Rashesh Shah: The Constant Achiever
Believing in constantly learning and raising the bar of performance, has led Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO, Edelweiss Financial Services to create and build one of the rapidly-growing financial-services conglomerates, with interests in corporate and retail credit, asset reconstruction, wealth management and insurance.
Shah kick-started business operations in 1996, with Rs 20 lakh in revenue. Now Edelweiss Financial Services is a billion-dollar revenue company (Rs 6600 crore) with net profits of over Rs 800 crore. It is Shah’s astuteness in spotting business opportunities that has seen him feature in BW Businessworld’s Most Valuable CEO list.
Quite unusually, Shah took up swimming for the first time four years ago, as he did marathon running eight years ago. He now is proficient at swimming, taking a plunge into the deep seas at all times. Says he: “The one thing that I enjoy the most is learning. You have to learn how to manage a large company and build the balance sheet. Learning is becoming necessary now because the way the world is emerging, every business has to have a rebirth every five-seven years. You have to re-invent yourself.”
Shah is constantly looking for new businesses that are scalable and do not add too much complexity to the organisation. Not too many years ago, driven by the huge opportunity in stressed assets, Edelweiss entered the business of asset reconstruction. Now, it has one of the largest asset reconstruction businesses ever, with a portfolio of over Rs 1 lakh crore.
Edelweiss has a roster of about seven businesses: structured collateral credit, wholesage and retail mortgage, SME and agri loans, distressed credit, wealth and asset management and capital markets. With over 10,000 employees it has grown, and how?. In the last three years alone, its employee strength doubled.
Pointing out that the short-term volatility and change in the market, Shah notes that his biggest challenge is keeping the organisation focused on long-term goals, not getting too caught up in the ups and downs of the near term. “The hardest thing a leader has to do is to have a trained organisation that maintains its long-term focus. One has to constantly re-calibre the organisation from short-term setbacks. You have to constantly tell people that this is the short-term reality: things change every day. But it’s the long-term goals you need to focus on,” says Shah.
He also believes that one has to invest in tomorrow, and is constantly on the lookout for new ideas and businesses. Shah attributes this to his curious side. Shah encourages his business leaders to look for new business opportunities once a year. That’s why Edelweiss has managed to grow from a small capital market business to a large financial services one.
Shah prefers to test a new business model at a smaller scale and work out the proof of concept. He does not hesitate to put seed money into new ventures for a year or two, chiefly to understand how a business can be scaled up and become a part of Edelweiss’ portfolio. “We have a framework. One is growth. Second, how much complexity it will create. If you keep on adding things, it will become complex. We look at competitive intensity, and whether it offers long-term scalability, or whether a segment is just a temporary opportunity,” says Shah.
Shah’s leadership style is giving people ownership and freedom to experiment within a framework. “It’s not complete outsourcing. You are involved, but the ownership is theirs,” says Shah. That’s how drive and curiousity create a billion-dollar financial-services conglomerate.
