Family Businesses In India See Rise Of Women As Promoters And Leaders

Her paternal grandmother, Kokilaben, stood by husband Dhirubhai but never joined him as he redefined the boundaries of Indian entrepreneurship. Her father’s sisters, or her aunts, were married early into business houses, with little discussion about joining the business: Dipti into the Salgaocar family and Nina into the Kothari family. Her mother, Nita, broke the mould somewhat and has done a fair bit on the business end of the group. But Isha Ambani, 22, is poised to redraw the family-business construct for Reliance women scions.

Last week, ET reported the only daughter of Reliance Industries owner Mukesh Ambani had joined global consultancy McKinsey in the US. Isha, a Yale graduate in psychology and South Asian studies, had joined her father at the Reliance annual general meeting in Mumbai last year. While the company declined comment, corporate observers say the McKinsey stint is probably a stepping stone to larger things in the family business empire.

Across India Inc, more and more women scions can be seen at the frontline of their family business. There are some who have made a mark: like Nisa Godrej and Tanya Dubash at the Godrej Group. There are some who are asserting themselves: like Radhika Piramal, the 34-year-old, Harvard-educated managing director of VIP Industries.

And there’s a new lot stepping in: like 30-year-old Gursimran Mann, managing director of Simbhaoli Sugars, and the first woman in four generations of the family to play a hands-on role in its business. According to business historian Gita Piramal, who is also the mother of Radhika Piramal, 20 years ago, she predicted it would take two generations before Indian women in the family business became the done thing. “I find it has taken one generation to do so,” she says.

 

Three Pivots Of Change

“It is a belated effect of what is happening in society,” says Ashvini Chopra, MD & CEO of Universal Trustees, a firm that helps business families in succession planning. When it comes to women in business, this change pivots around three aspects.

The first is education. “Parents who would typically give professional education, including overseas exposure, only to their sons are now also encouraging daughters,” says Prabir Jha, chief HR officer, Reliance Group, speaking in general and not in reference to the Ambani family. “Their entry into business responsibilities is then a logical corollary.”

Secondly, family size is shrinking. Joint families are becoming nuclear, resulting in a fall in the number of male heirs. “In many families it’s a father and son and daughter like situation. And daughters are the heir apparent,” says Kavil Ramachandran, Thomas Schmidheiny Chair professor of family business and wealth management at Indian School of Business. “Also many families are realising that girls are as good as, or better than, boys in performance.”

For some like Sulajja Firodia Motwani, vice-chairperson of Kinetic Engineering, all this was a given. “A combination of a good atmosphere at home, freedom to do what we wanted and treating daughters like sons encouraged me to get into the family business,” she says. While she feels this is how it should be, Piramal says it’s still not the case in all families and inequalities manifest themselves in many forms. “We are only half way there,” she says. “There are several prominent business families where daughters are not at the forefront of handling businesses in terms of true equality.”

That leads to the third pivot of change: an amendment in the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, in 2005, which removed gender discrimination in inheritance in Hindu joint families. Previously, only the male line, down to the great-grandson, had inheritance rights. The amendment gives women an equal share in the family business. “Even women married before 1994 can come back and claim equal rights into the family business as well as inherited assets,” says Sameer Tapia, senior partner at ALMT Legal.

But the exciting, radical change is happening in operations, and Tapia offers some sense of its magnitude. “We have at least 40 per cent family-business clients where women are playing an active role in the family business, and are part of crucial strategy or execution teams.” And many, like the four women profiled here, are leaving an imprint.

Through the Ranks

Unlike many, if not most, women scions in India, Lakshmi Venu had a point of reference on the gender question. Her mother, Mallika Srinivasan, is the chairperson and chief executive of tractor company Tractors and Farm Equipment Limited. But Lakshmi, 31, gravitated towards the businesses managed by her father, Venu Srinivasan—auto-component company Sundaram-Clayton and two-wheeler firm TVS Motor. In 2010, Lakshmi was inducted as director-strategy and whole-time director of Sundaram-Clayton. In May 2011, she was also made vice-president in charge of global business strategy at Sundaram-Clayton.

