RETIRING to Reboot

Bus iness&economy ~
RETIRING to Reboot
Corporate leaders leverage their passion and experience into a second innings,
starting brave new ventures when most would be preparing for the golden years
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SUBIR
I By Nandini Vaish I
Khattar
came up with an
audacious thought. He would
Exactly
a Maruti
year Suzuki
ago, Jagdish
retire from
and set
up his own venture, a chain of multibrand auto sales and service outlets. The
industry looked at him with disbelief.
Why would a man at the helm of the
country's largest automobile company
want to leave a cushy job and start his
own company-that
too in his 60s?
His detractors, who included officials
from the company, tried to talk him out
of it. "The unorganised auto service
industry is too large, and their costs too
low. How will you compete?" they said.
Servicing and repairing vehicles also
meant that he would be competing
directly with car dealers and service
centres, many of whom he had been
dealing with for years.
But Khattar, 67, had a bit of a
contrarian trait. He decided not to play
golf, despite being a member
of
several golf courses, or "sit home and
play with the grandchildren". Instead, he
started his second innings as an entrepreneur and set up Carnation Auto.
Today, he has 13 functional outlets in
nine cities which clock in a montWy
turnover ofRs 3 crore, and plans to scale
up to nearly 30 outlets by March. He has
also tied up with Dilip Chhabria for
vehicle redesign and has launched the
Workshop-on-Wheels service, a fleet of
fully equipped vans that provide door-todoor car service. And people have taken
note. "Today people in the 40s and 50s
walk up to me and say that they too are
looking at becoming entrepreneurs,"
says Khattar, even as he keeps getting
calls from dealers to work with him.
Indeed. Silver start-ups seem to be
picking up in India Inc. In 2004, Davinder
Singh Brar, former CEO and managing
director
of Ranbaxy, joined
GVK
HALDER/www
indiatodayimages.com
, I don't like
targets. It shows
you can't do more.
Business is not
about what others
think of you, but
-+wan~,
I what the customer
.
JAGDISH KHATTAR, 67
TRANSITION:
From MD, Maruti Suzuki
to founder, Carnation Auto
~
J/
outlet
BIG IDEA: for
Multi-brand
cars. The service
auto
service industry is worth
Rs 2,500 crore; much of it unorganised. That's opportunity.
CHALLENGE:
Sourcing genuine parts
from car companies as it clashes
with dealer interest.
FEBRUARY
8.2010
•
INDIA
TODAY
49
Bus iness&economy ~
-',
The challenge
of being an
I
entrepreneur
i
moving from a
known territory
is
i
and a steady life
to one which is
___4I--unpredictable.
_
I
,
SAURABH SRIVASTAVA, 63
From chairtnan
of Xansa to founder of
TRANSITION:
Infinity Ventures and
co-founder of Indian
Angel Network.
BIG IDEA: IAN brings
~ multiple investors
under one umbrella
~
to invest in start-ups.
CHALLENGE:
Finding
good start-ups to
invest in.
MANDAR
DEODHAR/wv.w.indlatodayimages.com
Biosciences as promoter-chairman.
A
company set up in 2001 by G.v. Sanjay
Reddy, it is an integrated research services provider. He was followed by BVR
Subbu, former president of Hyundai
Motors India, who set up Argentum
Motors, an auto ancillary manufacturing firm with the promoters of Spicejet;
IT veteran
Saurabh Srivastava, who
retired as Xansa chairman to set up
Infinity Ventures, a venture capital firm,
along with the Indian Angel Network,
the country's largest business angel
group with over 100 investors; and the
likes of Electrolux MD Rajeev Karwal
and Renuka Ramnath ofICICIVentures,
who, though not 'silver', have ventured
into entrepreneurship.
More recently,
Narayana Murthy ofInfosys, who is set
to retire from the company's board in
August next year, announced he had
floated Catamaran, a venture capital
fund for early and seed companies.
Srivastava jokes that the silver
entrepreneurs, the equivalents of the
baby boomers in the US, are increasingly getting less "old for their age and
are looking for newer ways to
channelise their energies. Increasingly,
people are beginning to ask them-
50
INDIA TODAY •
FEBRUARY 8.2010
selves: am I going to be in this job for
the next 20 years or do I want to do
something different?" Karwal, who
started
Milagrow
Business
and
Knowledge Solutions which mentors
micro, small and medium enterprises
(MSMES), says his motivation was to "be
his own boss". Money, he says, is incidental. "It happens when you do business." However, Arun Maira, former
chairman of the Boston Consulting
Group, now a member of the Planning
Commission, has a different take. He
believes many of the shifts happened
for want of choice. "At that age and that
seniority then," he says, "few people
would be looking for something very
different to do."
