MY FIRST...
The many firsts... continued
My First Major Customer Crisis
BVR Mohan Reddy Infotech Enterprises Hyderabad Provides engineering solutions In July 2009, the International Herald Tribune published a story that Kafeel Ahmed, a suspect in the Glasgow International Airport attack, worked as an engineer at Infotech Enterprises and might have had access to the design secrets of top aircraft makers, such as Boeing and Airbus. The article named five of our top 10 customers. This posed a serious challenge for us in terms of customer confidence. Ahmed had worked with us in the Bengaluru office between December 2005 and July 2006. He spent most of that time on projects from Pratt & Whitney, one of the largest aircraft engine manufacturers in the world. His supervisor said Ahmed was sincere at work. His co-workers described him as an introvert, who had few friends at work. So, we constituted a crisis management team to take all stakeholders into confidence, and communicate facts without any sugar coating. We authorised one person to communicate with media, and carefully chose that person to make sure he/she will be able to withstand the pressure of the situation, and stick to the brief. More importantly, the team was asked to investigate if any customer material in our possession was compromised to Ahmed. Further, it had to check if we had followed processes for background checks while recruiting him, and if all systems were compliant to ensuring no data leakage happened during the period. We also made sure that, unlike a Tony Hayward during the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, our senior management was actively involved in managing the situation. Thankfully, our investigation concluded that we had followed all processes in Ahmed’s selection and nothing untoward had happened during his employment with us. Our customer had investigated and found to its satisfaction that none of its data had been misused by him. That was a big sigh of relief.
My First Business Crisis
Ashok Soota MindTree Bengaluru An information technology firm MindTree was born during the dotcom boom, as an internet solutions firm. We were one, when we were hit by the dotcom bust. More than 50 per cent of our revenues were from dotcom firms. Even during the crisis, we found things for which we were grateful—the fact that we were not larger. Large players just couldn’t find alternate revenue to sustain even marginal growth. We were grateful that we had decided to launch our R&D services business, which augmented revenues. We were grateful for the response of our middle management, who volunteered to take compensation cuts. We learnt a few lessons: dotcoms floated by large organisations were the ones that didn’t pay. The VCfunded or self-funded start-ups met commitments. Very early in the crisis, we decided that we had to prepare for the future and began to develop capabilities and laid the foundation for five years of 59 per cent compounded growth when markets revived in 2002. Looking back, the crisis was the best thing to happen.
My First Inspiration
Ajay Chaturvedi HarVa Gurgaon A rural venture setting up women-only BPOs Reading Art of War by Sun Tzu at University of Pennsylvania changed my life. Achievement requires detachment—the Gita says that, as does Jack Welch. Initially, I didn’t understand how one could be passionate about achieving something, but not get attached. Later I understood the critical difference is the difference between intent and desire. Having worked with IBM, Citi and Global Vantedge, setting up a rural business was not a natural progression. But, after that class, disconnecting emotionally helped me see where I could go, as compared to where social conditioning was leading me. Our quality of life is determined by what we breathe, eat and drink, and not how much we pay for each. I think value begins with farms. Now, with HarVa, I am hoping to establish a socio-capitalistic model that delivers true value. continued on page
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