agree on a problem that our education policy makers still don’t want to accept. India’s education system was built to serve the empire that wanted to create thousands of people who were literate but not educated. They ensured that only basic information about science and humanities was imparted to students. There was a clear bias against curiosity and creativity. For once I would welcome a rant by political leaders against our method of education that works hard to kill the questioning mind. Young Neha was quoted as saying, “Indian education system is very exam-oriented and stressful. What you do is basically memorise and spout out during the exams.” Such perception from a pre-teen girl that is still to be grasped by the policy leaders who decide our school curriculum. Dr Mitra’s hole in the wall experiment proved that 8-12 year old kids can educate themselves to the level of an office secretary if left alone with an internet enabled computer. A few slum kids played with a computer stuck into a wall by Dr Mitra. They learnt to surf and over a few days learnt complex science from what they saw on the screen. The trick in this achievement was collaboration and curiosity fuelled learning. Dr Mitra goes so far as to say that teachers may be obsolete. All that kids need is initial direction, some encouragement and a technology enabled collaborative environment. Despite all the promises made by successive education ministers at states and centre, Indian schooling system remains most antiquated. Even the Right to Education Act does not address flexibility in curriculum. While it focuses on school infrastructure, the new law has not suggested any radical freedom for a student to learn freely at his or her own pace. Another example of the rigidity of the system is the set of subject is forces students to follow. A tenth grader moving into the final two years of school has to choose science or humanities. This at a time when he or she is yet to fully discover the importance of each subject. A 15 year old is thus forced to choose a subject suite that will decide the course of the student’s adult life. A student trying to mix and match science subjects with humanities is often advised against it. Typical fears are that colleges in India will not accept a mixed subject student. Or that the job prospects will reduce. In effect, the system tells a student that being all-rounded at school level is a crime. Allowing a few more years to explore multiple disciplines will somehow create fatal flaws in the student’s education rendering him or her unemployable. It is time that education policy makers are divested of such archaic ideas. Several studies have established that the current school and college system is creating legions of unemployable students. Most are stuck in doing work that they have no aptitude for. They were forced to make a subject and therefore a career choice much before they were mature enough to know what they were good at. One of the brightest students in the world Neha attributes her accomplishments to the education system of UK. Perhaps in India she would not have been recognised at all. Professor Mitra is desperately trying to protect flexibility that will nurture curiosity. Hopefully Indian political leaders will stop promoting literacy and start supporting learning. (Pranjal Sharma is a senior business writer. He can be contacted at pranjalx@gmail.com)
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It’s no secret that personal and professional online networks have drastically changed the dynamics of the brand-consumer relationship. This stems from the fundamental desire of today’s consumers to participate in a dialogue rather than just be spoken to. What this means is that there is a shift away from the traditional one-way, funnel marketing to a two-way non-linear/ decentralised marketing model. While this entails many changes for marketers in today’s world, I’d like to go back to the basics in this article and focus today on the transformation of one core concept – “know your audience”. In early years this took the form of purely geographic segmentation (e.g., running ads only in certain target metros) and then evolved to include demographic segmentation. Today’s online world allows marketers to take things to a whole new level with much more sophisticated levels of targeting and behavioral segmentation that leverages data from a consumer’s professional or personal graph and increasingly his / her social actions.Indian marketers are already using social media to help inform and influence the brand choice of consumers. However, the mistake several of them make stems from treating all websites and networks the same. Not only does context matter (since the fundamental purpose or utility is very different across social networks), but we’re now learning that the same user has different mindsets on the different networks.A recent primary research study titled The Mindset Divide conducted by TNS, in partnership with LinkedIn, helps underscore how consumers display two very different mindsets when they engage on different social platforms – they go to personal networks to “spend time” while going to professional networks to “invest time”.We would all agree that the best kind of marketing establishes an emotional connection. In fact, in a research study by IPA that compared 880 international case studies, emotional campaigns were found to be almost twice more likely to generate large profit gains than rational ones. But this difference in mindset means that the type of emotional connection marketers try to create must be different too – on social/personal networks, consumersshow emotions around entertainment and memories because the drivers that keep users on the site are their desires to socialise, stay in touch, be entertained or pass time. People on these sites are most often in a casual modewith conversations revolving around lighter discussions of life.On the other hand, the emotions of professional networkersrevolve around their goals, aspirations or ambition. This purposeful mindset is driven by their desire to stay updated and be more productive and successful. They do this by investing time in by maintainingtheir