| A great sense of humour, simplicity and disarming
candour are the qualities which register as the 80-year old doyen
of the Rs. 2,000-crore Sanmar group and associates, K S Narayanan
reminisces about his 60-odd years in the world of business. |
| Call him pragmatic but he remains one of those rare
corporate dons who decided to call quits to a life of active corporate
governance at the age of 61, way back in 1980. |
| On the reasons behind this decision he says, “Financial
institutions have their own nominees on the Board who like to comment
or even advise strongly on subjects they don’t know anything about.
So when the IDBI asked me to continue, I said: “I’m 61. When all officers
retire at 60 I too would like to retire around this age. I’d like
to continue on the board of India Cements but not as its Managing
Director.” |
| Sitting in his large room at the group’s corporate
headquarters in Chennai, he says with a broad grin, “I don’t know
whether such a decision is right or wrong, but for me it worked out
very well because my sons (N Sankar and N Kumar) are better, and more
intelligent than me. I don’t think I would have succeeded as they
have. Most people like to stick on to the seat of power... I had no
problem giving it up.” On whether he felt unwanted once he quit, “No,
I only gave up the position... and I can’t stop people from giving
me respect.” |
| Married at the age of 16, he got the message loud
and clear when his banker-father told him that he could not be dependent
on him for money to buy ‘seep (comb) or soap’ for his wife. After
a brief stint in his father’s bank, the youngster found it more adventurous
to be on his own. By 1938, when he was 19, he had taken over a printing
ink factory. Next came rubber works followed by a calcium carbide
plant. (“It was dumped on me, thanks to my inability to resist the
temptation of becoming a director at 24”). |
| “In 1947 my father started a cement factory and
asked me if I would like to join him. The assignment involved a training
stint in Denmark and “because going abroad was glamorous then, I agreed.”
On this tour he also visited Norway and Sweden and worked in the UK
and Egypt, to pick up additional expertise in the printing ink and
calcium carbide segments. |
| About ethics in business in those years, Narayanan
says, “All through my career I’ve never given a pie to any officer
or representative from the FIs or the Government.” And his two sons
“have kept this tradition alive. We are neither too close to politicians
nor do we distance ourselves from them. We know them, and there it
stops.” |
| Anecdotes about his brushes with politicians are
plenty. Take for instance his recapitulation of Shyam Prasad Mukherjee’s,
(independent India’s first Minister for Industry), visit to Madras.
“When he came to Madras in 1950, we were happy to extend hospitality
to him in our huge house built on 10 acres. The bureaucrats said,
“You should not come anywhere near the dining table. He will dine
with the officers and the local ministers. So I retired to the annexe
which had a small dining hall.” |
| At dinner time the minister was miffed about the
missing host. So I told him that being a South Indian Brahmin I sat
on the floor and ate. He said, “What do you take me for? I’m also
a Benares Brahmin and I’d like to sit on the floor and eat too. Let
my officers eat on the table!” Thankfully Narayanan didn’t have to
deal much with corrupt bureaucrats. “At the most, senior bureaucrats
from Delhi would ask to be taken to Tirupati, Kanchipuram or Guruvayur”. |
| About the industrial development of India, Narayanan
recalls, “During World War II when I was in rubber, the No. 1 of Dunlop
who was then adviser to the Government of India wanted to stop my
factory even though it was much smaller than Dunlop. He said I was
wasting good natural rubber for car tyres. I told him it was only
reclaimed rubber and he couldn’t stop my licence.” |
| “Even for our calcium carbide plant, the man from
Indian Oxygen charged that we were producing carbide from witchcraft.
They thought no Indian could do things like that. So I invited him
to come and see for himself. Then, there were very few industries.
Today, we have made fantastic advances in all fields.” |
| On the erosion of values in business he says, “I’m
sure this is a temporary phase and we’ll come out of it. People will
realise their mistakes and we are bound to go back to our old values.”
