Thursday, December 13, 2012

Unemployed for long time?



Being unemployed for long time can be stressful and can also spoil your life. Some planned actions can get you out of this state and help you in finding a job that you deserve. Everybody will have downfalls in their career and they might sometimes affect their job security. If you are worried of losing your job or being unemployed, follow the below mentioned points to find a job that suits your previous job profile...

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Are you worried of being unemployed for long time? Here are some suggestion


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Sunday, December 9, 2012

Spark Of The Corporate

Robin Li


Robin Li

CEO,
Baidu.com

Our strategy has proven to be a winning strategy...
To most laymen, Baidu.com’s, and Robin Li’s, success story is just an off-shoot of the stupendous success of the father of all search engines, Google. But that isn’t true. The idea for something like Baidu.com, or for that matter, even like Google, had been pervading in the mind of Yanhong (yeah, that’s the Chinese first name of Robin Li) ever since he had graduated out of Peking University as Bachelor of Library & Information Science. The fact that his education dealt with a science which hinged so much on search and related activities, led him to pursue his quest for, not just speeding up search, but also making it flexible, efficient, and far more refined than anything else the conventional search mechanism could give.


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Robin Li

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Satisfied with your Performance?


Self motivation is very important and is very much needed for everyone to improve their performance. This is acts as a driving force to reach their goals. When one feels that they are not getting satisfied with their work, self motivation is the only thing that can make them strong and helps them in fulfilling their potential. Here are some best suggestions to get self motivated...

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Are you not getting satisfied with your performance? Learn to motivate yourself

Friday, November 16, 2012

Stress Interviews


Interviews are done to assess a candidate and stress interview is done mainly to test how patient enough a candidate is. In this the interviewer will try to put more pressure on the candidate or make the candidate uncomfortable, to see how the candidate will react in such situations. Interviewer will see if the candidate is still able to think logically in such stressful situations. Interviewers use different ways to put stress on the candidate like for example: unexpected behaviour of the interviewer, uncomfortable questions, asking puzzle questions, asking questions repeatedly without even waiting for the response, acting rude, not agreeing with the candidate, continuously interrupting the candidate, and making the candidate wait for long hours. This is one of the toughest interviews and most of the candidates fail because they feel annoyed, frustrated and humiliated at the time of interview. Many of them fail also because they do not know how to handle stress interviews. Here are some tips to handle stress interviews...

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Are you worried of how to handle stress interviews? Here are some tips




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Monday, November 5, 2012

A Team of Young Employees



Al most all the companies’ show interest in hiring young employees who are energetic, vibrant and ambitious. Young employees aged between 21 and 26 are energetic and are always brimming with confidence. Sometimes it becomes difficult for the managers to control their energy and to manage them. Also it is difficult for them to channelize their energy in to something constructive and they end up with unhappy employees. Mentoring them, giving them positive feedback, correct direction and giving proper attention to help them move towards their professional and personal growth, is very essential. Here are some important tips to manage a team of youngsters...

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Tips for managing a team of young employees

Monday, October 29, 2012

Effective Team Building


Having a strong team is very essential to work effectively and to produce spectacular results. Good and effective team coordination results in a successful project. Every company strives to inculcate team values in their employees to create a strong value based organization. Strong team improves the performance and quality. Building a strong team can only be possible through effective communication and cooperation. Building a strong environment is not an easy task and it depends on how the management creates favorable environment for people coming from different cultures and regions. Major qualities that help in making a strong team can be classified as 5c’s and they are mentioned as follows..........

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Know the 5 C’s for Effective Team Building



Life partner is your working partner?


Developing a good relationship with your work spouse is very important because it will have a serious impact on the civilian relationship. As both men and women are working these days, they do not get enough time to spend with each other. In these kind of situations it is a bit difficult to develop a good bond with the work spouse. Therefore it is important to set boundaries between your family life and work life and don’t let your work interfere with your family. Here are some tips to deal with a work spouse............

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Tips to manage when your life partner is your working partner?

