The Hindu Business Line : Lending class

If you expect to hear how proud she is to be the first Indian woman to graduate from the Harvard Business School, you’d be disappointed. She responds to this feat with a wry “Isn’t that a very sad social comment, because Indian men have been going there for at least 25 to 30 years, and to me that’s the sad thing!”

But then everything about this soft-spoken woman is classy and restrained, beginning with the exotic, earth-colour Tusser silk sarees that have become the trademark of Naina Lal Kidwai, HSBC India’s Group General Manager and Country Head.

She is “very sure” why that happened. “Anyone who had a son and a daughter sent the son and not the daughter to such schools. My parents were very progressive. They had only two girls, but even then there was hesitation, more from my mum than my father.”

She applied for Harvard while doing her CA and her father felt she should finish it first. “But I wasn’t sure I’d get in and hadn’t met a soul who was there. I had a great GMAT score but thought I’d have to wait a couple of years.”

But she got admission and was the “youngest in class at 23, because most people go with work experience. The average age was 26 — it is now 27, and the Indian men were all 32-plus.” But her mother was hesitant, and “mine were progressive parents. If I faced that, I wonder what other women at that time would have encountered”, she says.

After completing her Masters in Business Administration in 1982, she got her first job back home in India at Grindlays Bank, which was “such an amazing melting pot. Look at the leadership that came out of there; at one stage all the heads of foreign banks in India were ex-Grindlays! It was a great experience.”

For the young woman, her age rather than gender was the big challenge as this was a period when age and experience were respected in organisations and “meritocracy was just beginning to emerge. We were still very hierarchical in the way we ran organisations, even progressive organisations like Grindlays.” Her boss, from whom she took over, was 15 years older than her. “So it was always the age factor… I don’t think it really entered their heads about the woman thing, because I came, I would say, more qualified than most of my male colleagues; I was both a CA and an MBA, a combination nobody had. And performance was always there.”

She joined as a consultant, “which was a bit unusual for they insisted on putting everyone through the training.” She joined investment banking, and went on to head the investment bank in western and northern India. The 13 years Naina spent in Grindlays were a “great learning experience. The faith and trust they put in you… was amazing.” When she was asked what she wanted next, she opted for retail banking, “which meant I was going to head it in Bombay. And they took that leap of faith… imagine an organisation that had very experienced guys over the age of 50 who took that role, making this decision.”

The ‘pregnancy thing’

She played that role for five years, but not without a starting problem. With a chuckle Naina relates the story of how the Bank’s Australian CEO — by now it had been taken over by ANZ — called her one day to offer the job. But, unexpectedly, “I had just discovered — literally the previous day — that I was pregnant with my only child. And that job was going to involve travelling all over the world, setting up offices in Dubai, etc.”

So how did her husband react to that?

“Well, how did I react to that, is the question! I had never been more shocked in my life. Here was the job I had always wanted but oh my god, this couldn’t have happened at a worse time; for me this pregnancy thing was an unknown…”

When she asked for time to think, “his jaw dropped because he thought I’d jump at it.” When she consulted her husband Rashid, “he said ‘you should come clean and tell them about it. Don’t be disappointed if they decide not to give it to you’.”

So she went back to break this news to the big boss, and even though a little taken aback, he asked her what she would like to do. “So I said I’d like to give it a try. And he gave me the job. I have never worked harder in my life because of the faith that was put in me and I could not fail. I worked and worked, even from my hospital bed till the last minute.”

A scary moment came during her eighth month of pregnancy when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and she was caught at the Mumbai airport. “There were incidents happening everywhere and by now my husband was furious! Anyway, the good news was that I got to keep the job; the timing was brilliant, the Gulf war happened and money just poured into India.”

In 1994 she got head-hunted to Morgan Stanley, “but it was heart-wrenching, because I was so happy where I was and the Bank had treated me extremely well.”

So why did she leave? “I took advice as it meant going back to investment banking. Those eight years (that she stayed with Morgan Stanley) were very interesting for India, as it had just begun to open up and disinvestments were happening, a lot of activities started in the capital markets, some of which I began.”

The high point of this tenure, recalls Naina, was that “some of the deals we did were truly global, particularly in the privatisation/ disinvestment space, such as disinvestment in the Gas Authority of India and VSNL.” And they worked for two years with Wipro before it listed on the NYSE. “That was really exciting; it was India’s first IT company to go to the NYSE and not Nasdaq.”

Did she play a role in Wipro listing at the NYSE?

“Of course. We were the investment bank! Azim (Premji) had a very clear view as well that the NYSE brought a certain stature. Also it enabled acceptability and access to the US markets… rubbing shoulders with the GEs of the world who are also your clients. So it had to do with the prestige, and for me it was a fantastic experience.” Next came the thrill of taking the “very young and very dynamic” Bharti public. It gave me an opportunity to work with some top corporate leaders in their own space.” The setting up of the NSE was another thrilling experience.

In 2002, she again got head-hunted, this time for HSBC in India. The job was to head HSBC Securities and Capital Markets as CEO, “with at least an indication, but no promise, that I would be considered for the job of CEO of the Bank purely on merit.”

On whether women generally negotiate thus, Naina says: “It also comes at some level from the confidence that if it doesn’t work out, you can leave, as you have a market value. So you negotiate from a position of strength and that helps. But I must admit that I didn’t have to raise that even once and things just fell in place.”

