Brick and Immortal

ET Is The Newspaper I Am Most Familiar With — Indra Nooyi

    THE backdrop was threatening, even ominous. In the course of a tumultuous September, modern Wall Street has changed for ever and many of the storied names of the world of finance have gone under. Strong men are quaking in their boots and the biggest economy in the world is eagerly awaiting a government bailout.
It was no surprise then that the ET Jury chose to recognise companies and individuals of substance. The preference was very much for brick and mortar, for solidity and stability. Materiality was a word which came up several times in the course of the proceedings. Companies and individuals who had built institutions with sustainable businesses won the vote of approval. Given the depth and variety of experience of our jury, led by the peripatetic Indra Nooyi, Pepsi-Co's worldwide chairman and CEO, ET's class of '08 could not have hoped for a better endorsement.
    The choices themselves emerged after intense, heated and entirely confidential discussions. The jurors dissected the guts of the winners, checking management practices, global vision, ethics and viability before arriving at their choice. One presence loomed over the proceedings. Indra Nooyi was very much the man of the match, guiding the deliberations with panache, grace, elegance and humour, combining flirtatious charm with a steely grasp of issues. We would love to give away some of the nuggets but are bound by a strict code of secrecy.
    First the winners: Given the broad paradigm, the choices were logical. Our Business Leader of the Year is India's 'Mr Infrastructure' AM Naik, the chairman and CEO of engineering titan L&T. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that Mr Naik is building the foundation of 21st century India. He has built four airports and six ports, not to mention numerous factories. Along the way, he has created a company with great management depth and the capability to execute international projects. The jurors were impressed by Mr Naik's passion, integrity, pride in his company and his determination.
    The Company of the Year, Tata Steel, pioneered industrialisation in India early in the previous century. It has begun this century by buying Corus, the erstwhile British Steel, and has completed the integration process, a formidable challenge for the best of companies, without a whiff of trouble. It is now the fifth-largest steelmaker in the world, post the Corus deal.
    The jury chose Sun Pharma's Dilip Shanghvi, who has built a highly acclaimed pharmaceutical company, as Entrepreneur of the Year. The Indian pharma story is well known and there have been many contenders for the top position but in the last few years, Sun Pharma has been streets ahead of the competition. Mr Shanghvi was in fact on ET's shortlist for Business Leader of the year, but the jury decided his entrepreneurial achievements—he built the company from scratch—needed to be recognised.
    The emphasis on brick and mortar also manifested itself in the choice of emerging company. Welspun Gujarat Stahl Rohren is the world's third largest maker of steel pipes and a company on the fast growth track. A sterling record of achievement, first as the creator of the modern Hindustan Lever (now HUL) and a long career in public service resulted in the Lifetime Achievement Award for Ashok Ganguly. Here again, the jury went beyond the ET shortlist, which is entirely its prerogative, and something which juries in the past have done.
    Kamal Nath, India's commerce and industry minister, won the jury's acclaim for pushing through a slew of reforms facilitating foreign direct investment and for his business-friendly policies. Lengthy debate over some nominees
    Mr Nath has also been the face of India at the prolonged, and so far futile, WTO negotiations, the Doha round. It was Mr Nath's firmness—his foreign critics would call it intransigence—which resulted in the collapse of the talks. Mr Nath's international stature clearly impressed our jury.
    The award for Policy Change Agent saw a prolonged debate over the meaning of the award. Eventually the jury plumped for E Sreedharan, the creator of the Konkan Railway and most famously, the Delhi Metro. The consensus was that masterful execution which influences and changes policy met the criteria for the award. Funding metro projects by developing real estate is a model which the Delhi Metro has pioneered.
    ET's most power-packed international jury, with three global CEOs (two, Ms Nooyi and Anshu Jain, of Indian origin) chose to acknowledge Arun Sarin's feats as Vodafone CEO with the Global Indian Award. Again this category saw a complex and nuanced discussion of the criteria for the award, but sorry—we can't give you any details.
    The Businesswoman Of The Year award went to a lady who has built India's largest private sector insurance company from inception. Shikha Sharma, CEO of ICICI Prudential, has headed the company from its birth.
    The Corporate Citizen Award also saw a lengthy debate on the quality of work which companies do outside their core businesses. Some of the jury members felt that Indian companies don't do enough. The jury eventually decided on Dr Reddy's Foundation.
    The jury of 2008 is remarkable for featuring three international business leaders. Apart from chairman Nooyi, the global contingent consisted of StanChart PLC CEO Peter Sands and Deutsche Bank head of global markets and co-head investment banking Anshu Jain. The other five members have been closely associated with the ET Awards and possess a wealth of institutional memory. They are Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, Wipro chairman Azim Premji, Bharti Enterprises chairman and CEO Sunil Mittal and Unilever president—Asia, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe—Harish Manwani.
    The ET Awards are presented by Raymond, in association with the Taj Mahal Hotel and television partner Times NOW.
    For more details, log on to www.etawards.economictimes.com