Spark Of The Corporate


Nitin Paranjpe

MD & CEO,
Hindustan Unilever Ltd

We want to strengthen our performance culture and be intolerant of incompetence.....
Hailing from the rich pedigree of Hindustan Unilever that has been the grooming ground for India’s business leaders, on first look Nitin Paranjpe does not appear to be different from any of his predecessors. But as one explores a little further, one will find that this plain-looking, unassuming man is quite unique.

In the sense that, in a span of just 25 years being in positions of either extreme – vis-à-vis leadership - he has traversed every single mile to the top position as a new journey. From being a management trainee to area sales manager then moving on to assume greater responsibility(for various businesses of HUL ) as time passed by, ultimately culminating in him becoming the youngest CEO (at 44) of HUL, Paranjpe’s career has blossomed into something that can go down as a text-book example of a progressive and thoroughly professional entrepreneur. Along the way he has picked up skills, nuances, learnt lessons and acquired leadership qualities and, then after taking over the mantle of the company, his thought-leadership, vision, and leading by example to make it possible for the multi-billion dollar conglomerate to cruise along the path of dramatic growth and success that had been eluding it for about a decade prior to his becoming the CEO.
Early years
Son of an IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officer father, Paranjpe wasn’t your quintessential IIT or IIM grad (Indian Institute of Technology, and Management, respectively); rather he had honed his skills at the comparatively less famous Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management (JBIM), Mumbai, where his modest aspiration was to get on board the ranks of HUL (Hindustan Lever back then).
After completing his Master’s in marketing management from JBIM, he got a break with HUL as a management trainee. This exposed him for the first time to the scale of operations and business he had only seen in books and case-studies. Here he was walking alongside the people who made and sold a gamut of products to a good chunk of the population of country with more than a billion people. Mostly premium-priced, the range included everything from soaps and shampoos to detergents, salts, and scores of other products that constitute FMCG today. It was a god-sent opportunity for the young Paranjpe to acquire the knowledge of how companies work at that scale while always keeping in mind the changing trends and consumer buying-behaviours. Most importantly, he came to realise his own potential as a marketer and, extending further, an entrepreneur.
The Spark 
Paranjpe was inducted into the HUL system as Area Sales Manager for Detergents, after he had been thoroughly dipped in HUL colors and moulded into thinking along the Anglo-Dutch multinational’s business ideology during his internship as a management trainee. He worked for this segment of the company’s business for a few years which gave him a clear understanding of how the entire eco-system – from manufacturing to marketing to sales and distribution- works and, in the process, was also exposed to what was impeding its growth, if any.
Then, after almost a decade, in 1996, he was made Branch Manager for the Chennai region, in which position he worked for three years, before he was appointed as member of the Project Millennium Team. This was followed by his move to Unilever London in 2000, where he was involved in the review of the organization’s structure and, in the following year, he was made Executive Assistant to the Chairman and the Executive Committee of Unilever London.
Paranjpe became the Category Head - Fabric Wash and Regional Brand Director (Asia) for several Laundry and Household Cleaning (HHC) brands after returning from London in 2002, and did reasonably well in that position as well. The next five to six years saw him assuming two more senior positions which exposed him to the strategy level of management. The first one was in 2004 when he became Vice President - Home Care (Laundry & HHC) India, responsible for the Home Care business, and the second one was when he was appointed as the Executive Director for the Home & Personal Care business in March 2006. These two positions allowed him to gain vital insights into as to what was plaguing the sales volumes of the company, which has been near stagnant in the preceding eight to ten years.
If Paranjpe’s stint at Unilever London gave him a chance to observe how a truly multinational company works, then his leadership positions after returning to India provided him a thorough understanding of what is holding back the company from exploding, and registering sales growth that it was capable of. He was quick to put the finger on some of the major problems: there were surely a few inherent practices that were ingrained in the HUL thinking which were acting as the stumbling blocks in its growth. Primary one among them was the margin-focus. For years, as touched upon earlier, HUL sold products at a premium, which limited its penetration and, consequently, denting into its volume expansion plans. This was the anomaly that Paranjpe would correct not very long after he assumed office as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. In fact this was one problem area that kind of sparked a marketing and distribution revolution at HUL like it had never seen before.
The story thereafter
Paranjpe was made the CEO in April 2008. There is a little story regarding this appointment too. Apparently, Paranpje wasn’t even expecting to be elevated to the CEO’s position as he did not think it was time yet for that, apart from the fact that his very own performance at the senior positions wasn’t great either. But, Paul Polman, the Unilever CEO, who had had a chance to see Paranjpe from up-close during his work with Unilever London, had already spotted the spark in this relatively young man and, as a result, when the time came, he lost no time in put that potential to use by strongly advising the board for Paranjpe’s to be made the CEO of the company. If this is indeed true, then Mr. Polman was prophetic in his vision.
Upon assuming the responsibility of being the CEO of the then $40 billion-dollar company, Paranjpe set about setting some policies and processes right that he thought the company ought to have already and, also doing things he had envisaged for taking HUL to its rightful position as the leader in the FMCG segment -driven by strong volumes rather than just margins.
One of the first things that he set about changing was the margin-focused mind-set of the company. But this was easier said than done. There had to be research, plans and, accordingly, efforts commensurate with the same.

