Christabelle Noronha

S. Ramakrishnan, the managing director of Tata Teleservices, thrives in the telecom jungle on a diet of business acumen, adventure and classics from Tamil literature

His colleagues have nicknamed him P8 for his speed of thought, but the Pentium 4-inspired sobriquet does not sit lightly on S. Ramakrishnan. "This reference to super-fast processing may have something to do with my impatience," says the managing director of Tata Teleservices. "When people describe something to me, I figure it out faster than they expect, and I go on to ask further questions. This has its disadvantages; I sometimes lose interest."

Mr Ramakrishnan’s theory is that human intelligence is determined by two factors: genetics and focus. "Whatever you consider important and strive towards, you get," he says. This, he adds, holds true with religion as well. "You get what you pray for. If you pray for wealth, you get wealth, if you want esteem, you get esteem, and if you ask for courage, you get courage." For Mr Ramakrishnan, the scientific and the spiritual walk on the same side of the street.

"I’m a fairly religious person (I spend two hours every day praying). I’ve come to realise that life, despite all the planning one does, is driven by an invisible force." Beyond the divine, Mr Ramakrishnan is passionate about literature, specifically Tamil literature of ancient times and the early 20th century.

He is a great admirer of Tamil freedom fighter, social crusader and writer R. Krishnamurthy, whose historical novels, written under the nom de plume Kalki, are acclaimed as classics today. His favourite work is Silapathikaram, widely thought to be among the five greatest in Tamil literature. The original is in chaste Tamil, the intricacies of which Mr Ramakrishnan is attracted to.

Surprisingly, Mr Ramakrishnan’s love affair with Tamil writing is of recent vintage. That’s because previously the pressures of work and family left P8 with little disk space to spare. "For a long time I did not have much time for life outside the office. It’s only in the past five years, with the children having gone to college, that I’m taking my other interests seriously. I started on Tamil classics because I had the language with which to access this treasure."

Put that down to being schooled in the vernacular. It was this platform that paved the way to distinguished spells at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, and Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. "We were brought up in an environment where excelling in education was considered more important than anything else," he says. "That’s the way it is in the South, as much with women as with men. My wife is an income tax commissioner, my daughter did law before going to IIM, Kolkata, and my son is now studying at IIM, Ahmedabad, after completing his engineering.

Is he a restless person? "No, I’m not," insists Mr Ramakrishnan. "If I were restless I would not have stayed with the Tata Group for 30 years! Let me put it this way: one reason why I have been continuously associated with new projects and ventures is probably because I lose interest and patience once they have been set up."

Mr Ramakrishnan’s career graph is testimony to his sense of entrepreneurship and adventure. He joined the Tata Administrative Service in 1972, a time when the Tata Group was seeking young blood for its hotel industry projects. He passed up the chance to join Tata Motors (then known as Telco) and Tata Chemicals before opting for Indian Hotels, the Taj Group’s parent company.

"I stayed with the Taj for 20 years," he says. "Since the industry was growing fast, we had plenty of opportunities. We were building new hotels, acquiring old ones, renovating properties and establishing ourselves in places like Sri Lanka and Nepal. Responsibilities came our way quickly. By 1976, I was handling projects worth Rs 11 crore all by myself, and I was just 27." By age 33 Mr Ramakrishnan was on the board of Indian Hotels.

In 1992 Mr Ramakrishnan decided to test still newer waters and Tata Industries beckoned. "For the next five years I worked with Tata Industries in a number of projects: the Singapore Airlines project, which got aborted; ITPL, which saw the light of the day; AT&T, which later became Lucent Technologies; and telecom, both the cellular and basic ventures." Mr Ramakrishnan returned to Indian Hotels in 1997 before joining Tata Teleservices as its managing director in 1999.

With the telecom industry encountering rapid change, P8 has had to use all his processing power to stay on top of his responsibilities. The last few years have been a roller-coaster ride for Tata Teleservices, but the company has emerged from the churn with a significant presence in the basic services arena.

One sphere where Tata Teleservices, and by extension the person who heads it, has come up smelling of roses is in keeping its people happy. A recent ‘employment satisfaction survey’ conducted by Gallup, the global management consulting experts, showed the company in spectacular light on a variety of parameters: leadership, employee confidence, the management of acquisitions, customer orientation and human resource processes.

"A lot of employee satisfaction has got to do with the jobs people have, and whether they have the tools to do them well," says Mr Ramakrishnan. "We are in a tremendous growth phase, so people always have substantial work to do. There’s the challenge and the learning. This is a somewhat new industry and it has certain technology aspects that attract a lot of youngsters."

The excitement of running a company in a liberalised economic environment is not lost on Mr Ramakrishnan, who, unfortunately, spent the major part of his career in a restricted business milieu. "The bulk of my exposure has been in the areas of new ventures: finance, legal, regulations, etc. There is more I could have done but did not. Today’s corporate world is a lot more aggressive and dynamic."

Mr Ramakrishnan, who believes that "to be a good professional, you need to be a good person," channels his altruism towards social causes. He is the guardian chief executive office of the Hyderabad chapter of the Tata Council of Community Initiatives and cultivates a keen interest in children’s education. "I want to get more involved in community initiatives, but as of now it’s more intention [than action]. Having said that, Hyderabad gave me more time for such activities than does Mumbai."

Polymath that he is, Mr Ramakrishnan has managed to balance work, leisure and everything in between with a dexterity that eclipses anything a computer can achieve. It takes more than speed of thought to do that.

Uploaded on December 2, 2003