The New Boom

Better Off Than Dad

Services Sector: Growth Engine

Faces: Adventure Capitalists

Adapters: Tradition Meets Technology

Industry: Being Indian

Careers: Techies Line Up For Jobs Online

The Scindias: Will Power
The contentious will of Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia virtually disinherits her only son Madhavrao Scindia. This controversy threatens to mar the reputation and respectability of one of India's best- known and highly regarded royal families.

Gujarat: Shaky Regime
Confronted with a monumental disaster, the Gujarat Government is at the centre of relief operations. Was its reaction timely and efficient? Could more lives have been saved?

And Greed Hits Home
More than anything, it was corruption that killed people in Gujarat as buildings constructed by getting around norms came crashing down.

Public Sector: Shotgun Exit
First large PSU where workers agreed to leave the company.

THE NEW ECONOMY: ADVENTURE CAPITALISTS

Earth Mover

Vinayak Chatterjee
Chairman, Feedback Ventures

"Wherever there is a problem, there is also an opportunity."

Investing money-and future-in infrastructure would have seemed crazy at a time when the world was running after industries like telecom and it. But for Vinayak Chatterjee it was an instinctive decision. Today, Feedback Ventures-the company Chatterjee and four IIM-A batchmates set up to provide integrated infrastructure management services-has catalysed investments of Rs 10,000 crore. No other firm in the private sector has advised as many states as Feedback. It won the consultancy rights to Andhra Pradesh's economic policies despite being pitted against the sizzle of Arthur Andersen and ICICI.

A "lethal blend" of foresight and meticulous planning shapes Chatterjee's approach. And he is clear about one thing: wealth maximising is not all-important, doing "something with an element of nation-building" is. Two years ago, Feedback and some institutions set up India's first private urban infrastructure fund to aid cash-strapped projects. Feedback, feels Chatterjee, is at an exciting cusp: some goals have been reached but plenty remain. "Wherever there's a problem," he says with infectious enthusiasm, "there's also an opportunity."

-Shuchi Sinha

The Image Maker

Ekta Kapoor
Creative Director, Balaji Telefilms

"I get a kick when people react to my characters."

If entertainment is queen of the ice age, Ekta Kapoor is its princess. But like in all fairy tales, she too had to go via the ugly-duckling stage-when every star kid had big-budget films, a fan-following and death threats to boot. When she told people about her work and watched the interest in their eyes die out. Well, it only made Kapoor get back to some serious work.

The daughter of Hindi movie star Jitendra is creative director with the family-run Balaji Telefilms-a TV production company that has seen its share of struggles and a meteoric rise in the past year. The seven-year-old company has moved from clocking 8.5 programming hours in January 2000 to 33 hours in January 2001.

For someone who started as an "assistant model coordinator", Kapoor has 18 shows on air. Such as the highly popular Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi with a rating of 8.38 which took on the mighty KBC and its 8.91 (week ending January 7). "It has been seven years of hard work,'' says Kapoor. "But I've enjoyed myself. I get a kick when people react to the characters I have created. The power to make people cry, laugh and dream constantly amazes me," she adds.

So what else has changed? Well, revenues for one. The company's turnover last year was Rs 20 crore and Kapoor projects an increase of Rs 25 crore by the year 2002. That's one high a 25-year-old will find difficult to live down.

-Himanshi Dhawan

The Call Guy

Raman Roy
CEO, Spectramind India

"Good people are like magnets--talent attracts more talent."

Raman Roy, 43, founder-CEO of Spectramind, India's leading call-centre, is a firm believer in "the Indian work-force-it has incredible potential but it needs moulding, like hot wax. Otherwise it gets wasted". And it was this belief, he insists, that led him to what's now being seen as a pioneering effort in the world of call centres in India. First at American Express and then at GE Capital, Roy showed his American bosses the unarguable profitability of using an Indian work-force, efficient, qualified and comparatively cheap, to do accounting and processing work for the company's operations across continents, simply by using satellite connectivity. Then a lunch meeting with someone "who believed in me and showed me some incredible figures on a laptop" turned a switch in his mind: why not duplicate the success of the call-centre concept with his own company.

And Spectramind was born, barely 10 months ago. Today its clients include various Fortune 100 companies with tie-ups worth $30 million (Rs 140 crore). It employs 980 workers on three shifts. Beginning, of course, was not easy. "I remember the first day I walked in-I was the only employee. Just an empty building, no water, no cubicles, nothing. My knees were wobbling. But once the first few associates came on board things began to look up." Which brings out another Royism: "Good people are like magnets-talent attracts more talent." It's a belief that's held Roy in good stead-friends and colleagues speak of his ability to motivate even "non-performers" into confident workers. And though he looks the part of the pipe-smoking, business-suit clad copybook CEO, scratch the surface and there is little awe and plenty of shared laughter with associates, who gang up with his nine-year-old daughter in insisting the pipes remains unlit.

-Shuchi Sinha

MetroScape
Random Readings
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra would rather be "accurate" in his latest undertaking, a book of Kabir's poetry in English, even if he says "Kabir's greatest hits may not have been written by him at all".
more...

Looking Glass

Kolkata: Restaurant

Bangalore:
Art Exhibition

New Delhi: Play

Who says Indian theatre is dying? Playwrights--both veteran and budding--in the country had a chance to interact with those from the Royal Court Theatre, London, at its first residency workshop in Bangalore recently.
It was a fortnight
of enrichment, concludes Principal Correspondent Stephen David in Despatches.

"I was very much against the idea of India," says William Dalrymple, author, The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. In conversation with INDIA TODAY's Sonia Faleiro, he talks about his old girlfriend, Delhi and his "enormously exciting" next book, The White Moghuls in Interviews.