He now heralded a philosophy of consumer-focus that would determine every plan that the company made and every action it took. The fulcrum of it all was to connect directly with the market-place to understand and, thus, deliver what the market wants, as opposed to seeking a premium always to satisfy the share-holders, whose only stand-point was margins. Some of the pioneering initiatives are the additional rural-focus, innovative distribution methodology, the technology-enabled ‘Project IQ,’ and ‘Mission Bushfire,’ as also a spate of rural-inclusive activities like aligning with Self-Help Groups (SHG) and leveraging on their local base (Project Shakti), that have not only helped HUL penetrate the rural markets by ensuring effective hyper-local distribution, but also made the hundreds of rural-folk self-reliant. The project, according to internal estimates, has resulted in a 40% jump in sales wherever it was implemented.
All these initiatives stem from the need-basis. The Mission Bushfire was required to understand the customers, both urban and rural, through in-person interaction. This allowed the management committee to better understand the market demand, and come-up with products accordingly. Senior managers now make it a point to periodically establish direct contact with their end-customer through these drives. In fact, Paranjpe himself is said to be on the road for as many as fifteen days a month making customer visits.
The next step was to look at the distribution channels. Much before Paranjpe took over the as CEO, the company had around 10,000 distributors across the country, which meant too many over-heads in order to deliver the products to its customers and, thus, hurting the margins. This had to change if the company had to truly realise its potential as the market-leader. Paranjpe initiated a system that has turned out to be one of his many master-strokes. This was to shift production to supplier-owned factories close to the market, which has seen in the number of distributors coming down drastically to 2,400. Wheel detergent, which contributes more than Rs 2,000 crore, or more than 10 per cent of HUL's, is now supplied from 20 supplier-owned factories across the country rather than being concentrated in particular zones, which has led to savings of about Rs.1,000 to Rs. 1,500 per metric ton. Likewise, the sales are driven by smart region-specific and brand-specific pricing and product strategies. While Wheel has two mixes for different parts of the country: hard-water mix for northern India and soft-water mix for the south, Rin (detergent) –which contributes to about 5% of HUL’s sales- is priced differently in southern and northern India as, the company thinks, its "equity is different in the two parts. One definitely has a thing or two to learn from Paranjpe in thinking global and acting local. The company has also followed the practice of ‘zero-inventory,' vis-à-vis its distributors. Now, products arrive at its distributors' place from an HUL depot and stay there for just one night before being shipped to the retailers.
Then there is the ‘Project IQ,’ which uses analytics to better understand the buying behaviour of customers to get a thorough understanding of the market at a granular level. This is particularly effective when you are looking at data from million and a half outlets. It is almost impossible for humans to come up with the answers, thus necessitating the use of technology. Therefore, an algorithm was built to help support the app come up with certain recommendations of the system.
The result is that today, each of the 12,000 strong marketing staff (sales agents) employed by HUL’s distributors now carries a tablet computing device to the field where he has to just key in the store name to know what is to be done with that particular store. The software application on the tablet, built in-house by HUL, tells the agent everything from store-specific inventory control and re-order status indicators to the likelihood of which other products that store is capable of selling. The effort is further enriched by the tablet-app which even tells the merchandising agent who visits the store right after the sales agent has left the store, and who also carries the tab, how to arrange the stocks on the shelves.
Employing technology for effective sales and distribution help does not stop there. Paranjpe quite well understood and acknowledged the fact that the media-consumption patterns were changing with onset of the internet revolution, which has brought about a sea change in where potential customers spend their time. More so, the advent of social networking also eating into a lot of time and mind-space of the consumers, Paranjpe felt it was imperative that HUL is not left behind in capturing this source of connecting with its customer base. Since, all these new media-consumption sources were relatively alien to Paranjpe who, during the same period, was immersed in nothing else but strategizing the turn-around in the company’s performance and growth – which had been stagnant for well over a decade, he had to learn to get upto speed with the market-dynamics.
Paranjpe figured if he had to lead HUL in the era of digital marketing, then he would have to himself get used to living in the world his children were now a part of, which meant he would have to “go back to school” and attend digital workshops led by his brand managers, read the materials they insisted he read, and submit assignments they asked him to complete. Thus, in what can be called as ‘reverse-mentoring,’ endeavour, he hired a 25 year-old to tutor him on how to navigate the social media. Obviously, all this was to get to the root of phenomenon and to understand how it could made best use of in order to moulding HUL, the largest FMCG company in the country also as the largest digital marketing firm in the country.
The results of all the efforts that Paranjpe put in so far as the CEO of the company are there for all to see. He has changed a margin-focused company into a volume-centric business resulting in not only HUL headways in terms of market-penetration, it also allowed higher margins to retailers thus ensuring, in an indirect way, brand loyalty to a great extent. Further, although his aim of a ‘Perfect Store,’ which would work on ‘predictive intelligence,’ is still in the making, his emphasis on using technology through Project IQ has only added to the efficacy of his performance as the CEO. No wonder then that not only has the share value of HUL stock, which was languishing in the Rs.200 region for almost a decade, has shot-up by about 200% in the last two years to Rs.575, the company’s revenues have also gone up by Rs.4,500 Crore, from Rs. 17,000 Crore to Rs.22,500 Crores. This billion-dollar growth (exchange rates prevailing at the start of the sample period) – equivalent to the m-cap of many mid-sized companies-, has apparently not been able to ruffle the thinking caps of competing brands who contend that their market presence is not affected by this growth and expansion of HUL.
In any event, HUL’s story, and in particular, how Paranjpe brought about this remarkable turn-around would make for a thoroughly rewarding case-study in everything that has got to do with business and entrepreneurship. The company itself recognized this and re-appointed Paranjpe, who was the youngest CEO of the company (India) when he first became the CEO in 2008, even before his first term is completed in 2013 for another term which will last upto 2018, which would make him one of the youngest as well as the longest serving CEOs in the history of the company.
Awards and Honours
Best CEO (Multinational) at the Forbes India Leadership Awards (FILA), 2012.   