professional identity, making useful contacts,searching for newopportunities and staying in touch. Split Strategy for Consumer Mind Splits For marketers, staying on top of their game will mean taking these different mindsets into consideration when planning their brand engagement strategy. The greatest impact of this is on content. Analysing what network members consume when “spending time” and what gets their attention when “investing time” will determine the manner in which brand information is shaped and shared. On personal networks the content they are looking for is very much in line with the context of those networks – getting information on their family & friends, exploring personal interests, and getting entertainment updates. However, for professional networks, consumers expect content and insights to make them more successful (e.g., tips to improve themselves professionally, help them make better decisions etc.)A recent Nielsen global study highlighted the internet as a key influencer to their purchase decisions for a vast majority of consumers (electronics was highest at 81 per cent and for electronics and 60 per cent the lowest for personal hair-care products) with those in Asia Pacific. Moreover social and brand pages were listed as important influence sources. If you join this statistic with the recent McKinsey quarterly article which states that 67 per cent of all customer decisions, both B2B and B2C, are driven by experiences with brands and categories rather than purely price, then it comes as no surprise to learn that “updates from brands” surfaced as an important content stream folks expect from professional networks. What was surprising was the spread wherein –“updates from brands” was ranked at #2 by professional networkers and #9 for personal/social networkers.They expect to hear from brands 26 per cent more on their professional networks than they do on personal ones. But equally interesting is the fact that they don’t expect the brand to just talk about their product but rather focus on leveraging knowledge that brands have to help the consumer (e.g., a healthcare company helping people with expert tips on how to stay healthy).And while you can expect higher social engagement due to the greater relevance, there is impact for marketers even beyond this. For example, Citibank engaged professional women by choosing to focus on user-generated topics relevant to this audience (rather than highlighting their products) and was rewarded with 2.5x more engagement but on top of this, they also had an almost ~50 per cent higher unaided brand awareness. And the real prize for marketers comes from the fact that social media seamlessly enables a compounding effect on the impact their campaigns garner. Virality ensures that your message rapidly spreads from a few to many, while the inherent trust associated with a personal / professional connection helps make things even more relevant and increase chances of consideration and conversion. But this entire flywheel is contingent on ensuring an emotional connection which is based on relevant content.Publishers are recognising these trends and making investments in reducing the number of ads on the page and instead attempting to boost relevance of their content. However savvy marketers, also need to thread sensibly these insights to devise more targeted & relevant campaigns. Do you know your audience, and if so, do your campaigns appropriately leverage the mindset differences across the different social networks?(The author is Country Manager, LinkedIn India)
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The number of Indians using mobile devices to get online is growing at a steady pace, and the availability of affordable smartphones is an important factor fueling this growth. Opera Software's special State of the Android Mobile Web report takes a closer look into the mobile browsing behavior (on their flagship Opera Mini browser) of these smartphone users in India.Over the last year, Opera Mini users on smartphones in India increased by 136.6 per cent which constitutes 19 per cent of the total Opera Mini users in India. The survey finds that almost 50 per cent of the top hundred domains visited by Opera Mini's Android users are related to news and information, search, price comparison and e-commerce. The top 3 categories of domains based on data usage are social networking, search and cricket. Some 21.7 per cent of all data used by Opera Mini's Android users is for Facebook, followed by Google at 5.8 per cent and ESPNcricinfo at 1.7 per cent. With 67 per cent of these users in India using the browser to access Facebook from their mobile devices, the majority number of webpages viewed are also from Facebook. Click For Complete InfographicSamsung tops the list of Android devices used to access the web via Opera Mini. In all, 9 out of the top-10 Android handsets are from Samsung. A further breakdown of the top-100 Android devices of Indian Opera Mini users confirms Samsung's leading position, with a 31 per cent market share, followed by Sony at 23 per cent and Micromax at 15 per cent.Each of the top-10 Android devices cost less than Rs. 10,000, with the exception of the Samsung Galaxy S2, which ranks last. A mobile device packed with a smart operating system and multiple features, all while fitting within an average users' budget, is proving to be a good deal for users.In addition to being the most preferred browser on basic phones, Opera Mini is also being used by millions of smartphone users in India. The data consumed by Opera Mini users on smartphones is significantly higher than the data consumed by Opera Mini users on basic phones.Among Opera Mini users, the number of webpages viewed by an Android user is 29.5 per cent higher than the monthly page views by an average user. Opera Mini compresses webpages by up to 90 per cent before sending them to the device, as a result webpages open faster and users save on data costs. Data compressed for an Android user is 127 per cent higher than the data compressed for an average user. Higher usage and compression rates clearly indicate that Opera Mini users on Android browse more and save more money than an average Opera Mini user.
