The Hindu Business Line : Women execs have more clarity

In manufacturing, when we do consulting, probably a 50-year-old who has already seen the market is taking the decision. But in IT companies, a 35-year-old at best is making the decision.

ANAND RANGACHARY, chief of South Asia and Middle East operations, Frost & Sullivan - Bijoy Ghosh

As the chief of the South Asia and Middle East operations of a global consulting company like Frost & Sullivan (F&S), Anand Ranghachary provides an interesting insight on how female chief or senior executives handle consultants and take decisions. Commenting on the gender angle in his company's dealings with corporate leaders, he says, "Even though it's not a major difference in terms of speed of decisions — at least in our experience — women tend to be a little bit quicker. But a bigger difference pertains to the clarity in terms of what they want. Women are very clear that these are the deliverables I want or this is the outcome I seek. People tend to be vague sometimes, particularly when it comes to consulting, because they themselves are not very clear. Of course, it is the role of a consultant to provide clarity. But I find that women executives have clarity on what exactly they want out of a research report."

Do women tend to be more sticky, a little more stingy?

"Not from the money standpoint," is his response.

The company, which is headquartered in California, operated in India as a liaison office from the early 1990s, starting a full-fledged subsidiary in 1998. More of a business-to-business consultancy, F&S has been concentrating in India on IT, telecom, healthcare, traditional manufacturing, auto, chemicals and electronics. "Our target is to help companies grow and growth is driven by a mix of three things — top management, corporate objectives and how the company sets about meeting those objectives. For some people, growth is more important than profitability and somebody else might say that if at all I want to enter any business, it should not be less that Rs 2,000 crore. Each company has its own objective," says Rangachary.

On the importance of HR, he says that once the corporate objective is in place, HR falls into place as long as there is leadership.

His clients in India include Microsoft, SAP, Cisco, Nortel and a few others in the IT-telecom sector, TVS, Rane and Sona Koyo in the auto sector, and in the "passenger car and vehicles segment Tata Motors is one of our biggest clients. In chemicals we work with the biggies like Reliance and BSF."

In India, F&S has two different businesses; consulting and a captive BPO started in 2001 in Chennai. It has 450 employees and is called the Global Innovations Centre. "We were one of the first to start a BPO in India after McKenzie's knowledge centre," he says, admitting that attrition is indeed a problem. "A lot of these billion-dollar consulting companies are coming into play and we keep losing people and where we really lose people are the core analysts who get exposure to us and the European markets. And it is not just losing them to consulting companies. We lose them to IT companies that are now looking at domain specialists. And here is someone with experience of a telecom vertical in the US sitting in Chennai!"

A big challenge before this head honcho is that "we operate in a very niche space which means that unlike a full-fledged management consultant, if I want to get into an M&A deal, I don't have a legal team or a regulatory team." A comparatively conservative company, "one of the reasons why we survived the dotcom burst was due to this factor. In fact, there was immense pressure from outside to re-christen ourselves as frost.com! Luckily we didn't do that. We're a debt-free company and the promoters are very conservative about the areas they want to grow in," says Rangachary.

On the manufacturing side, the consultancy has slowly taken up process consulting primarily in India, China and Malaysia and "once we succeed in Asia on manufacturing consulting, we might take it up globally."

On the major differences between dealing with executives of "old economy" or manufacturing companies versus those in the IT-telecom sector, he says, "The biggest thing is that in the latter decisions are made by the next generation and a little quicker. In manufacturing, when we do consulting, probably a 50-year-old who has already seen the market is taking the decision. But in IT companies, a 35-year-old at best is making the decision."

So is it easier to deal with younger people?

"It is for us, because the average age in F&S is also around 30-35 years. Another factor to note is that today a lot of companies, including family-owned ones in India, are more open to consulting and have also infused a lot of professional blood."

So what are the challenges before the man who has recently taken over as the MD of this region?

"The biggest challenge is to take this company to the next level; in the first year, our consulting turnover was Rs 20 lakh. At that time Rs 10 crore seemed a big goal, but last year we did take it to Rs 18 crore. We want to double this by 2009-10, which means a lot of work. We are doing better and better what we are good at, but you can't grow from Rs 18 crore to Rs 40-50 crore by just doing the same things better. You can do it by doing different things and that is where the challenge lies."

He feels that there is a big scope for getting new markets in the Asia-Pacific region. "One of our global competencies is our presence in 21 countries and we want to expand to 45 countries in the next 5-10 years," he says.

From last year the Middle East market has been added to Rangachary's portfolio and "we're setting up an office in Dubai which will be our base for focussing on ECC countries. We'd like to increase our portfolio from being niche and just pure growth consulting to other areas. Given the fact that India's manufacturing is doing so well, it's still the tip of the iceberg in terms of the quality of plants, operational efficiency, etc. We have a good team and robust model in place on how to help companies improve their process efficiency."

On the key factors that get a consultancy the client's trust and loyalty, Rangachary says, "First of all, good delivery and meeting of your client's expectations. Unlike most other consultants our approach is slightly different. We don't have industry experts who are 50 or 60-year-olds and who have actually seen the industry. I've had 28-year-olds advising clients, and it's a complete bottoms-up approach. Because of our legacy of market research, we collect the information and then put a strategy in place. We've been fairly successful in having 60-year-old CEOs listen to a 25-year-old on where to put his money. This is a challenge but it can be met if you're competent."

To end this dialogue on the gender quotient, one quizzed Rangachary on the special attributes of his women employees, particularly managers. His response: "Women are very dedicated and focused, some of them run my businesses in 5-6 different areas; chemicals and healthcare practice are run by women and have done very well. Corporate communications is an all-women's team. Even at the Chennai BPO where there are a lot of women, we find them to be more focused and disciplined. There may be 10 people surrounding them and making noise but if they've decided they're going to work, they will, despite all kinds of distraction.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in