Indian Titans Leadership Crisis with Andy Mukherjee

Andy Mukherjee from Bloomberg Gadfly joined us in a conversation discuss the recent Indian titans leadership crises from the Tata Group & Infosys. We discussed the business structure, key people, background and recent corporate governance troubles behind the Tata Group & Infosys and discuss whether these issues will percolate to the rest of the other Indian corporate business titans.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

• Andy Mukherjee, (@andymukherjee70, LinkedIn, Bloomberg), Gadfly columnist for Bloomberg LP
  • How did you start your career? [1:18]
  • What’s your current role and coverage in Bloomberg Gadfly? [4:12]
  • Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? [5:06]
• Indian Titans Leadership Crisis [6:04]
  • To start off with, there are some interesting things happening in India on the leadership with the Indian business titans: Infosys and Tata Group. I want to get an understanding of both companies before we head into that topic of interest and to start, can you briefly describe the Tata Group and the industries which the group are involved in? [6:30]
  • Similarly in Infosys which we have often know it as an Indian successful IT outsourcing company, can you briefly tell us what Infosys do? [10:15]
  • Who are the key players and owners in Tata Group & Infosys in the past and today? [12:01]
    • Tata Group [12:18]
    • InfoSys [15:06]
  • With the rise of Indian startup unicorns such as Flipkart and Paytm, is Infosys under threat for talent in India? [17:43]
  • In the case of Tata Group, Ratan Tata, the Chairman of the group ousted Cyrus Mistry, the group CEO, what are the key reasons for that ousting? [19:15]
  • In the case of Infosys, what actually happened with Vishal Sikka quiting the company given that there are constant attacks from one of the founders, Narayana Murthy? [22:41]
  • With both companies having leadership crises, is the main reason being the founders and their CEOs are not aligned with the core values of their companies? [25:49]
  • Will this percolate down to the rest of corporate India? [27:04]
• Closing [28:58]
  • Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything that you found interesting to your work or life? [29:04]
    • Andy Mukherjee’s recommendation: Sapiens by Yuval Harari
    • BL’s recommendation: Homo Deus by Yuval Harari
  • How do my audience find you? [30:28]

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The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw & weibo) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk on Indiegogo (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, Altizen and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack.