Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters

by Menon, Sudha

  I hope you are holding the hand of your little one in bed, as I did yours.

  With lots of love,

  Baba

  Kishore Biyani

  t is a difficult task to describe or slot Future Group Chairperson, Kishore Biyani. Over the years he has been described variously as a maverick, a rebel, a dreamer, a risk taker, and the Rajah of Retail. To me, he is all these but much more.

  Biyani himself is an ardent student of human behaviour, though I doubt he will ever agree to describe himself because, despite the thousands of people that he employs for his retail group and despite the fact that he hobnobs with the captains of Indian industry, he remains a very shy person who prefers mostly to keep to himself.

  Biyani began his audacious journey to become one of the country’s most celebrated businessmen with a simple decision to step away from his own Marwari family’s conservative way of conducting their family business and set out on his own. The journey took him through the bustling, crowded by-lanes of Mumbai’s trading localities where he went from shop to shop selling stonewash fabric to small shopkeepers. Later, he manufactured his own fabric from a ramshackle warehouse in suburban Mumbai and took to selling readymade trousers. When retailers refused to stock them alongside the imported brands that they sold in their stores, he was so miffed that he set up his own retail shop. Somewhere along the way, when modern retail and large retail malls made their appearance in India, a large mall developer declined to give him space within its mall for the Pantaloon brand. That one snub led Kishore Biyani into the business of setting up a fund that would invest in developing malls for retail, not just for in-house brands but also all the big retail ones as well.

  If there is possibly one thing that Biyani is most known for, it is for being the brains behind ‘Sabse Sasta Din’, the day when millions of middle-class Indians patiently wait for the doors to open at Big Bazaar, one of India’s largest supermarket chains, to shop for all range of goods, including big-ticket purchases such as televisions and refrigerators, at rock bottom prices. Biyani gave most Indians another reason to celebrate January 26, the day of the sale. He allowed us to convert our junk into productive commodities by inviting consumers to exchange these with new products at his stores. Who does not like a freebie or a good deal?

  Biyani’s business empire is rooted in his belief in the Indian way of doing things and in his complete refusal to look towards anyone or anything for endorsement of his ideas. At the age of 10, he remembers visiting the annual animal fair at Nagaur, near his tiny village of Nimbi on the border of the Thar desert. The little boy saw that while the villagers struck smart deals trading oxen, cows, and horses, they also had lots of fun watching camel races, cock-fights, and puppet shows, eating street food, buying jewelry from local artisans, and dancing to the tune of folk music. Biyani’s own retail brands today reflect his memory of that village fair he visited decades ago, which is why his retail outlets don’t just sell commodities, they also give the consumers a place to socialize and have fun.

  Biyani’s success mantra in business as well as in life has been to question established norms, rewrite the rules, and redefine them. In doing so, his biggest role model has been Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton who set up the phenomenally successful retail model which is the average American’s retail mecca. He also looked upon Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of the Reliance group, as his original inspiration, a man who so fascinated him during his college days that he would often hang around outside Mumbai’s Oberoi Hotel to catch a glimpse of the businessman who visited the health club at the hotel.

  The boy whose horoscope predicted unusual amounts of good luck eventually proved that prediction correct, setting up an empire that sells everything from goods, groceries, consumer electronics, furniture, cosmetics, to books, insurance, and entertainment. Not to forget dreams.

  Here, he writes a note to his two daughters, Ashni and Avni, with whom he shares a relationship that is more in the capacity of a friend than of a father with his children. Ashni is director of Future Ideas, the innovation and incubation cell of the group and uses her complex understanding of mythology, anthropology, and sociology to understand consumer behavior before the group rolls out new businesses. Younger sister Avni, an inveterate traveller, has backpacked through amazing, diverse corners of the world and picked up their culture and habits. After graduating in sociology from an American university, Avni is home now and is the brain behind Foodhall, the group’s new gourmet chain.

  Dear Ashni and Avni,

  This is unlike anything I have ever done before in my life, including the years we have grown up together. But here are a few thoughts that I want to put on record, not for just the both of you, but for whoever thinks they can benefit from it.

  Ashni, you are trained to be a thought designer. And from you I have learnt that the source of everything is in thought. Thought creates idea and belief. These in turn shape our behavior, life, and business. Both you and I have been firm believers in involving the study of humanities in business. We like to delve into anthropology, sociology, mythologies, and the cultural diversity of India and like to be inspired from these areas in developing the strategic thoughts in our business. Avni, you too are trained in liberal arts and in the study of social science, societies, and politics. I believe that your education and your interests give you a unique strength in developing new ideas and executing these in business.

  Many times over the last few decades, I have been asked what is the key to my success, what has made me the person I am, and what are the secret business mantras I have adopted that helped me to establish our large business group.