Journey at HSBC

The journey at HSBC has been “phenomenal; we have now got people from Grindlays in HSBC which makes for very interesting dynamics as well.” India is posed at an interesting stage of growth, so the focus on it within the HSBC group is big. That HSBC India, under her leadership — she has been CEO of the Bank for 18 months now — recorded a net profit of 64 per cent for 2006-07, the highest among major banks in India, is another feather in her cap. “This showed that whatever had been laid in place is working for us. We’ve got a fabulous team and that helps. And we are growing on all our businesses — there is the corporate bank and markets, a traditionally high-growth area, and we have a big thrust into retail banking and consumer finance,” she says.

She proudly points out that today her bank lends to “municipal workers and kirana merchants; some years ago, you’d never have believed that HSBC Bank would be in this segment. We’re writing about 15,000 such loans a month and we only started this a year ago. Just under 50 per cent of those loans are for first-time bank borrowers, who could have been borrowing from moneylenders till now,” says Naina.

Under her initiative the Bank has also been championing the cause of financial inclusion for women, and HSBC has sponsored the HSBC Manndeshi Udyogini, a business school for rural women in Satara, Maharashtra. “We’re engaging with micro-finance institutions by lending to them at subsidised rates. We’ve debated and discussed how best we could engage in this sector. At one level we were quite happy giving grants, but I believe it’s very important to make them understand the worth of that money.” This scheme lends to women at subsidised interest rates — 2-3 per cent below the prime lending rate — and also helps them scale up small business ventures. Not only are they given financial literacy, they are also taught how to handle a simputer, compute accounts, and so on. “The effort is to encourage and enable them to be profitable and stand on their own feet, by giving them practical education in the areas of their business.”

On why she has not opted for a posting abroad Naina says, “The biggest temptation is when you leave Harvard because at that time you get such good offers. Even though I had gone saying I wanted to come back, I must say I got tempted and thought should I do a year or two.” But she was advised to return to India, and has never regretted it. “I’m sure the deals I would have worked on there would have been bigger — in billions rather than millions — but here they were the first; the first-ever listings of companies, the first-time entrepreneurs, etc.”

Awards

Right from a Padmashri, innumerable business leader awards and mention in Fortune and Time magazine lists of the most powerful women, Naina has seen it all. So do these awards, recognition and adulation constitute an incentive to do even better? “An incentive to do better doesn’t come because of the awards; it comes because of the challenges you keep placing before you… you achieve and reset targets for yourself. You pick awards along the way. I feel very lucky and believe there are as many, if not more, deserving people out there. So I would treat these with a pinch of salt. But where they have been very valuable, particularly the first listing on Fortune… to be on tha t list at a time when one was less known helped. It gives visibility and helps you move ahead.”

Many a dream and... some concerns

Naina Lal Kidwai lists some of her passions and concerns:

Trekking

It is a passion, but I’m doing less and less... I don’t think I’m fit any longer to do those 25-km long treks. Inevitably I’ve gone for treks in the Himalayas, around the Binsar area — Gangotri, Yamnotri, Valley of Flowers… would love to go back to the Valley of Flowers.

A typical working day

From 8.30 a.m. to probably dinner — including official dinners.

Music

All music, except heavy metal; I love western and Indian classical, particularly the flute and the sitar.

Workout

Definitely during the weekends, and once or twice during the week too. But it takes quite a boring form — watching TV on the treadmill. Would love to walk or jog.

Relaxation

The ultimate relaxation is to be with family — my husband and children. I have a daughter who is 16 and a stepson who is 27. He makes films so it’s a very different world. He has worked as an assistant director for Bunty and Babli, Gandhi my Father… so we have some winners there.

Favourite holiday destination

Always wildlife resorts — Kaziranga, Corbett, Kanha; I would rank these the highest.

Food

All varieties of Indian, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese; I’m a very eclectic eater.

Cooking

I can’t cook to save my life which is why I enjoy different cuisines as it needs someone else to prepare the food! That’s probably why I came to banking; my mother decided that was good as I couldn’t cook at all!

Dream for the country

It would be a shame if we aren’t the leading emerging market today but developed country of tomorrow. We have a lot to do to get there. It’s very frustrating to find that we still haven’t got our infrastructure story right. We still have the worst airports in the world. But at least we are moving in the right direction but not fast enough. I want it to happen in my lifetime, and don’t want it to be our children’s story, as this would be the failure of our generation.

But the immigration queues at Mumbai airport have been sorted out by pooling three different sets of immigration officers. A simple solution which shows that if you have leadership you can do it. I’m in and out of the airport all the time, I have no special service, I’m like anybody else and I’ve not even had to wait a minute or two going in or out of immigration.

Communal divide setting back the country

I think it can set the world back. Yes, it is frightening. As a Hindu married to a Muslim, I respect and love all religions. To have in the name of religion this nonsense that has been happening in the country is awful. And yet, little stories give me heart. The father of our driver Alam, who is like a family member, went missing after the 1992-93 riots in Mumbai. Rashid went with him from hospital to hospital, and they found him after three days, injured but okay. So here is a man who didn’t eat for three days because he thought his father was gone, lost a couple of distant relatives in the riots, saying: “This is not the work of Hindus, it is the work of goondas.” And he was not saying it for the gallery or for me, a Hindu. He meant it. This means we have enough discerning lower middle-class people and we have to fight. This young TV actor (Amir Ali) who has gone to court saying he is being discriminated against by a housing society is a good thing. And the Alyque Padamsees and Anu Agas of the world who have spoken out… it takes courage to do so. At the end of the day we are all Indians. If you ask my daughter what she is, she writes ‘Hindu-Muslim’, because she is both!

Attrition among women

Women tend to hop around less, but can leave for other reasons. An analysis in HSBC shows that the leaving rate for both men and women is about the same, though reasons may vary. Men will hop around more and women will leave for family reasons. At the end of the day, as an employer, it makes no difference to me.

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

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Lending class