The Hindu Business Line : Pow-wow with a chief

He is known to be a person who speaks his mind. A journalist’s delight… or nightmare, if you find yourself at the receiving end of his one-liners. Interviewing him is always a challenge. So it is with a sense of anticipation that I wait in the unusually deserted lobby of Chennai’s Taj Corormandel for a pow-wow with Mr Venu Srinivasan, CMD, TVS Motor Company, makers of such well-known bikes as the Apache, the Star and the Flame.

Mr Srinivasan, who’s also CII President, walks in five minutes late, apologising for the delay. We are the first customers for lunch that day at the Prego, Taj’s speciality Italian restaurant, which was Mr Srinivasan’s choice. So, does he like Italian food? He says he chose the Taj as it is across the road from his office. “The coffee shop is always crowded and I eat good south Indian food at home,” he explains for choosing Prego over Southern Spice, Taj’s south Indian speciality restaurant.

After taking a close look at the menu (“what is the price difference between set lunch and a la carte?) Mr Srinivasan settles for the set lunch. A vegetarian, he chooses gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce for the main course while I settle for the tried and tested lasagna vegetariana.

In typical fashion, he starts with a Brett Lee bouncer that has me all squared up: “Why do only some journalists believe in constant engagement while most call up only when they want news?” he asks sipping his thin cup of Colombian coffee.

“Well, er…,” I try to fend it off, almost choking on my mouthful of watermelon juice, but realise it’s a lost cause. He’s already caught the deflection off my bat!

The waiter comes by with the soup and spares me further embarrassment. Mr Srinivasan liberally spreads chilli flakes on his minestrone soup, which resembles a main course in itself for its quantity. Does he like his food hot and spicy?

“I can eat a lot of spice… I can eat extreme spice but I’ll have it as one pickle or one dish… I don’t like everything being spicy,” he says.

We talk about the business culture of Chennai, which is different from the districts. “The Tirupur, Erode, Coimbatore culture is entrepreneurial…non-Chennai culture is more bubbling and entrepreneurial. This (Chennai) is not Tamil Nadu culture.”

People from Chennai go to him with fairly regular ideas, he says, which means that there is a capital barrier. Maybe its because city life is more regimented than in a place such as Erode which helps you to think differently, he muses.

Wasn’t the $3-billion TVS group itself born like that, in a small town?

“Yeah, from timber merchant to cycle parts, to auto parts to dealerships; then bus transport to body building; insurance, finance; component manufacturing and then two-wheeler manufacturing,” he traces the growth of the TVS group.

Does he think that, somewhere along the way, the group missed opportunities to expand, I gently probe? His response comes even before I finish the question.

“The infotech wave is in many ways exactly like what TVS does — highly ethical businesses, organised people, engineers, manpower right at the doorstep… I think TVS did miss that bus. Today, even if not a $4-5 billion business, we should have had at least a $1-billion business in the knowledge sector,” Mr Srinivasan admits.

“Pharma is, I think, not so obvious a link because it is again about domain knowledge, where we have no knowledge. But in infotech there is no reason why TVS couldn’t have started a 10,000-15,000 employee business.”

Could it be because the companies that could have done this, such as his own or Sundram Fasteners, were caught in their own growth pangs?

“There are always reasons why you didn’t do (something) but there is only one reason why you did: because you did,” he smiles, “there are 99 reasons not to do something but the guy who did it had only one reason: he wanted to do it.” That’s a typical Venu Srinivasan response: direct, delivered with a smile. But can’t it still be done with young blood entering the various group companies now? He feels the wave has now passed. “You are going after a wave that has passed you. You could still do that but you are never going to build it the same way.”The main course arrives after I finally manage to finish the large helping of soup.

The waiter comes by with extra parmesan cheese for his gnocchi but Mr Srinivasan turns down the offer and sprinkles the dish with ground black pepper.

He continues: “Even if we had caught one of the two waves — pharma or infotech — it would have made a huge difference to this group. There were ethics issues in many areas and you couldn’t have entered, but the entire IT and pharma boom was done with very good governance and ethics. So that can’t be a reason.”

Mr Srinivasan points out that the TVS group has gone through a hiatus of 20 years of not starting any major new business. “Yes, we (TVS Motor) have continued to start new things, (Sundram) Fasteners have done new things, Brakes India, Wheels India and Lucas TVS are doing something… Sundaram Finance has actually very nicely added on like a flower, petal by petal quite a nice portfolio. But the new, not related to your current momentum line will happen I think in the next generation which is talking far more vociferously than people of my generation did when they were starting in the business.”

“In my particular case, the moped plant was given to me and a set of drawings. My father left that with me as his legacy… a fruit, and said, plant it and grow it. That has occupied most of my time. I have to now think what new seeds to give to the next generation and they have to think how they will grow it. Some of them may find their own seeds as well. I think next generation has greater belief in being entrepreneurial than people of my generation who largely have managed what was given to them.”