It capped close to a decade of her involvement with the family business. Back in 2003, Lakshmi joined as a management trainee in Sundaram Auto Components. She also did stints in business strategy, design, corporate affairs, and sales and marketing at TVS Motor. Lakshmi declined comment for this profile.

But senior auto industry professional RL Ravichandran, who has worked in a senior position in TVS Motors, says Lakshmi was interested in the business from early on. Even with her impeccable academic qualifications, he adds, she earned her way through various roles. “(It’s why)…there was no resistance from employees when she was inducted on to the board.”

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a senior TVS manager who interacts with Lakshmi describes her as “level-headed” and “business-like”. She currently manages the entire component business, which includes die cast, rubber, plastics and seats. “She is handling the business well and it is showing results,” he adds. Unlike Lakshmi, brother Sudarshan Venu, 24, had an easier entry into Sundaram-Clayton, joining its board in 2011.

According to VG Ramakrishnan, managing director of Frost & Sullivan, a consultancy, it’s a good sign when scions spend time in the business rather than being parachuted into it. “Children are being groomed to take over executive roles and responsibilities right from the beginning as part of effective succession planning,” he says. “It shows the progressive nature of these companies.”

In 2011, Lakshmi married Rohan Murty, son of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy. Her lineage aside, she is seen as a leader in her own right. Anil Singhvi, founder and director of Institutional Investor Advisory Services, a proxy shareholder advisory firm, has been baying against the tendency of business families to induct women scions into the board simply to meet the new rule of minimum women representation. But for Lakshmi, he says: “She is competent to take the business forward.”

When a 21-year-old Bhairavi Jani returned from the US in 2000, after a year of working as a supply-chain consultant in KPMG’s Washington DC office, she battled two stereotypes as she tried to make her mark in the male-dominated Indian logistics business industry: gender and age. “There were people who did not want to work with me, who thought I was probably amusing myself for a few years before being married off,” she says. “And then there were customers, even MNCs, who refused to give business to a young woman, who they were sure would fail miserably at logistics planning.”

Her father had thrown her into the deep end, and told Jani to learn to swim. Instead of making her a part of Blue Dart, his flagship before he sold it to DHL in 2004, Tushar Jani stumped his elder daughter by asking her to set up her own venture. “His view was that people from family-owned businesses tend to take things for granted,” says Jani, now 34. “Going through the pain of setting up a venture would teach me two things: never be afraid to take risks and value what it takes to sustain a business.”

So, Jani set up i3pl, to provide end-to-end logistics services to corporate clients. After initially struggling for business, i3pl obtained its first client in M&M, and subsequently signed up British Petroleum, Sara Lee and Walt Disney, among others. Jani roped in partners in 2003 and, in a planned exit, sold out to them in 2005.

That same year, Jani assumed the role of group director for the SCA Group, which has four verticals: warehousing, supply chain technology, cargo handling and freight forwarding, and shipping, respectively. At present, she provides strategic and operational guidance, operating as a link between the board and professionals; she also directs new projects and is in charge of joint ventures and alliances.

Jani set up the warehousing vertical, via a company called Transmart India, in 2007. Percy Dhunjisha, a former CFO of Blue Dart Express and a person who had worked closely with her father, was her mentor there. He describes her as a searching and questioning manager. “Bhairavi’s management style is, forethought is better than afterthought,” he says. “She does not accept things as they are presented, but will often probe enough with questions to determine whether there is an alternate way of doing things and whether the same has been considered before arriving at the solution presented.”

At SCA, she has her father’s backing. “Daughters are as astute and sharp in financial management, balance sheet and P&L [profit and loss] accounting, says Tushar Jani. “I have always believed in that. Therefore, Bhairavi has always been given full charge of our projects and companies, including P&L responsibility. And like any CEO, she has been answerable to the board.”

