Long before global consulting firms such as McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company became the go-to organisations for Indian firms seeking to reinvent themselves, a group of renowned and pioneering Indian management gurus were guiding the destinies of corporate India with their sage advice and ideas.
While the early phase of the Indian management movement saw the rise of experts like NH Atthreya, Vasant G Rajadhyaksha, Sharu Rangnekar, and Uday Pareek in the 1960s and ’70s, the next phase, following the 1991 liberalisation, saw the blossoming of true-blue Indian gurus—many of whom studied at business schools overseas and returned to shape the future of Indian companies.
These included professor CK Prahalad, Mrityunjay Athreya, Tarun N Sheth, Bish Agrawal, Suresh Lulla, A Besant C Raj, Walter Vieira, and TV Rao. Today, even as some of them have passed away and others are in their sunset years, the daughters of many of these gurus are now donning the mantle of their fathers. In yet another work domain, women leaders have come to the fore. Some of these female inheritors include Deepa Prahalad Abhayankar, Purvi Sheth, Jigisha Lulla, Sonal Agrawal, and Irene Raj Foster. What accounts for this development and how did it come about? There are three factors that play a role here.
Family dynamics
In most of these cases, the daughters didn’t plan to succeed their fathers, it was more of a happenstance.
Professor CK Prahalad, who passed away in 2010, is survived by his wife Gayatri, son Murali, and daughter Deepa. While Murali moved into the corporate sector, Deepa planned to work in the public policy space and join a think-tank. Hence, she studied political science and economics. For her first job, she went to Singapore and saw the East Asian tiger economies up close.
She began to see that business had the ability to act and innovate in ways that other actors could seldom do. It was then that Deepa pursued an MBA at the Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business rather than further studies in public policy. She is now a leading management consultant working for both multinationals and Indian companies with special focus on design and strategy. While her father was globally recognised as an expert in corporate strategy, Deepa has guided multinationals and start-ups in India and globally with an emphasis on emerging markets and social innovation. She also works with social innovators.
Deepa’s interest is in understanding how to use design to increase profit and impact. She co-authored a book, Predictable Magic, which lays out a framework to understand how to create new products and services, and the narrative in a way that is self-reinforcing and builds trust. Deepa is an elected member of the International Academy of Management and was ranked 34 on the inaugural Thinkers50 India list. Furthermore, she is in touch with many of the organisations profiled in her father’s book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. The other way that she keeps the legacy of her father alive is through a course that she teaches at IIM-Ahmedabad on Bottom of the Pyramid Marketing.
In the case of Purvi, her mother, Pratibha Sheth, founded a consulting firm named Shilputsi Consultants in 1978, which was later joined by Purvi, her sister Shilpa, and father Tarun Sheth.
Tarun Sheth had retired as the head of human resources at Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL).
Purvi’s other sister, Atsi, is currently the Chief Credit Officer of Moody’s Ratings in New York, while Shilpa is an advisor based in the US.
Bish Agrawal, popularly known as Doc and widely recognised as the father of the executive search industry in India, started ABC Consultants in 1969 in Kolkata. His daughter, Sonal Agrawal, had no plans to join the family business firm. However, after she finished her MBA from the London Business School and was assessing whether to go back to the UK or move to Singapore, an opportunity to join ABC came up and she joined the firm in 1993.
But, later, following a series of restructurings at ABC, Sonal decided to set up Accord Group India/Alto Partners. Today, 85-year-old Bish Agrawal and Sonal’s sister Toral Patel are very much at the leadership of Accord, while brother Shiv leads ABC. Bish is also the chairperson of Accord Group India.
Sonal’s role at Accord has evolved over a period of time, and currently she is serving as Managing Partner at the company. One of her critical tasks was to define what Accord is and is not. The parent company ABC is very dominant and has a certain culture of doing things which was very different from that of Accord. Sonal incubated Accord, targeted the hirings in the C-suite space, developed processes, and hired the right consultants. She also gave her business a global edge by becoming a founding member of AltoPartners, an international alliance of retained executive search and leadership consulting firms, whose member firms have 63 offices across 37 countries.
For Suresh Lulla, meanwhile, his daughter Jigisha is the backbone of the Qimpro Group, which focusses on quality management. Lulla founded Qimpro Consultants in 1987.
Jigisha is also the CEO of Qimpro Foundation, a non-profit firm aimed to spread the message of total quality management (TQM) in the healthcare and education sectors.
“My son, Jogesh, after completing his studies at Purdue University opted to become an entrepreneur in the sports and entertainment reputation business and co-founded Cornerstone which has over the years managed sports icons like Virat Kohli and PV Sindhu,” said Suresh Lulla.
He was 43 when he established Qimpro Consultants—full of energy, driven by his passion for quality management through the Dr JM Juran approach. This evolved into a deep understanding of performance excellence. Lulla said he felt like a missionary with a mission.