  To everyone I have just this to say. Everything I learnt about business, and about life itself, I learnt in the huge joint family that I grew up in. I learnt everything about people and interpersonal dynamics from observing the elders in our house where parenting was a community responsibility and children learnt values from whichever elder happened to be around at various points in our lives.

  I believe business education boxes people completely. I did not train the both of you in either accounts and balance sheets or profit and loss issues but I am glad I got you interested in humanities. While understanding the nuances of finance is very important, I knew you would learn these anyway while being involved in the business. If you had first learnt about finance or business in classrooms, I believe you wouldn’t have gathered the ability to learn the softer aspects of life, the importance of understanding human beings, society, social trends and culture—all of which are just as important in a consumer business like ours.

  At a superficial level, you may find that the world values the people who can talk suavely about numbers and discuss balance sheets. But it is my belief and experience that in the long run, it is people who matter. It is how you understand and interpret people, how you deal with them and inspire them, and how you lead and challenge them that decide how successful and happy you are. The training you receive in a classroom can only help you to an extent. Life has been my best teacher.

  Ashni, Avni, you have both grown up hearing me talk about the importance of human values. I believe that the source of everything in life is our thoughts, vichaar, soch. For me, there isn’t a separate set of values for business and another set of values for one’s personal life. All my values are intertwined and what I practice at home is the same as what happens between me and my team at work.

  To me, the study of human behavior is the most important. Once you understand how and why human beings behave the way they do, it is easy to learn business. But it is not as easy as it sounds because to understand human beings and their mysterious ways, you have to understand there is no absoluteness where human beings are concerned. Every truth is contextual. You have to understand that life is not black or white and that there are lots in between the two ends of the spectrum. If we look around us, we will see there is a constant worldwide search for absolute truth but in reality, I think no such thing exists. Each of us process informa
tion in our individual way depending upon our background and upbringing and our truth depends on our unique set of circumstances. If we are able to accept these simple facts, life becomes less of a challenge and more of a journey of learning.

  I know I have been an unconventional father and ours has been an unusual parent-child relationship, where I have been more at your beck and call, being ordered around by the both of you rather than being the authoritative parent who has sought to impose rules in your life!

  Ashni, I still remember you came to me once when you were still a teenager and surprised me to no ends when you questioned me, asking why I was so different from the other fathers that you knew and why I did not keep tabs on what you both did with your time, your pocket money, and your whereabouts when you were out with your friends! It has been a different childhood for you and I am glad it has been that way because the both of you have managed to carve out the map of your lives the way you want to live it.

  What makes me happy is that our constant discussions on life, the Indian mindset, the lessons we can learn from our mythology, seem to have all come together to make you both very unique people with very clear ideas of your own.

  Avni, I am filled with joy that you have grown up to be a person who is so widely-travelled and so welcoming of the amazingly diverse people that you have accepted as your friends from all over the world, during your studies abroad. Today, I am always so proud to notice the energy and sense of dynamism that you bring to your work. I am sure these will stick to you as you grow and reach new milestones in your life and work.

  Ashni, you are a deep thinker and over the years, your in-depth research and what I must admit is a very unique study of Indian communities, their festivals, customs, rituals, and beliefs, has added immense value to our business. The customer insights that you have gathered and the way you have led the innovation and incubation team in the business gives me the confidence that you will always have a superior edge in any business that you pursue. In fact, sometimes the way you deal with situations and the way you ideate at work make me feel you understand life, our business better than I do.

  But I also believe that this is the beginning of a long journey. I believe that as you grow, achieve more, and take on more responsibilities, you will have to be even more sensitive to the feelings of the people around you. My personal philosophy has been to never worry about what people think of me and also to never build expectations from anyone. In expecting something from someone, you are not only setting yourself up for disappointment but also burdening someone with the weight of your own need.

  Though I have always encouraged both of you to think differently and celebrate your difference, I sometimes wonder if that has brought with it its own set of challenges. Even though you may think differently, you should always be open and welcoming to people who may not match up to your expectations. No one should isolate themselves from people, even if they may not match up to you intellectually. It is never a waste of time and energy to spend your time with other people. It may not be possible to be intellectually stimulated all the time but it is also not fair to expect everybody to be like you! There is always a balance in nature’s scheme of things.

  I grew up surrounded by academicians, designers, business people, and each one of them has left his or her individual mark on me, taught me something. My aim is to constantly seek diversity and I hope this is what you seek out too because then, life truly becomes your biggest teacher. Diversity is the fun in life. Trust me.

  Dear Ashni and Avni, one of the most important lessons I learnt early on in life is the importance of opening up the mind to different thoughts, opinions, views, emotions; the very process of doing this is a signal that we are accepting of people and ideas that are not our own and when we are able to do that, the rest falls in place. The most important thing is to be flexible in our thoughts and actions and to have the ability to hear and respect other people’s thoughts and opinions.