Gender and age still come up in conversations, though. Even today, there are few women in the logistics industry, and Jani still has to face issues of equality with male colleagues and work-life balance. “But I am confident that women in leadership roles in business will pick up sharply,” she concludes.

Set up in 1933, Simbhaoli Sugars has seen four generations of the Mann family nurture it. But in that journey, women from the family, though present as shareholders and promoter-directors, were conspicuously absent on the frontline. Gursimran Mann, belonging to the fourth generation, changed that.

In 2005, just 21 and out of college, she joined Simbhaoli— a business with inert appeal to the young and a workforce in which women made up less than 1%. In doing so, she was turning her back on options available to her like consulting and investment banking. She even considered joining a consumer products or an agri-trading company, having done internships with Nestle, Cargill and ED&F Man.

“It was my decision,” says Mann. She grew up in the Simbhaoli factory compound, in rural Uttar Pradesh, listening to conversations about the business and watching sugar being made. “This background, combined with my training in economics, made me realise the opportunity that existed for me to help grow the business further.” The only child, she did not immediately start reporting to her father and chairman Gurmit Mann. Joining as a trainee, Mann worked in various departments—factory, farm operations and trading —reporting to different people.

“My promotions were not on auto mode,” she says. After completing her MBA from London Business School, Mann became an executive director in 2012 and managing director in July 2013. At Simbhaoli, she counts among her achievements increasing asset utilisation, partnering with global sugar trading company ED&F Man, setting up sugar refinery on the Gujarat coast to tap the import-export play, reducing the cyclical nature of the sugar business by pushing the power and the alcohol business, building a consulting vertical that advises other companies on all things sugar, and raising new capital from private equity. “She has taken the challenge to professionalise the business,” says Devin Narang, India MD of Singapore-based PE fund Sindicatum, which has invested in the company.

For Mann, it’s all in a day’s work. “There is an overall social and cultural change, leading to a change in mindset among business families regarding acceptance of daughters to take charge,” she says.

The middle of three daughters, Arathi Krishna was the first women in her family to join the business, in 1989, when she was just 20. “I had an easy transition into the company,” says Krishna, now joint managing director of auto-component major Sundram Fasteners. “I was easily accepted by employees.” Acceptance from the industry has followed. The 45-year-old spearheads the Rs 2,651 crore company’s domestic business.

“This is a logical succession,” says Sonu Iyer, partner & diversity and inclusiveness leader, Ernst & Young India, a consultancy. “The daughters [younger sister Arundathi is in charge of overseas operations and business development] have grown up in an entrepreneurial set up, and it’s only natural for them to be entrepreneurs and also do it better.”

According to Arathi, her parents gave her an environment to flourish and the freedom to choose. “There was no difference between a son or a daughter,” she says. “My parents are very progressive, willing to take risks and pushed us to pursue our interests. But they never pushed us into the business.” Arathi did an MBA from the US. She stayed on, first to work in automotive strategy with a consulting company and then with Sundram Fasteners for five years. “I knew I would, at some point, come back and join the business,” she says.

“So, I took up jobs in the US that were related to the business. I wanted to make myself worthy when I came back to join the business.” Arathi returned to India in 2006, and became joint MD in 2011. Arathi counts among her achievements making the workforce at Sundram Fastners younger, and the work culture more performance-based and technology oriented. Around 2005, the average age of the Sundram workforce was 40 years; it’s now down to 35 years.

In her earlier years, at industry meets, Arathi would feel out of sorts in what was essentially a man’s world. “But then, I felt it was tougher to work in a Japanese or a Korean company,” she says. At present, 10% of Sundram’s workforce is made of women. “We have always believed in equality at the workplace. We are promoting more women to join the manufacturing ranks in the company.”