“In order to scale-up, I had to reinvent myself, particularly with succession in mind. The obvious choice for succession was my daughter, Jigisha. She grew up in Qimpro from 1992. Our strategy was to digitize the two key services which Qimpro had earned a reputation for: Quality Improvement and Performance Excellence,” added Lulla.
Today, Jigisha helps professionals using digital courses and tools like Problem Solving Pro and BestPrax Barometer. She also manages a Qimpro Bookstore that sells unique books suitable for quality professionals or qualitists.
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Inspirational fathers and mothers
Beyond family dynamics, another equally important factor is the iconic status of the senior gurus and how they have inspired their children. Each of them has been a pioneer and godfather in their respective fields: CK Prahalad (corporate strategy), Tarun Sheth (human resources and strategy), Besant Raj (financial management and corporate planning), Suresh Lulla (quality), and Bish Agrawal (executive search).
For example, stories of how Tarun Sheth became a trusted advisor to many business leaders and CEOs were inspirations to Purvi and Shilpa. Legend has it that when MS ‘Vindi’ Banga, brother of World Bank president Ajay Banga, finished his engineering course and applied to HUL, Tarun told him, “I am going to do you a favour and not hire you right away.”
He was advised by Tarun to study for an MBA and apply again after finishing the course. He did exactly that and went to IIM-Ahmedabad. After completing his MBA, MS Banga joined HUL and rose to become its chairman before moving to a global role at the parent Unilever.
Today, Purvi draws on the advice that her father has given in the past. For example, at a time when the human resources (HR) function was just emerging in India, Tarun was one of the first practitioners who said that there was a key link between people management and corporate strategy. Additionally, he also emphasised the fact that HR has to be seen in the context of behavioural sciences.
For Deepa too, her father taught her the “importance of cultivating a macro view, sharing ideas openly and being an optimist. In his own life and imagining how to improve life for others, he always began by studying aspirations.
“I think that is what ultimately helps individuals and organisations bring the ‘impossible’ within reach,” she added.
Besant Raj’s fame, status, and adoration from his students and managers influenced his daughter Irene Raj Foster and the rest of the family—wife Amritha Raj and two sons, Reuben and Irwin. He was one of India’s leading management consultants especially in South India, with expertise in financial management and corporate planning. Given his background in psychology, he was also an expert in human resource management. Today, Irene, although a full-time professor at The George Washington University, continues the legacy of her father by serving on the firm’s board.
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Grooming and mentoring
For Sonal Agrawal of Accord India, it helped that hers was a family of recruiters. “Executive search and recruitment is part of our DNA. Work was always discussed at dinner table conversations. What I learnt from my father in particular was how to serve clients well and more importantly, what to do and what not to do. I also learnt from him how to always assess the person behind the candidate, beyond the obvious CV scan,” she said.
Her earliest memories are of drawing moustaches and eye patches on photographs on rejected CVs. Her father started them off at the bottom—as associates. He put all three children through the grind, making them work long hours. They were all hands-on.
Deepa Prahalad added that her father’s influence came in with the wonderful debates they had around the dinner table as a family and the fact that the three of them—she, her mother and brother—were always the first ones he asked for feedback on whatever he was writing. Over time, the idea that “intractable” problems could be understood and addressed seeped in. She also saw that business introduced a bias toward the future that pure analysis doesn’t always address.
Purvi came to be associated with Shilputsi quite early as an intern around 1994-95 when she was in college. However, after her studies, she became a journalist. But disenchantment crept in soon enough. She therefore rejoined the firm as an intern again and her first task was to write letters to candidates and put them inside the envelopes. Her mother had insisted that she would have to start from the bottom and work her way up.
“We used to have a lot of conversations around HR at home. My mother was a big theorist especially on behavioural science, psychology and sociology. That really helped me and served me very well in working with clients on the HR appraisals side. My Dad used to bring in very much the Levers business kind of thought processes into human resources in managing of people. How do you take care of people, how do you groom leadership, keeping in mind your business objectives as well,” said Purvi.
Purvi remembers that her parents would push her to the deep end. On her first day as a consultant, she was put in charge of interacting with a new client. While there were senior colleagues in the team, they said they would not interfere and were quite glad that it was rough for Purvi. But such instances helped her build self–confidence and learning.
Finally, even as each of the new-age women gurus started their career and with support from their fathers, it is interesting to note that they are also different from the earlier generation in many ways. For example, Sonal gave her work an international face, Purvi further professionalised Shilputsi, Deepa moved from pure strategy that her father largely focused on to design and strategy, Jigisha focused on the Qimpro Foundation doing quality related work primarily in the education and healthcare sectors, and Irene shifted to the US with her primary job as a professor, while still looking after the consultancy that her father started.
Today, global management consultants like McKinsey and Bain are big in this space, but homegrown Indian firms will remain. However, more as boutique organisations. As competition increases, the inheritor women leaders will thrive through personalised services. What will also change in the consulting services is the increased use of technology and artificial intelligence. So, while the era of the original charismatic management gurus will slowly decline, their daughters will continue to influence the future of Indian companies, albeit in a different way.
The writer is a former editor at the Indian School of Business. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)
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