Content area
Full Text
The ET Family Business Awards, part of the unique ET Family Business Forum, in a glittering ceremony, felicitated the winners on March 23 in Mumbai. The event, sponsored by NxtGen Cloud and Datacenter Technologies, honoured leading family businesses for their achievements. Grant Thornton India was the knowledge partner for the awards process. With more than 150 attendees, there was stellar representation from Corporate India, including industry bigwigs such as Adi Godrej, M.M. Murugappan, S. Vellayan, Harsh Goenka, M.V. Subbiah, Dilip Piramal, among others.
The Family Business Awards platform saw two of India's tallest business family stalwarts - Adi Godrej of Godrej Group and M.V. Subbiah of Murugappa Group - shed some light on the challenges facing family businesses at a fireside chat on 'Age of the Professional Family Business'. The discussion was moderated by the Executive Editor of The Economic Times, Bodhisatva Ganguli. Edited excerpts:
M.V. Subbiah: My grandfather laid down this rule. My youngest uncle initiated this rule of retiring at 65 and let the next generation run. He was the first one to reach the age as my father, grandfather and uncle died before reaching the age. I have no idea of what's going on in the business and I chose to not get involved with anything even outside. I am enjoying myself and have lived probably the best 15 years of my life.
Adi Godrej: We have a family council which meets and discusses matters and then decides. But we haven't fixed an age of retirement. For example, in two of our listed companies (Godrej Consumer Products and Godrej Properties), I have given up the chairmanship and am now the chairman emeritus. My daughter Nisa has taken over as the chairperson of Godrej Consumer Products and my son Pirojsha has taken over as chairman of Godrej Properties. So, we look at how people are prepared in terms of taking over. But we have a very strong rule. Only family members who are professionally qualified and could qualify as a management trainee, should join the group. All our managing directors are non-family professionals and the chairman is usually from the family.
Adi Godrej: Looking back 30 years, there was little knowledge about improving family business operations. This knowledge came to the fore in...