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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Spark Of The Corporate

                                                    

                                   Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

                                                   CEO and President (since 2004, Feb),
                                                                   Facebook

“The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open” “It’s OK to break things” “to make them better”
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is born American computer programming genius, young and energetic ideologist, envisioned entrepreneur and scientific brain behind the path breaking revolution in social networking systems; found and took up reins as President and CEO of Facebook in 2004. The way he transformed the social networking systems made communication, networking, knowledge sharing and connectivity jet fast and just a matter of a click.
The “Facebook”, which spread like magic from the dorm room of Harvard, founded by Mark Elliot Zukerberg in 2004, when he was just 19-year-old, with his fellow students and roommates, has become popular worldwide, with an extremely broad base of about 800million viewers, as of September 2011. Currently the Facebook is growing at tremendous pace with about 700,000 people using it per day. Today, one out of every 12 people is known to have Facebook account. These viewers communicate in 75 languages and use 700 billion minutes every month on facebook. As of 2011, Zuckerberg is a billionaire, with approximate personal wealth of around $17.5 billion.
Zuckerberg is named as the Person of the Year for 2010 by the Time’s Magazine for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information and for changing how we live our lives. Amidst many controversies about the origin of the company and law suits filed against Facebook, in a very short spec of time, Mark was able to string up humans into a huge single social entity through Facebook network, which made a historical paradigm shift in human relations. Facebook has become a part –and- parcel of human lives through out the globe, with 50% of the people utilizing the network in the U.S and from countries outside the U.S, 70% of people have changed their lives with Facebook usage. Under the great leadership and guidance of Mark, total registrations to the site quadrupled over the previous year. The number of employees has tripled, as has revenue. This shows his determination, strong willpower and relentless hard work to execute his mission of connecting people around the world. He stood as a role model for all young upcoming businessmen with great ideas, which could transform the world.
Mark Zuckerberg thinks that lot comes from going to good schools, as he did. He believed that every child deserves good education, which is not happening right now. He just wants to do what he could do to lend everyone an opportunity to get educated. He wants to spread his wealth, so he announced that he would be giving $100 million to the Newark school system in charity, to help reform schools in U.S, in Sept 2011. Zuckerberg stated "With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts”. By this he joins Bill Gates and Warren Buffet in “giving away pledge”.
Rise of Facebook and Zuckerberg
The foundation and groundwork before starting the actual Facebook, took its birth in the Harvard. Zuckerberg developed an image of go-to software developer on the Harvard campus, in 2002. At that time, he built a CourseMatch program, which helped students to choose their classes based on course selection of other users.
In 2003, when Zuckerberg was in his sophomore year at Harvard, started a program called “Facemash”, with the help of his friends and roommates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz, just to divert himself from the pressure he felt. Facemash placed photos of two undergraduates side by side, and asked the viewers to vote for one that is “hotter”. The site actually originated only for Harvard, but quickly grew to other colleges, then high schools and finally for anyone over age 13. However, the Harvard’s school administration quickly shut down the program, as Zuckerberg was charged for breach of privacy. Later on, the Harvard dropped the charges.