  It is my flexible nature that makes it possible for us to have a no-holds-barred relationship. We never feel a generation gap between us because I learnt to be open to all kinds of opinions, no matter what age group that thought came from.

  Is there a legacy that I want to leave you? Yes! But that legacy is not the business that we created. If anything, I want to leave you with the thought that life is a journey of learning and for each day that we are on this earth, there has to be hunger to learn something new, something more. As you set out on that journey with this belief, your approach to life will be different from mine. I wish and hope that you enjoy the journey of life. There is great fun in learning on your own.

  With love and wishes,

  Dad

  K. V. Kamath

  ndia’s best-known banker, Kundapur Vaman Kamath, was a carefree young man in engineering college in a tiny coastal town in Mangalore when, one day, his mother taught him his most important lesson in money management.

  The housewife who spent her entire life in the little town did not chastize her son when she saw him smoke cigarette in those days. Instead, she taught him a simple lesson about money that he adopted as his mantra for the rest of his life.

  ‘Do you know the principal sum a person would have to have in his bank to generate the interest that you are blowing away in smoke? For every box of cigarettes that you buy, somebody has to actually work hard to invest that money to get the paltry return that you are blowing away in smoke rings,’ she told her son who later went on to architect what is today the country’s largest private sector bank, ICICI.

  Today, Kundapur Vaman Kamath is the Chairman of Infosys Limited, India’s third largest IT services company. He continues to be associated with ICICI Bank as it is Non-Executive Chairman. Kamath’s life began in a small village in Mangalore where he grew up under the supervision of his grandmother, a self-sufficient woman with an independent streak, who gave him the first experience of just how much a determined woman can achieve. The mechanical engineer eventually brought about the transformation of a government backed developmental finance institution into India’s largest private lender but got his initial life lessons from his mother, a pioneering woman in the family who contested and won the local council election in Mangalore, when it was not at all common for women to have preoccupations outside their home and hearth. It is from watching her resoluteness that Kamath got his first glimpses of the true potential of women.

  That young man is one of corporate India’s leading lights, with an awe-inspiring reputation that precedes him wherever he goes. He is the man who has almost singlehandedly mentored half a dozen of India’s most admired women leaders, a group of trendsetting women who began their careers as executives in the erstwhile ICICI (In the 1990s, ICICI transformed its business from a development financial institution offering only project finance to a diversified financial services group offering a wide variety of products and services, both directly and through a number of subsidiaries and affiliates like ICICI Bank) who were handpicked and groomed to take on leadership positions as the developmental finance institution transformed itself into India’s largest private sector bank.

  In the years since then, it is a matter of great pride to him that one of his protégés, Chanda Kochhar, has taken over the mantle of steering the bank as its CEO and Managing Director while others have left to become heads of competing banks and financial service institutions. Much like a fond mother who might feel a temporary pang about her flock flying the coop, but takes pride in the fact that they have set out on their own individual journeys, Kamath watches with visible pride as his mentees take giant strides in the field of their choice.

  The soft-spoken gentleman that I met in his office at the higher echelons of ICICI’s corporate headquarters in Mumbai, carried his many achievements lightly and insisted that the journeys and achievements of the women that he groomed would never have happened if they had not had it in them to relentlessly push their own boundaries. Each of them had it in them to take on a challenge and get after i
t with a single-minded commitment that nobody and nothing could distract them from.

  It is perhaps one of life’s delicious ironies that his own daughter, a highly qualified young woman who left home in her teenage years to study and explore her own interests, chose to step off the beaten path and be at home to care for her family of three children and husband who is a very busy doctor. It takes a man with great conviction who will say that it does not affect him that his daughter’s potential is possibly being untapped as she leads the life of a homemaker in an American town. It is to Kamath’s credit that he supports his daughters categorically and without apology.

  ‘Success means different things to different people and if you have decided that your career should wait till you have completed your family and given your children all the attention they need, then being able to do that itself is a measure of your success,’ he writes in his letter to his daughter Ajnya.

  Dear Ajnya,

  You might think this is a fond parent’s indulgent letter to his daughter but to me, it is a conversation with myself about the things that I might or might not have expressed to you in all these years.

  You know, of course, that when you were born, it was a very special occasion for not just your mother and me but also for your entire extended family because you were the first girl child to be born in two generations of our family on either side, your mother’s and mine. And while we already loved your elder brother, your coming into our lives was an amazing experience—not just because we were all learning the ropes of rearing a girl child through trial and error, but also because you ended up teaching me a whole lot of stuff about life in general. You continue to do so, even more now that you are a mother of three children and seem to have a wisdom that comes from taking on that role.