Being an optimist, he finds the country’s future bright. “Unless you
think positive you will never have a place in this country.” |
| About the present political turmoil, he says, the
phase is transient and we would eventually settle down to a two party
system “which is the best. When there are more than half a dozen partners
in the Government, each one wants to extract his pound of flesh, and
it doesn’t work.” |
| The one philosophy which has governed his life is
“faith in God. I can’t claim to have any hand in my success. It was
purely providential. I did many wrong things, some times to help people
but everything worked out right.” |
| He elaborates this with an example. He had given
a bank guarantee to a financial institution headed by the late H D Parekh
in 1969. “I don’t know if I’ll do it today. No sensible man would
do it for any other factory. He was a very good man – I can’t tell
you the name of the company because it is doing extremely well now.
If you think about such things, you can’t do it. But if you do it
spontaneously, that’s another thing.” |
| On his philanthropic streak, he says, “Helping people
makes one happy. Anyway I never spent too much of money on anybody.
I did help several students by paying Rs. 100 or Rs. 200 a month,
and was cheated too in the process!” |
| And when one such student he helped went on to become
an Income Tax official, he wouldn’t allow him to come and “pay respects
to my wife and me. I said, I don’t want you to remember that I helped
you, now that you are an IT officer, for at some point my case might
come before you.” On whether such values exist today, he says, “With
individuals, yes.” |
| An admirable quality in the man is his transparency
and a charade-free disposition. Most willingly he tells you how he
started to drink in 1941 when former Industries Secretary and then
Steel Controller S R Venkataraman asked him, “You don’t drink? Don’t
you want to be in business? I was in Coimbatore and he would come
there for summer. He, R K Narayan, K Srinivasan and sometimes even
R K Laxman and I would get together in the evenings.” But in 1950
at another party, “the same man, when I went for my second or third
drink, said: Hey, do you want to poison yourself? I said have one
drink and never advised you to get drunk?” |
| On whether this advice was followed, he says with
a twinkle in the eye, “I don’t know. I used to have my four small
ones. But a couple of months ago I said let me stop drinking whisky.
Now I take only beer.” Narrowing his eyes he adds, “From 1941 to 1998....
I would have saved millions if I had not taken alcohol. At that time
a case of scotch whisky – 12 bottles – would cost me Rs. 96. Today
the minimum cost per bottle is Rs.1,200.” |
| A keen interest in sports and playing games like
cricket and tennis, apart from a daily walk, have kept him fit. He
stopped playing tennis two years ago (but the youngsters at the MCC
in Chennai where he played regularly, still celebrate his birthday)
“because I thought that if at this age I fall and suffer a fracture,
only God can help me.” |
| But a 50-minute morning walk is a must. You almost
fall off the chair when he tells you that he is out of the house at
4.15 a.m. To shock you further he adds, “Earlier I used to go at 3.30 a.m.!” |
| He continues to be on the board of MRF and wants
to quit but “I like beating or fighting with Mammen (MRF Chairman)
once in a way,” he says mischievously. Recalling the time in the early
1970s when the MRF share was selling below par he says, “Being a good
friend of Mammen Mappillai, I knew the company would come up and being
a Director I also considered it improper to buy shares for myself.
I told a couple of friends and they bought shares at Rs. 10 or 12
and it went up to Rs. 3,000! Now it is closer to 2,000 and they’ve
become millionaires.” |
| Looking back he has no regrets. “I never worry about
any problem, especially in the nights. The next morning in the office
I worry about how to solve it. I never carry problems to the house...
including financial difficulties, because I believe that it is not
me but some other super power which is controlling these things.” |
| His only dream for the future is that everything
should have a happy ending. “As long as I am alive I want the same
life to continue. I’m very happy. The business, which my sons are
looking after, is doing well, and my family life is very happy...
if the same continues, I don’t mind living till 100!” |
| Reprinted with permission from The Hindu Business Line.
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