Based on the popularity gained by the previous projects, Zuck was sought to work on an idea of social networking site by three of his fellow students, Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, which they called “Harvard connection”. This site was designed to use information from Harvard's student networks in order to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project, but soon dropped out to pursue his dreams. The controversy surrounding Facebook began quickly. A week after he launched the site in 2004, Mark was accused by three Harvard seniors of having stolen the idea from them. This allegation soon became a lawsuit, as a competing company founded by the Harvard seniors, sued Mark and Facebook for theft and fraud, starting a legal fight, which continues to this day. The case was dismissed due to a technicality in March 2007, but without a ruling and Zuck ended up paying a huge penalty.
In the year 2004 February, the same trio Zuck, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard to pursue their dreams and run Facebook full time, they diverted their efforts to recreate Facemash and opened Facebook, the most popular social networking site. This site allowed users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and communicate with other users. The group ran the site first called “The Facebook”, from the dorm room at Harvard, until June 2004. In 2004, an angel investor, Sean Parker (founder of Napster) became the company's president. The company was moved to Palo Alto, California and had 1 million users by the end of 2004. In August 2005, “the facebook” was officially called “Facebook”, and the domain facebook.com was purchased for a reported $200,000.
The network quickly expanded to other Boston universities, the Ivy League, and eventually all US universities. US high schools could sign up from September 2005, and then it began to spread through out the world and reached UK universities the following month. The network reached beyond educational institutions to anyone with a registered email address, as of September 2006. The site remains free to join, and makes a profit through advertising revenue. That's why you'll see banner ads on Facebook, and this is how they can manage to create such a great service to you for free.
The features of the site have shown a continuous development, during the year 2007. Users can now give gifts to friends, post free classified advertisements, and even develop their own applications (graffiti and Scrabble are particularly popular). Over time, Facebook has added many new features to their website. You'll now find a news feed, more privacy features, Facebook notes, the ability to add images to your blog and comments, importing other blogs into Facebook, instant messaging, and much more. In addition, new apps are born on Facebook every day. This month the company announced that the number of registered users had reached 30 million, making it the largest social-networking site with an education focus. Facebook has count worthy investors including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Accel Partners, and Greylock Partners. In 2007, Microsoft came forward and invested $246 million for a 1.6% share in Facebook. The next month Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing made a large investment too. Yahoo! and Google both offered to buy Facebook, but Mark Zuckerberg showed no interest in selling. Today Facebook is the second largest social networking site and stands behind Myspace, with approximately 150mn viewers a month.
More about Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
BornMark Elliot Zukerberg
May 14, 1984 (age 27)
White Plains, New York, U.S.
ResidencePalo Alto, California, U.S.
Country of citizenshipUnited States
EthnicityJewish
Alma materPhillips Exeter Academy
Harvard University (drop out)
OccupationCEO and President of Face book
Marital StatusSingle
The top wig of social networking, Zukerberg of Facebook; was born in a Jewish family in White Plains, New York, in the year 1984, May14. He was brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, in a well to do, closely-knit family, with his three sisters Randi, Donna, and Arielle. Right from his childhood, Zukerberg was raised totally in a Jewish style and culture and by the time he turned 13, he named himself as an atheist. Zukerberg’s parents were well educated. His father, Edward Zukerberg was a dentist and he ran his practice attached to his home. His mother worked as a psychiatrist, until she gave birth to four children.

