Introducing myself

It was at a young age that I began to dream of contributing to a new model of economic development. I had visualised that I would first work for Industry to gain ‘hands on’ experience and then set up a consulting organization that would help businesses to create wealth in the right way.

After I did my MBA, from the University of Pune in 1975, at the age of 20, I joined Tata Motors and then the Eicher Group in 1978 and worked in HR, Operations and TQM areas.
In April 1991, Eicher enabled me to realize my dream and we created Eicher Consultancy Services.ECS had a unique Mission: India’s economic development without spiritual impoverishment. We worked with most of the large global and local firms in areas of Strategic change, operations improvements and people development and stressed the importance of good values of ethics, doing more with less and empowerment of people. We brought AT Kearney to India and worked as their India partner till the time they became part of EDS. We then formed a 50:50 Joint Venture with Strategic Decisions Group, a Menlo Park, California based Strategy Consulting firm, founded and led, mostly by Stanford University faculty and alumni. We did projects with SDG in Europe, North America and the far east with leading global firms.

It is my belief that good leadership is about building an organization and walking away so that the shadow of the founder does not prevent new leaders to grow and so as per the plans I had announced many years in advance, I stepped down as the CEO of ECS in April 2001, exactly 10 years after creating this organization.

I decided to start a new organization with focus on human development, my first love. As a result, Grow Talent was born in April 2001.All its shareholders were clients of ECS who believed in our work and acted as our angel investors.
Grow Talent grew to become the leader in the HR consulting business in India by 2006.It was a unique organization that had a mission of helping people and organizations to realize their full potential and had strong focus on promoting the model of holistic economic development.

We decided to sell our consulting business to Right Management, a company which is part of MANPOWER Inc and whom we brought to India in 2002 as our strategic partner. This was done to raise funds for our dream of entering the field of Education. After transferring our ownership to Right, we created the School Of Inspired Leadership or SOIL in October 2008.

SOIL is a business school with a difference. I have always enjoyed teaching and have been adjunct faculty to the Kelley School of Business in Indiana University, Bloomington, GMI- Flint, Michigan, Anitoch-Seattle, ISB-Hyderabad etc. What we are attempting in SOIL is unique. We are focusing on developing leaders that are ethical, compassionate, care for the planet and are spiritually aware.

I have served the Confederation of Indian Industry as its Regional Chairman for its HR Committee and its National Chairman for its Employee Relations Committee and the National HRD network as its President in Delhi. I have delivered talks at conferences all over the world and written contributory articles in several publications. I serve as the Trustee of the Chinmaya Mission, an inspiring ‘Not for Profit’ Institution and the Charities Aid Foundation, a global NGO

I met Neera at the University in 1974 and we got married in 1977. She has been a partner in more ways than one and has been a pillar of support in all that is described above. Our son Sahil did his MBA from the Kelley school of Business and works for Limited Brands in the US and married Devyani Debi in 2007.Our daughter Mehek did her MSc from the London School of Economics and now works for Mckinsey.