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

Bull's Eye

Ravi Narain
MD & CEO, NSE

"We dream of reaching every investor's home."

It's a scrip not many were willing to bet on. A stock exchange that's not a building but 11,000 computer terminals spread across 405 towns and cities. Where trading takes place not in a raucous ring but on PCs. Where every trade is guaranteed. And where over 3,000 V-SATs bring instant-and transparent-trading.

When Ravi Narain set out to start the National Stock Exchange (NSE), very few were willing to go along on this vision. But Narain, 56, who studied at Cambridge and Wharton, went ahead with his techno-blitzkrieg anyway. Today spreads have come down and turnover has jumped. In 1992-93 the combined turnover of all exchanges was Rs 250 crore; today it is over Rs 6,000 crore. Along the way, the NSE created the depository, the clearing corporation and a derivatives trading system. As Narain puts it, "The investor has got a better deal and we achieved our aim to de-mystify the market."

But he's still one stop short of his dream. "We dream of reaching every investor's home," sighs Narain. The techie is cautiously hopeful and for once there are many willing to go along.

-V. Shankar Aiyar

Pied Piper

Ketan Parekh
Director, Triumph Securities

"Legend has it IPOs are first filed with Parekh before they hit the market."

In the days when Harshad Mehta was pumping old-economy stock acc to the Rs 10,000 threshold, Ketan Parekh must have been a gawky youngster still learning networking. Not anymore. Today, just the association of Parekh's name is as good as a CMM certificate for budding ice entrepreneurs. If the stock market is one of the movers of the new Indian economy, Parekh is one of the prime movers of that market. There is virtually no ice scrip he has not looked at closely. Legend has it IPOs are filed with Parekh before they hit the market. Indeed, when Kerry Packer wanted to enter India's sunrise industry, he simply dialled KP. Vinay Maloo, the Marwari warhorse who has led HFCL's growth, counts on him as his seventh sense, and even Amitabh Bachchan brought in KP's expertise to turn around ABCL. Sure, he hasn't called right always and some scrips may have moved from the A list of investors to Z but that hasn't dented his reputation. All this has turned KP into a must-invite at parties. Controversies, in the form of tax returns and Bollywood links, too have dogged him but the invites for mahurats, IPOs or plain fruit juice sessions continue to flow. At least for now.

-V. Shankar Aiyar

Adobe's Abode

Naresh Gupta
CEO, Adobe India

"The net won't touch an individual's life the way TV or radio did."

You could mistake him for an undergrad until you exchange visiting cards with him. For he is Naresh Gupta, the 34-year-old CEO of software applications giant Adobe India. From graduation in 1988 to heading a company today, the journey to the corner room could not have been swifter. Starting the company's operations from scratch in 1997, today all major products shipped out of Adobe's headquarters in the US have some components developed out of India. It goes to Gupta's credit that India is the third largest development centre in the world, and the largest outside the US.

After IIT Kanpur he headed to the US for a master's and some exposure before heading home. At Adobe he worked in the advanced technology group. As CEO, Gupta wants the Indian centre to develop world-class apps.

What next? Maybe head for pure research and academics. About the Net he says, "It will not change an individual's life the way TV, radio or telephone did. But business will change dramatically around it."

-Malini Goyal

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.