Take
instance.he After
27
yearsBrar,
with for
Ranbaxy,
decided
to set up his own venture. "I had envisioned
starting
a
world-class
company on my own," he says. His
research, however, showed that the
generic ph arm a space was already
saturated and so a start-up had few
chances of succeeding. Interested in
R&D services, Brar chose biosciences.
MANDAR
DEODHAR/www.indiatodayimages.com
It was a growing industry with a lot of
potential.
The global outsourcing
market for drug discovery is estimated to be $60 billion of which discovery outsourcing is $8 billion, and
India and China are emerging as the
favourites.
Starting from scratch
would have taken him three or four
years to scale up, so he joined forces
with Reddy. Today, the compa~y has
a turnover of Rs 250 crore, and is
providing R&D services to 16 of the top
20 pharma companies around the
globe for drug discovery in veterinary,
agro and human pharma life sciences.
Similarly, Karwal, who has worked
with a host of companies in the
consumer goods sector, found a niche
in mentoring and advising MSMES which
were either starting or scaling up, or
even looking for a turnaround. There
are about 350 million MSMES in India
which contribute about 45 per cent of
the domestic manufacturing
output
and about 40 per cent of exports.
Whatever the motivation, these
entrepreneurs are increasingly putting
their industry experience, expertise,
management
skills and goodwill to
good business use. For instance,
I-J' I wanted
. i
to
do something
of my own. Now
I
I set the agenda
and lay down
I
the terms of
i
: engagement."
~-f------ -----RENUKA RAMNATH, 48
From managing
director of IClci Ventures
TRANSITION:
to founder of Multiple
Alternate Asset Managers
BIG IDEA: Channelising
\~ money
from
long-term capital
providers to deserving
~
entrepreneurs.
CHALLENGE:
Raising capital
and getting a good
team in place as it is
a new fund.
SHAKHAR
, I had already
missed the bus
in IT, but that
opportunity was
yet to come in
R&D services in
-- -------------.,
.--- , ,
life sciences.
•...
D.S. BRAR, 56
TRANSITION:
From CEO
and managing director
of Ranbaxy to Chairman
of GVK Biosciences
Drug
W discovery
and
~
BIG IDEA:
contract research
for pharma companies.
The global outsourcing
market is worth $60
bn of which drug
discovery is $8 bn.
CHALLENGE:
Increasing
the pool of innovative
products while reducing
R&Dspends.
GHOSH/ww.Y.iodiatodaylmages.com
Khattar managed to snag Rs 108 crore
in Series-A funding from IFCI Venture
Capital and Premjilnvest, even though
he had a bit of "chasing to do". likewise, Ramnath's first office in Mumbai's
Worli was offered by a friend. "Ninetynine out of 100 people who helped me
out approached me," she says. A study
by UK-based NatWest Bank showed
that silver entrepreneurs were twice as
likely to survive the first three years,
which would make them attractive to
investors. That could apply here too.
In April 2009, as the recession was
beginning to rear its head, Ramnath
stepped down as the head of ICICI
Ventures to found Multiple Alternate
Asset Managers,
a private asset
management firm. The 48-year-old,
who had been an executive for over 20
years, couldn't resist the idea of creating something new of her own, whatever the economic headwinds.
However, even though most entrepreneurs are in an industry familiar to
them, being the new kid on the block isn't
easy. As a start-up, you have to think and
behave like one, and keep your ear to the
ground. For one, cost is important. So, if
Khattar is a stickler for turning ofIlights,
Ramnath has started using non-refundable, cheap air tickets, "and no business
class till I earn it". But more importantly,
she says, one has to "move on from the
past and recalibrate".
Setting a culture for the company is
as important, says Srivastava. "Actions
speak volumes about a company's
values, so spend a lot of time thinking
about your company DNA and set precedents." Brar will agree. Reddy and
he have, for example, fixed a per day
travel allowance for the company's
staff, including the chairman himself.
Brar gets $175-$200, which includes
travel, transport and stay per day when
he is abroad. "It's a discipline where
cost management is practised at all
levels," he says.
Karwal says that entrepreneurs
often fail due to lack of good people. "Be
it building a team, aligning it to a
common purpose and retaining it,
choosing the right people is the biggest
challenge. Everything else follows."
Entrepreneurship is about urge, not
age, and these pioneers prove it.
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FEBRUARY
8.2010
•
INDIA
TODAY
51