Sujata Agrawal

Sheila Nair has successfully navigated her career path of nearly 20 years with the Taj Group. It has been a blend of sunshine and windy days but the journey has been well worth it

Sheila Nair, COO, Roots Corporation, has always run with the current, letting it lead her onto new paths and uncharted territory. Her self-contained nature and her ability to think things through have helped her plot a career course that has been as challenging as it has been fulfilling.

Nair joined the Taj Group in 1986. It was to be her first and only job. An MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur with a degree in nutrition, food service management and dietetics, she was recruited by Indian Hotels and posted at Taj Palace, Delhi. "Even though my background in nutrition focused on the medical and therapeutic rather than the hospitality sector, I chose to join the Taj, rather than Maruti Udyog, my second option, as heavy engineering seemed totally unfamiliar to me at the time," she says. It is now nearly 20 years since she's been with the Taj Group and the relationship is as strong as ever.

The long stint has given her an all-encompassing view of hotel operations, be it the front office, the kitchens or new business development. "In hindsight, I feel that each experience added bandwidth and gave me a different insight into the industry," says Nair. She compares a hotel to a ship, "except that a hotel is stationary". Both are self-contained units that must provide all the comforts and amenities to their residents from within; they must, therefore, have similar functions and operations.

Her first assignment after the induction period was as executive assistant to Shanker Menon at Taj Coromandel in Chennai. "It was here that I got a macro view of the regional operations. One began to see trends, make analyses and understand the nuances of each operation," she explains.

Post-marriage, she moved to Bombay in 1989 and worked as executive assistant to Camellia Panjabi. Nair was involved with different projects such as trade fairs, hotel renovation and setting up of the Gateway hotels. Interacting with Panjabi taught her to look at details. Panjabi's close attention to the finer points was complemented by Nair's meticulousness in her work. "I believe if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well," she stresses.

Nair went on to be manager of co-ordination at R. K. Krishna Kumar's office when he took over as managing director in 1997. It was a tough appointment as the company was in a state of transition, but it gave her invaluable insights into the churn an organisation goes through during such a change.

She adds, "With Mr Krishna Kumar, I learnt to be ambitious. He has a philosophy about working in a particular assignment for not more than 2-3 year period which struck a chord in me." One day Krishna Kumar out of the blue gave Nair a one-line memo, a mandate to set up a chain of budget hotels. "It is not that he gave you a concept or guidelines. You have to figure it out and get back to him with a plan." Nair had three months to come up with one. Fortunately her skills in conceptualising, conducting research and synthesising various aspects paid off with the launch of indiOne.

indiOne is something that she has a passion for. This is no surprise considering the fact that she has nurtured it from conception to birth. She gives credit to her team of 15 people who pitched in to launch the first indiOne Hotel at Bangalore. The challenge now is to deliver the next 10 hotels. Nair's words prove that she relishes a challenge. "If someone says it cannot be done, it's a challenge for me. Many people thought that indiOne was never going to be a reality, but I saw it as an opportunity to do something different and really test myself. To encourage the team, we referred to the Bangalore model as Mission Possible," says Nair.

The indiOne project actually went beyond being just a challenge for Nair. It had to do with a change in the mindset of a hotel group that epitomised luxury and class. "You had to shake off the legacies, analyse the business processes and create new hypotheses. With indiOne, we had to establish the science of hospitality," she says. Getting to that science was exciting for Nair and it was here that her experience in the company across various functions really helped. "Over the years a lot of learning gets embedded in your subconscious. There were anchor points for various pieces of information that kept flowing in and so it equipped me to handle the multi-faceted synthesis that indiOne was all about."

Success in her workplace has come with a price tag. She muses, "My children have always seen me working. They have never seen me in the kitchen. There are moments, especially when I see my son who is grown up now, when I wish I could have spent more time with them." Nair emphasises that family support is vital for a woman to be successful in her career. "I always had strong family support, both from my husband, Anil, who is with Avaya and my mother who is completely in charge of my children."

While she is ambitious to a point and would like to continue to grow in her career, Nair would not opt for positions that separate her from her family. "I'm happy in the Taj Group," says Nair, with a smile. "I really feel that Tata is an organisation with a soul. I am a person who is here for the long haul and would not job-hop for small things. There are bound to be things that don't go your way but moving from one place to another is not the solution."

The Taj Group has many women in senior positions. When asked if it is the Taj culture that is the reason for this, Nair responds thoughtfully, "It is the nature of the hospitality industry, softer skills like social skills are required and I think that those come quite naturally to most women. It's not hardcore science, which you need to apply in heavy engineering. There are a wide variety of job opportunities available. It's on account of the nature of the business and the essentials of this business that women can deliver very well."

What are the learnings she has shared with her children? "They need to work and be constructively occupied, and to achieve anything they will need to work. My daughter is very clear that she wants to work although sometimes seeing me working late, she says, 'I am going to stay at home and look after my children'." In a world of changing values Nair insists on instilling time-honoured values in her children. "I try to make them understand their responsibilities, about being hardworking, straightforward, simple and respectful of elders."

Dividing her time between her family and workplace, Nair has little opportunity to know what it is like to have some free time for herself. But as she says, "I have a lot of energy so even if I had an opportunity not to work would I even be able to sit at home?" Maybe some day she will have the time to read that book or play that game of tennis.

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Uploaded on September 19, 2005