Young Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook
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Wednesday, October 10, 2012

I have always followed the 80:20 rule....

Any effort to arrive at a conclusive inference on K.V. Kamath's professional career and its impact on corporate India at this juncture, as such, is likely to be incomplete as this amazing man, at 64, is still chipping away at it, as strongly and as enthusiastically as ever. For, you will never know what surprise innovation or pioneering effort he is going to spring up with, like he has done over the last four decades during which he redefined umpteen practices in the realm of corporate culture in India. Looking beyond the obvious and coming up with out-of-the-box yet practical solutions has been the forte of Kamath. And it is with the same creative fervour that he is continuing to lead the next generation of business leaders onto the path of success in the 21st century. His approach to managing business has been revolutionary in many respects, from an Indian point of view. Most of that could be attributed to his make-up. A strong-willed man with both, the humility to accept weaknesses and the courage to face adversities with ingenuity is not a very common occurrence. These coupled with a flair for innovation which almost always propelled him to think ahead of the pack, have lead in shaping the career of this leading light of the Indian industry.
Early days
A Kundapur Vaman Kamath was born in Mangalore into a business family (his father, later, went onto become the Mayor of Mangalore city), just at the dawn of independent India (2nd December, 1947). Both his schooling and pre-university education were completed from St. Aloysius, Mangalore. Thereafter, he got into the Karnataka Regional Engineering College (now called as National Institute of Technology) at Surathkal to pursue mechanical engineering, which he thought was necessary for him to carry forward his family's roof tile manufacturing business. He used to go to the factory everyday for three hours to look after the business as well as get acquainted with its finer details. So, it is no wonder that he chose to enroll for the MBA programme at the IIM-A (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad) in 1969, when the course wasn't much sought after back then, or at least it was not known to be among the popular choices for career aspirants at the time. Even during his student days, he is known to have demonstrated flashes of the leadership that he was to put to effective use in subsequent years; this was corroborated by many a school and college mate of his. Encouraged by his father, he took up the responsibility of being the president of the college union. So, it can be safely assumed that the MBA programme only reinforced what many others already knew about Kamath's leadership qualities. It helped refine him and made him the finished product he was at the end of programme during which finance was the subject that he took the most liking to, and a successful career beckoned. Despite having the option to join the family business Kamath chose to join ICICI (Mumbai) as a management trainee. He joined the Project Finance Division of ICICI (Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India), which was an initiative of the Indian government that had started in 1955, backed by the world Bank, to accelerate industrial growth in the just born independent India.
This was an excellent opportunity for Kamath to acquaint himself with the nitty-gritty of the field - how things were done, how things were built, and the challenges managements face, and so on- that also helped fuel his entrepreneurial instincts. It also allowed him to -in his own words- learn to combine technical skill with soft skills to take decisions.
For instance, when he was asked to set-up ICICI's leasing business, he was sent to London to work with a leasing company for three months -the experience actually laid the foundations for whole new set of financial analysis and tools for ICICI.
A few years later, when it was time to strategise for the next decade, he was again at the helm of affairs. Egged on by his mentor, Mr. N. Vaghul (the then Chairman of ICICI), he took up the project to computerize the entire business resulting in ICICI establishing the country's most advanced computing set-up in the financial business. It was this pioneering initiative that heralded a revolution in the Indian banking system in later years.
Thus, through the course of his first association with ICICI, which was a good 17 years, he went on to demonstrate his talent and leadership skills, and created immense value for ICICI by setting-up new businesses in leasing, venture capital, and credit rating besides handling the general management positions.
The Spark
Perhaps feeling a bit jaded with his more than decade-and-a-half association with ICICI, Kamath was looking for a change. There was an offer from the Asian Development bank (ADB), Jakarta. He sought out his mentor, Mr. Vaghul, and put forth his plan to take the offer. He was allowed to go with a promise to return to ICICI when needed.
This was a very good opportunity for Kamath to explore, beyond the frontier of his country; the way businesses were run facilitating many a nation's rapid progress. The ADB facilitated his exposure to the South-East Asian countries as well as China. What this meant was that now he was able to get a first hand view of how rapidly these countries had reduced poverty levels through high growth rates. They seemed to him almost like developed nations. This also made him reflect what was wrong in the Indian scenario. One of them he felt was the License-Raj, resulting in a constrained atmosphere for businesses to work in.
In 1996, after eight years of not so eventful working with the ADB that took him to more than half-a-dozen countries although he did gain perspective and some new foresight, he was offered to assume the mantle of ICICI as Managing Director and CEO.
He realised what was required to be done, the moment he stepped back into ICICI. The opening up of the Indian Economy had opened up many avenues that also brought along challenging tasks if one were to make good of the now liberalized economy. The increase in per capita income would lead the populace to aspire for better things in life.