I ask him why there is no documented history of the TVS group. “It came from a feeling that you should not remain rooted in the past. We could not get our elder generation to actually document because of this thought,” he replies.

But he agrees that it needs to be done now; 2010-11 will be the centenary of the TVS group and what better time to do it than now, he points out.

“More than the history of TVS in terms of times, events and places, the philosophies, the principles and the work ethics and integrity that built TVS need to be documented and I do agree. That you could build a business right through the period of regulation and licence-permit raj without compromising on principles would certainly be worth documenting not just for the sake of the family but for India itself.”

The lasagna is as bland as it should be and I struggle to spice it up with pepper. Mr Srinivasan’s stint as CII President saw “two-and-a-half budgets”, the financial crisis, general elections, WTO and climate change talks. He talks about putting in place a three-year rolling plan for the organisation so that continuity can be ensured, irrespective of who is President.

The waiter returns to take our dessert order. Mr Srinivasan opts for Darjeeling tea while I choose home-made ice-cream, supposed to be a delicious option at Prego.

“Our (CII) plan is to deliver 50 million jobs in 5 years…. We have 35 per cent of people living in disturbed areas where there are no job opportunities. People are living in conditions going back a few hundred years! No electricity, no hygiene, no education….”

Mr Srinivasan is a firm believer in reservation. “Let’s call it inclusive growth. But for reservation, would Tamil Nadu be as dynamic as it is today? While reservation is very painful for the upper castes, no one can deny upper caste domination. It is due to reservation that the disadvantaged have now caught up.”

He points to reservation’s success as the reason why Tamil Nadu has a peaceful society. “The pressures have been released and opportunities have been given.”

But has not reservation also driven out a lot of talent from here? “Where did your entire IT talent come from? Ultimately, the upper castes also realised that being an AG’s office clerk is not the greatest thing in life… being a vice-president in Silicon Valley is better,” he laughs. Another typical riposte!

As the ice-cream begins to melt, discussion turns to the militant trade unionism rearing its head in the auto industry. Mr Srinivasan has a logical explanation for the labour problem. “Because of the global recession and a slowing of growth in India, labour saw a squeeze which it had not seen for 20 years. Managements felt a similar squeeze. So for the first time in many years, there is a stress in the relationship. Now that growth has returned, some of these stresses will get relieved.”

With typical candour he points out that no failure of industrial relations is due to one side. “There has to be contributory negligence from both sides… sometimes management may be inflaming the situation and other times, the social, political and labour part may be doing so.”

I quiz him about his schedule with the two hats he wears. He says that post-Diwali he’s spent six days in Chennai, which is the longest since April. “Its been kind of two nights in one town on an average for months now…. Feels like normal now,” he winks. He manages to create time for yoga at least “3-4 days a week on average” to relieve stress.While he relaxes watching Animal Planet and Discovery, he misses a good science channel. But his favourite now is Twenty20 (“the greatest invention in sport that has taken place in India”) and he says with IPL he started watching cricket again.

With tongue only half in the cheek, he says that test cricket should not have a time limit of five days and should be played till there is a result. “They should go back to the old rule and people take a 3-month vacation to watch one game! Now, that is not practical and therefore, test cricket should be abandoned! “

With Twenty20, cricket has come in the realm of a globally competitive sport for eyeballs, he says and, importantly, it has put money back into cricket.

Did it ever cross his mind to own a Twenty20 team? “Owning a cricket team, to me, is like how you dream to be a pilot when you are a kid. It’s a nice thought but not practical,” he retorts, “It requires passion and I don’t have that. Like my friend Cheeni (Mr N. Srinivasan, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, India Cements and owner of Chennai Super Kings) is an ideal cricket owner. The amount of time he spends on sports and promoting it, that’s what gives the buzz.”

I ask him about his daughter who has been inducted into TVS Motor and how he started from the shop floor.

“She has joined the corporate office and is getting into things. I started off with all my summers being spent in shop floor — right from high school till I finished engineering — as a mechanic trainee in TVS & Sons. Then I did six months of graduate engineering apprenticeship at Lucas in UK and two summers I sold Bibles in America, door-to-door. But in today’s corporate world, identifying the next entrepreneurial wave and all that, I think you start off in the corporate office, in strategy, audit and finance, planning, HR and things like that….”

Just as we near the end of the lunch, I ask him about the impending Credit Policy.

“I think rates will progressively harden a bit from January. You have to reconcile to a slight hardening. It will cause stress, but what to do? The Government cannot keep on increasing fiscal deficits. As businessmen, we also want a fiscally responsible Government,” he concludes in inimitable fashion.

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