Name: Satyan Gajwani
Age: 27
Profile: CEO, Times Internet Ltd. (TIL)
Education: Masters, Management Science & Engineering, Stanford.
How He Is Changing the Way the Company Works
Change TIL from one big monolith to a collective of digital startups with independent CEOs, while he will behave not as a CEO but more like a chairman of 10 companies.
The task is one worthy of a hero: make Times Internet Ltd. (TIL) the most profitable and dominant online company this side of the Suez. Though TIL has revenues of approximately Rs 320 crore, it isn’t very profitable. It has been left behind, picked clean by various start-ups such as Flipkart, Makemytrip and Naukri.com. And the Hercules who has been given this task is a very young man indeed.
Satyan Gajwani is just 27, and if he does what Samir Jain (vice chairman of the Times Group), expects him to, then get ready to make place for Gajwani in the pantheon.
Gajwani isn’t some hero-under-oath brought in to do a modern-day Twelve Labours. He is Samir Jain’s son-in-law (he’s married to Trishla Jain) and the person who the plush set expects will inherit the Jain’s more than Rs 5,000-crore media empire, Bennett Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL).
Unlike many of the sons- and daughters-in-law in the Olympian realms of India’s wealthiest, Gajwani is not to the manner born. What’s more, he and Ms Jain chose each other, dating while they were students in the USA.
Gajwani’s father, an engineer, moved to the US in the 1960s, worked at various places before setting up his own security systems company. Satyan, the youngest in the family, grew up in Miami, majored in mathematical and computational science at Stanford, then did a Master’s in management science and engineering. That’s a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in four years; he’s certainly no slow learner. It was in this last year of Stanford that his life took a turn: he met Trishla. “I didn’t know anything about her family. We dated through college. We both moved to New York, she was doing other work at NYC.”
Samir Jain told them that if they were serious, Satyan and Trishla should move to India and start working there. Gajwani had been in the relationship for just a year, had been to India only a couple of times as a visitor, and had just started work on the equities trading desk at Lehman Brothers.
He told Jain that when he was ready, he would think about the marriage, but India wasn’t in his immediate future. “I said I want at least two more years in the US before I decide.”
Now Samir Jain is a very powerful man but even he couldn’t have planned what happened next.
The financial world blew up and took Lehman down. In India, BCCL had a month where it witnessed a revenue decline, possibly for the first time in 175 years.
Jain told Gajwani that he really should think about coming to India. “He said a lot of strategic decisions are going to be made in next six months that may have long term impact, so you should be part of them.” Gajwani quit his job and moved to India.
“Fortunately Trishla’s dad was very progressive, both in terms of intellect and culturally. He was convinced that we would have been married anyways. He said, you are already my son for all practical purposes. So I moved here as her boyfriend, not as a fiancé, and even worked in the Times group as her boyfriend and lived with them in Delhi for six months. And then when I was comfortable, we got engaged, and a year-and-a-half later, we got married.” (That was in early 2011.)
The Jain empire needed new blood. Vineet Jain does not have children and Trishla, Samir Jain’s only child, seems to have no desire to get involved with the operations of BCCL. Once it had become clear that Trishla had chosen Satyan, it was almost a foregone conclusion that he would have to get involved in the business.
For the first year-and-a-half, Gajwani did stints across print, radio, TV to understand what worked and what didn’t.
After Dinesh Wadhawan left, Gajwani was involved in identifying and appointing Rishi Khiani as TIL’s new CEO. Then when Khiani decided to move on and turn entrepreneur, Gajwani felt he was ready to take on the mantle himself.
The company needs a shake-up, he says, one that a professional CEO couldn’t administer.
“I have the autonomy to make a big change in our culture and processes. It’s partially because I am part of the family.”
He was clear that he had very little to add to the print or television businesses; Samir Jain and Vineet Jain know those like the backs of their hands. Besides, these were stable businesses, with professionals in charge; they had made BCCL great, but they were its past, not its future.
The new horizon was digital, a space Gajwani understands well: “I grew up as a computer nerd, I programmed and hacked as a kid. So it was a skill useful for this role.” And at Stanford, half his friends started internet companies.
That Gajwani has come into TIL at the top, as CEO, has had many people saying his success was not earned.
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(This story appears in the 02 November, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
Success at such young age may take you ahead of all mountains. All the best.
on Aug 4, 2015Bob Dylan, i.e. - \" For the \'TIMES\' they, they are a-changin\' \" Super excited to witness such enthusiasm.......
on Nov 23, 2012Dylan may be appropriately quoted here, for this awe inspiring, real-life story. Wonderfully put Deepak Ajwani
on Nov 23, 2012