If that were to happen, then they must be provided with the options. Thus, KV Kamath hit upon the idea of a universal bank which would have the ability to provide complete financial services to different classes of customers. Under his leadership, by 1998 ICICI had built capabilities for everything under the sun: from home loans to mortgages and auto loans to every other conceivable financial product and service.
To make funding as well as operations easy, in 2002 he oversaw the successful merger of ICICI with its subsidiary, ICICI Bank, which was formed some years before while he was away working for the ADB. This was a first instance in the Indian context wherein a parent institution was merged into one of its subsidiaries.
The journey
Under him, ICICI has made significant progress in creating a strong retail focus and building the personal financial services business. But it didn't happen just like that. With only 50 branches across the whole country, the ICICI Bank seemed to be lagging behind the state-owned banks, and the multi-national banks which had forayed into the Indian financial market post-liberalisation. If ICICI were not to lose on the opportunity, increasing the number of branches was felt to be the need of the hour. But, that was a herculean task at that point in time, given the fact that the government had been reluctant to grant banking licenses.
He had to do something that would allow ICICI bank to reach a greater target. From his earlier stint at ICICI when he had set in motion the computerization of organization, which was thereafter looked after by one of its subsidiaries called ICICI Infotech, he knew that technology-enabled operations would be the way forward. So he set up ATMs across the country, initiated online banking services, and also fostered banking services at the door-step of the customer - all three aspects combined to do the trick for him.
The bank has with around 3,500 ATMs, 35,000 employees in 20 countries and over 25 million customers. And today, less than 30 per cent of customers come into the branch. Almost 70 per cent of transactions take place through technology channels.
There have been doubters and naysayers who are skeptical of him being able to carry on the mantle from N.R. Narayan Murthy (Founder and Ex-Chairman of Infosys) right since the time he assumed the responsibility at Infosys in late 2009 (as Non-Exec Chairman), less even repeating his own success at ICICI. However, only time will tell if these fears were well-founded.
Admittedly, there were some eyebrows raised pointing at the mini turbulent phase with ICICI in 2008, when customer confidence had tanked a bit, leading to rumours of the bank going insolvent and the like (of course, nothing of that sort happened), also the two IPOs backed by ICICI Bank - 3i Infotech Ltd. & First Source Solutions (erstwhile ICICI Onesource Solutions) have proved to be duds, denting into investor confidence. Some also point to the fact that Infosys' performance has been disappointing in the last 2 -3 quarters, which is being hinted as his inability to lead the technology giant in the right direction. However, it needs to be pointed out here that the instances cited above were a result of a combination of extraneous factors like global economic down-turn (in 2008 when ICICI had to somewhat scale-down their retail & home segment business) and, weaker spending due to a very cautious approach adopted by clients (Infosys expressing concern over clients' apprehensions in the times prevailing leading to lesser allocation of funds for technology spend that is manifest in companies coming out with very few fresh project proposals). Therefore, a mere blip or two should not take anything away from K.V. Kamath's illustrious profile as one of corporate India's most inspiring leaders. His contribution to the growth of our nation's economy are laudable, in that he did his bit in helping spur the business stimulus with which the country went on to tread a reasonable growth path over the last 15 years.
The mentor
Like with any other progressing nation, India also had a couple of corporates that performed the duty of being its leadership schools, in the form of Citibank and Hindustan Unilever (then Hindustan Lever). As the country stepped into the era of globalization with a liberalized economy, many businesses found innumerable opportunities to grow. Obviously, this meant the country would be needing scores of business leaders with a burning ambition and the ability to take the country's economy forward. ICICI Bank, initially through Mr. N. Vaghul, and then in the form of Kamath, stepped up to the plate, and set about nurturing talent that showed sparks of leadership.
Kamath will be known for as much for revolutionizing the Indian banking system as he would be for mentoring some of the most successful leaders like Chanda Kocchar (current MD & CEO of ICICI Bank), Shikha Sharma (MD & CEO of Axis Bank), Kalpana Morparia (CEO of JP Morgan India), and V Vaidyanathan (MD of Future Capital), to name a few.
As one can expect, besides ICICI, and now Infosys, Kamath also serves under various capacities. He is a Member of the Governing Board on various educational institutions including the Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad, Indian School of Business, National Institute of Bank Management and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, besides serving as an independent director of Houston-based oil services company, Schlumberger. He is also a member of the national council of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), as well as the honorary member of the Government constituted Audit Advisory Board (AAB) that whose function will be to advise the CAG in matters relating to audit and suggest improvements in the performance and focus of audit.
Social causes
Kamath has been known to have always approached taking business decisions while also keeping in mind the need of the common masses, like encouraging and supporting projects that impact the lives of the underprivileged people. A Social Initiatives Group (SIG) was constituted under his guidance in 2000 to promote inclusive growth through focus on primary health, elementary education, and access to finance. The ICICI Foundation was established in 2008 to carry forward this legacy. He also contributes funds that provide scholarships to deserving students.
Family