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If you are studying engineering, you are not studying science. You are studying to become an engineer. Then when you graduate, it is often the case that you realize you don’t really want to be an engineer. It’s not so exciting. Then you go to business school. That’s what most engineers do now. I was certain early on that I didn’t want to work as an engineer. I wanted to do my MBA. Therefore, I thought I might as well spend three years studying economics instead of five years in college training to be an engineer. This is why I chose to study economics at Stephen’s over engineering at IIT.…Stephen’s was three years of making lifelong friends; three years of introspection; three years of spare time because the institution doesn’t push you that hard; three years of figuring out what you want to do. I initially looked back at the end of those three years and wondered what had happened and whether it had been worth it. After ten years, I realized that the unstructured time had indeed been worth it.After graduating, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go. I was accepted into IIM, but had also got a job offer in advertising at Lintas. I decided to join Lintas. My decision was based on two pieces of logic. The best business schools in the world, which are in the United States, generally take people who have first worked for a few years. You will gain a lot more if you can relate to what you are studying because you have worked before. I felt that was useful.I was barely able to survive on my salary at Lintas. I was earning 1,500 rupees a month. Even in 1984, it was hard to live in Bombay on 1,500 rupees. I paid 450 rupees in rent for an attic with six beds. I was always hard-up for cash. But I experienced a maximum amount of learning in those three years at Lintas. It was my first job, and your first job is always the one where you learn the most as long as you are with a good organization.I was working with nice people. I was really trying hard to perform. I was learning something new every day. While my job was highly operational, I was getting a chance to discuss conceptual and strategic decisions with colleagues. I was observing. I was in meetings with clients and bosses. I was working with some super-smart people and I was learning from them.Lintas at that time had perhaps the best talent pool in advertising in the country. My contract said five days a week, but we worked six and a half days. It was so much fun. Lintas was full of young people. We all had to work hard because we had impossible deadlines to meet. We were stretched, but we were learning. When I started Naukri, I knew I wanted to recreate this work culture for all our people.After Lintas, I went to IIMA. In the 1980s, the admission policy at IIMA ensured that there was diversity in the classroom. You had students from different academic backgrounds and with different kinds of work experience. There could be a maximum of 50 per cent of the students in the class from any one academic background. This made for a 360 degree experience, with several points of view on the table during class discussions. There were a fair number of mavericks and independent thinkers. Many of us simply did not want to work as employee managers and we had said so in the admission interview.Today, India’s best business schools, including IIMA, seem to be ignoring the value of diversity in the classroom. The admission policy at IIMA has changed; 93 per cent of the students in the current first year batch are engineers—a retrograde move. If you reduce diversity, you produce clones. And a class of clones is likely to produce fewer entrepreneurs.Click here to read 'Inspiring Lives'The goal of every good school should be to produce a fair number of misfits—because that is what entrepreneurs are. They do not see themselves fitting into existing corporate structures.Reflections…when I started Naukri, I realized that in an organization, you have to have processes. The key for me was to build a team with someone else who was more process-oriented than I am because that is a gap I have. I have remained consistent. I still cannot do something because of external stimulus. Somebody else can do it.You could say that we have empathy for the less obedient sort at Naukri. We work hard to ensure that everyone has the freedom to speak his or her mind. We encourage a culture of independent thinking with a high tolerance of dissent. I guess it is this acceptance that allows our independent-minded businesses like Jeevansathi and Happily Unmarried to thrive beside each other.Retention of the entrepreneurial spirit has to be driven from the top. This has been our experience. First and foremost, you must hire the right kind of people. Entrepreneurial managers are a rare breed. We look for people who