Corporate Dossier
The Economic Times
27 May 2005

Ten years back, few professionals aspired to work with a Birla company — synonymous with a community-based workforce thriving on sycophancy. Here's how Kumar Mangalam Birla transformed the group into one of the hottest places to work at.

People issues are something that are going to crop up in every other discussion you have with Kumar Mangalam Birla. Consciously or unconsciously every discussion veers towards the importance he places on getting the right people. He would proudly state that every person he brought in senior management is intelligent, probably more than he is. "My objective has been to build a meritocracy and there are lots of nuances about it," says Birla and adds, "You are not talking about an object, an organisation is about people who make it and it would continue to be my focus in the days to come."

One of the first people he went about hiring was Santrupt Misra who would since then be the group's HR head. Misra had worked with Hindustan Lever and the Tatas and had just completed his second doctoral from the UK. "I was 31-years-old and adventurous and he was 28 and our wave lengths matched reasonably well," recalls Misra. Something in his HR instinct told him that the young person was hesitantly approaching a large role and was mentally prepared for it. Recollects Misra, "Possibly he didn't have a clear agenda or even if he had, he was camouflaging it. He didn't set an agenda and was more curious of what I could do. At that time, it was probably too early for a 28-year-old to talk about big plans." Misra fell for it and took up the role.

It's almost the same story for Debu Bhattacharya who would leave the board membership of Hindustan Lever to join as the MD of Indo Gulf and Birla Management Corporation. "I had no compunction to leave Levers, I joined because of Mr. Birla," confides Bhattacharya and adds, "In 1998, Kumar Mangalam Birla was yet to be well-known and there was a penumbra or ignorance that meant that all the Birla groups look alike. To me it was kind of a chalk or cheese dilemma, and the talks went on for a protracted period."

Today, the Aditya Birla group attracts some of the best talents from India and abroad. Over the past few months it has even attracted expats who have moved from Canada and the UK to work for the group and plenty of overseas-based Indian professionals make up the group's senior management. Even at the entry-level, Birla's objective was to attract the best talents from the B-schools, something that has today materialised. At most B-schools, the group recruits on the same day as bluechip multinationals do.

Getting the right people on board was a priority, and Birla was willing to do everything to grab them. Internally it raised eyebrows, not because scores of senior managers working for the group for decades had been asked to put in their papers, but because a company which had never invested much on HR was suddenly spending Rs 16-17 crore on management development programmes which would later be called Gyanodaya.

There was something else that was also working in Birla's favour, his own people skills. Says old-timer Shailendra Jain, "There was a reaction of a shock from older colleagues, but the retirement of the senior professionals was painless. It went off smoothly with hardly any grievance being expressed. He had a natural penchant for winning over people, even if they were being asked to leave."