Billionaires In The Making

These six NextGen scions of successful, wealthy business families stand at the crossroads of their empires and have the potential to take their inheritance to a whole new level

Oct 20, 2010, 06:35 IST6 min

Shapoor and Cyrus Mistry

There’s one thing that’s common to Pallonji Mistry and his sons, Shapoor, 46 and Cyrus, 42: They all know how to stay out of the public glare. While Shapoor is occasionally seen at the Turf Club in Mumbai and Pune, riding his yachts and visiting his stud farm near Pune, Cyrus guards his privacy with a vengeance. While Shapoor is the quintessential risk-taker, Cyrus is decidedly more analytical and deliberate. The two flagship businesses — real estate and infrastructure/construction — have been carved up among the two brothers. And over the last year, the brothers have brought order to the diversified group’s activities.

In his quiet way, Cyrus is perhaps the man to watch. In 2006, when the time came to offer a board seat to the biggest single shareholder in Tata Sons, both Ratan Tata and Pallonji Mistry chose Cyrus. He’s now on the nominations committee that will decide on one of the most closely followed succession dramas in corporate India: Finding a successor to Ratan Tata. It’s another matter that Noel Tata, who is married to his sister Aloo, is one of the candidates reckoned to be in the running for the top job. However, knowing Cyrus, you can bet that he’ll hold all the cards close to his chest till the very end.

Nandini Piramal

Nandini Piramal, 29, starts at another time, in another era to take charge of the family business. But a lot of things haven’t changed at home. When she was in school, her father, Ajay Piramal, was constantly in the news acquiring one small multinational pharmaceutical company after another. Now he is again in the news for having sold his business in a Rs. 17,000 crore deal, which Nandini jointly scripted with him.

Nandini, a Harvard Business School graduate, has been doing the rounds at the family business since 2006. She worked in McKinsey for a brief while but went on to run operations pretty quickly in Canada and London in her family business. She is now an executive director on the board.

Nandini, who will soon have company from her brother Anand, has challenging times ahead. Her father has the cash to start any business though ironically, he will also be her first hurdle. In the two decades of running his pharma business, Ajay Piramal grew his capital of about just $20 million to more than $3 billion. Nandini, who loves formal Western clothes, will have to do better.

Dheeraj Hinduja

The Hinduja family is quite media shy. Nevertheless, the increasing importance of Dheeraj Gopichand Hinduja, 36, in the family’s diversified business interests has got people speculating if he is being groomed to be the next big leader.

From what is known, the man’s track record has been impressive. Dheeraj Hinduja, an MBA from the University of London, is currently overseeing the Hinduja Group’s India business. As the co-chairman of commercial vehicle-maker Ashok Leyland he has played a key role in expanding the company’s activities, like venturing into light commercial vehicles, etc. Dheeraj is on the board of directors of Hinduja Global Solutions, which has emerged as one of India’s largest offshore, outsourcing and call centre companies. It looks likely that in Dheeraj, the third generation, the Hinduja family might have found the man who could propel the next wave of thinking and growth for the group. He’s been around for 16 years, and also heads the group’s HR function with a key agenda of driving transformation.

Images: Shapoor Mistry: Alok Brahmbhatt Nandini Piramal: Vikas Khot

Rishad Premji

In August, Wipro’s chief of strategy, K. R. Lakshminarayana, needed to quickly find a successor so that he could move to a new assignment as chief endowment officer at Azim Premji’s philanthropic trust. As it turned out it took him more than a month to carefully vet all the candidates in the fray. Not many would have believed that the eventual choice had nothing to do with the candidate’s surname. For Rishad Premji, 33, the grooming process has now reached a crucial point. As the new strategy boss, he has a tough job of figuring out what is on his dad’s mind — and reconciling that with the two joint CEOs he reports to. Armed with a degree from Harvard Business School, he has worked at blue chip firms like GE Capital and Bain and Co.

Rishad must find new ways for Wipro to grow its revenues, and ward off the attack from nimbler competitors without sacrificing margins. How he fares now will decide whether he eventually gets considered for the top job once his dad retires as the chairman of the board. In his new role, he will also have the benefit of a full view of the company’s IT business, which brings in 90 percent of the profits of the approximately $17 billion group.

People who have worked with him in Wipro say that Rishad’s a fine gentleman, he doesn’t throw his weight around and that he has the rigour of an MNC executive — thorough in his work and highly process oriented. But it’s not all work and no play for this young father of two. Unlike his father, who maintains an extremely low profile, Rishad and wife Aditi are sometimes spotted at Bangalore’s high profile dos.

Tanya Dubash

Tanya Dubash clearly knows her chops on branding. A senior ad professional says it wasn’t always that way when she started out. He remembers meeting her more than a decade ago on a strategic marketing project. At that time, fresh out of Brown University as a graduate in economics and political science, she seemed a complete greenhorn. Yet over the years, Tanya has developed a remarkable quality: She is able to draw out people in a meeting, listening to every point of view — and actively seeking opinion, before making a decision. More often than not, it has won her the respect of both insiders and outsiders.

A careful grooming process starting with managing the hoary Cinthol brand has helped too. When the ill-fated joint venture ended with P&G in the mid-1990s, she ran the brands that continued with Godrej. Along the way, she led a couple of new business initiatives: Real Good Chicken, an early attempt to brand processed chicken, and Nature’s Basket, a chain of gourmet stores. And an advanced management programme at Harvard Business School would have consolidated her learning.

Today, the 39-year-old mom of two young children is president of marketing for Godrej Industries. Her big project is to contemporise the Godrej corporate brand. Now, with younger sister Nisa, 30, also playing an active role in the business, there have been faint murmurs of a sibling rivalry, although there’s nothing to suggest that it could get out of hand.

Sanjay ReddyThe cacophony that arose because of a plan to relocate Shivaji’s statue from outside Mumbai’s international airport, is just one example of local problems that can arise for developers, says Sanjay Reddy, vice-chairman of the GVK group. The solution in this case was to ensure that the statue was moved “with respect” and a larger memorial with a museum dedicated to the Maratha warrior was built elsewhere in the area.

Conflicts are common in the infrastructure business, says Sanjay. In fact, it is by tackling dozens of such problems over the past 10 years, that the only son of G.V. Krishna Reddy has proved that he is a tough inheritor of his father’s mantle.

His focus is now on finding new areas for the group to grow over the next decade. The search for the next big thing has led the company to try out opportunities ranging from SEZs to ports, logistics and oil exploration. How to remain competitive and yet profitable is the big question.

Sanjay is also preparing to scale up, and is trying to “future proof” the group. Among the big calls will be to measure up opportunities overseas versus those in India. He is clear that the GVK group will be run as a family-owned business even 25 years later. Apart from finding opportunities, the challenge is to be able to raise capital without diluting the family stake beyond a point. His newest role is to mentor 26-year-old nephew Krishna Bhupal who has now entered the family business.

Images: Tanya Dubash & Sanjay Reddy: Indiatodayimages.com

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Billionaires In The Making

These six NextGen scions of successful, wealthy business families stand at the crossroads of their empires and have the potential to take their inheritance to a whole new level

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