have the experience of having worked in a large organization, and, despite having performed well there, are dissatisfied with excessive controls and yearn for greater independence. We look for people who are somewhat irreverent but at the same time understand the need for organization-building and for the right kind of controls to ensure performance and governance without stifling creativity. And all this without compromising on the competencies required to actually do the job.Such managers are rare to find, but if you don’t recognize that these are the people you need, you will get them only by accident. And then you won’t know what to do with them. Once you have a few of these folks on board, you need to agree with them on expectations and, most importantly, empower them. If you don’t, you will be wasting a precious resource and chances are that they will leave in some time anyway. So give them all the assistance they need and ensure you don’t get in their way.In any company, there will be people who will resist the empowerment of others—most notably the people under them. Get rid of the control freaks, no matter how good they are technically. In the long run, they will ensure that the organization remains inconsequential.Lastly, close the loop by ensuring that you have a generous wealth-sharing plan. These are the people who will take the organization to the next level. Ensure that they are rewarded well for their performance – way beyond the market price, usually through ESOPs. A performer must never even think of looking elsewhere.You are now no longer an entrepreneur alone. You have to assume the role of creating other entrepreneurs internally. You are consciously building an argumentative company.From the chapter 'Internal Stimulus', by Sanjeev Bikchandani, Founder & Executive Vice-Chairman, Info Edge. Extracted with permission from Bloomsbury India. The Captainship is scheduled to release on 25 May
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Media agency Mindshare won the top honours at the Media Abby awards given out a glittering ceremony on the sands of Goa on Friday, 5 April 2013. The awards that saw media agencies cheering loudly for their respective agencies and applauding for their peers, received about 660 entries from all the major media agencies in the country. Only 46 of the entries made it to the winners' list with only six of them bagging gold awards.While Mindshare picked up more than 20 per cent of all Media Abby awards, network agency Maxus came next with six awards followed by Lodestar-UM and Madison Media-Pinnacle picking up five medals each.The surprise package of the evening was, however, the emergence of non-media specialists like digital agencies, creative agencies and relatively unknown small agencies picking up media awards showing probably the direction that advertising might take in the future. Click Here For The List of Media AbbysA Marriage Made In HeavenGoafest, the annual indian advertising festival, is being held from April 4-6 at the Zuri White Sands in Goa. The festival which has a knowledge conclave on the first day had clients talking to senior agency heads about how both could work better towards an effective client agency engagement. R S Sodhi, managing director, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation that owns the brand Amul gives some tips for a happy-ever-after client-agency relationship.The agency-client relationship is a lot like that between a man and wife. Sodhi says Amul has had a loyal relationship with its agencies for several decades. Even though Amul had two wives (read Draft FCB and Da Cunha)... wait a minute... actually four, at one point, it never ‘divorced’ any of the agencies. Two of the agencies, ASP and Radeus ceased to exist in their erstwhile form (they were either acquired or shut shop).Think conceive and execute your advertising in local languages. Most often that not, campaigns for Kerala are written in English, by copywriters sitting in a remote location like Mumbai and then translated. Such ads lose out on the local flavour.Link advertising budgets to company performance. Only if a company’s topline and profits grow will Amul increase the advertising budget. Ever since inception, Amul’s advertising budget has always been constant at one per cent or less of turnover. Currently, it’s 0.8 per cent of turnover. So if an agency wants to increase its client’s ad budget, it will have to work in tandem with client objectives to achieve growth.Believe the agency. Treat the agency as professionals who know their job. In most cases Amul executives see the ad the same day the consumers see the advertisement. Imagine an agency that requires no client approvals for its creative message. Of course, there have been setbacks. But Sodhi is quick to point out that the overall experience has been positive.