He is married to Rajalaxmi; the couple has two children - a son (Ajay) and a daughter (Ajnya). He is an avid reader and a Formula-1 racing enthusiast.
Awards & Accolades
award starBest CEO for Innovative HR practices - World HRD Congress, 2000
award starAsian Business Leader of the Year - Asian Business Leader Award 2001 (CNBC Asia)
award starBusinessman of the Year - Forbes Asia, 2001
award starBusinessman of the Year - Business India, 2005
award starOutstanding Business Leader of the Year - CNBC-TV18, 2006
award starBusiness Leader Award of the Year - The Economic Times, 2007
award starConferred with Padma Bhushan by the Government of India, 2008
 
Quotes
kv"India needs to focus on inclusive growth."
kv"To build a successful business, you have to be able to pick entrepreneurs very early and get them embedded into the business. They need to go out into the ecosystem, demonstrate their abilities, nurture the business and build it up"
kv"Every leader worth his salt is capable of executing a plan to its finest details."
kv"I have always followed the 80:20 rule, which is prioritising the vital few and trivial many. The rule essentially means that you focus 80 per cent of your time and energy on the 20 per cent of your work that is really important."
kv"The reason is that turbulence in our customer markets would mean our customers would seek even greater operational efficiency and productivity gains. If Indian knowledge sector players can prove that they can partner in these areas, and deliver value, a win-win opportunity develops. I am reasonably sure this is going to happen".
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