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Sandyp Bhattacharya , VP and Global Head of HR, Mahindra Comviva, has successfully managed culturally diverse environments in a global scenario, spread across entities and continents. The biggest challenge to a HR practitioner in his mind lies in sifting true talent within and outside the organisation. Sandyp has many ‘youngest firsts’ to his credit and was among the youngest HR professionals in the industry to occupy a Management leadership position, when he became part of Comviva’s Apex Leadership Team in 2008. With a Masters in (Personnel) Management, from Pune University, Bhattacharya was presented the ‘HR Leadership’ Award at the Asia Pacific HRM Congress, 2012.What made you to choose HR as a profession? For two primary reasons. I had an inherent interest in human behaviour. Also, I wished to influence positive change around me. HR profession gave an interesting opportunity to achieve both. I felt at that stage that talent pool in this space was not adequately developed, and in a rapidly evolving domain, I saw a great career opportunity for myself.What has been the biggest achievement in your career? There have been successes and failures on a regular basis. I feel that culmination of a series of successful global initiatives by my team during one of my stints gave a lot of satisfaction. It created a highly engaged, focussed and capable team. Amongst many capable leaders and teams, I was chosen for the President’s Annual Award. The highest annual award of the company. Apart from this, the sheer pleasure of seeing people groomed by you reach high levels of recognition in the company and industry gives me a lot of satisfaction. I feel, the quality of leaders you create and leave behind in the industry is one the biggest measures of professional success.What have been, the primary traits/qualities that have helped you attain your present position?The desire to learn new things, and unlearn things which are not relevant anymore. It is easier to learn but more difficult to give up and unlearn what has worked for us in the past, but are losing relevance now is a more difficult.Courage to stand up for one’s views, and show with conviction and passion.Strategic thinking and rigor in following them through with actions.Basic planning and preparedness with a detail oriented approach from any large initiative to a simple thing like a small meeting that is coming up.Innovation and thinking out of the box. Not the herd mentality.Building relationships.Integrity and Transparency in words, thoughts and actions.What are the challenges you are facing in organisation?The biggest challenge is to sift out true talent within and outside the organisation from the huge pool of people around us. True talent is rare. Once one finds them, we must give them the freedom and keep them developed and engaged. What are the steps a company should take to develop and motivate future leaders?It is critical for the organisations to establish multi-pronged approach and mechanisms to identify high potential individuals. Having found them, as mentioned earlier, one must give them the freedom; and keep them developed and engaged. Most importantly, they should have the freedom to fail. Mentorship for such people also can enhance this leadership development process.What is your rate of attrition? How do you prevent it?Based on anecdotal data, we could be anywhere at 20-30 per cent lower than the industry average in our space. We drive engagement through our internally developed People Focus Octagon Model, acronymed ENERGIZE. Some of the aspects like Engagement, learning opportunities, competitive salaries and benefits, open environment and challenging and meaningful work makes Mahindra Comviva one of the most preferred employers in this space.How do you retain talent in your company?As mentioned above we follow an employee first philosophy. The thumb rule is – if in any situation, a human decision is equally divided between an employee and the corporate side; we would bend towards the employee. We believe, over a period of time this almost always creates employee and organisation working together on the same side.What sets your company apart from other companies as far as work culture goes?Open and informal work culture.Allowing people to fail and do well again.Allowing people to break the boundaries.Approachability – open door approach by all levels.Employee First Approach. What is the biggest challenge you face when selecting people?The talent pool in the VAS, mobile financials and related domain is not adequate to meet industry needs. We have to dig outside the domain to look for people. But our answer to this is grooming talent from within. We therefore do a strong campus programme called ‘Comcubs’ where we hire brightest engineers from top 25 campuses every year. We also do B-school hiring from premier institutes like IIMs, London Business School etc. and look towards investing in them over the years to occupy 80 per cent of all our talent requirements.How do you track of employees' satisfaction or dissatisfaction?Formal engagement surveys year on year, apart from other functional surveys and internal feedback mechanisms, like heart to heart, employee dipsticks that happen during the course of the year on a regular basis.How has HR been important to the bottom line of the company? We are into people business. We have a strong role to play in impacting cost structure, quality of innovation and creating a talent pipeline of the company. We strongly facilitate the employee productivity improvement. In the last 4 years, our gross revenue per employee has more than doubled.How has the downturn affected HR? There has not been any impact as far I am concernedHow should HR be integrated with the core line of business? By truly understanding business and understanding the nuances of the same from revenue, growth, market, cost and delivery challenges perspective.If you could change three things about HR practices, what would they be?I would only add understanding of business. One clear measure would be- asking HR people to be able to write 90 per cent of job descriptions themselves instead of asking business to do the same. This automatically would ensure that HR understands the business. Today they rely significantly on line managers to do the same.(As told to Poonam Kumar)
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