Business Icon of The Year: How Vellayan Subbiah is transforming his companies with quiet efficiency

The long-sleeved blue shirt and the Tube Investments of India logo on the pocket sit well with Vellayan Subbiah. His room is spartan and the Mac on the table gets a break, during BT’s meeting with him. His mobile is charging in another corner. A replica of the FIFA World Cup trophy finds a pride of place.

It’s Chennai, and the summer is just about making its presence felt. No footwear is allowed in the room, and we are seated cross-legged on the floor. Subbiah, a fourth-generation member of the storied southern conglomerate that was founded in 1900, oversees three of the group’s 10 listed companies—Tube Investments of India, CG Power & Industrial Solutions and Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company.

Started by Dewan Bahadur A.M. Murugappa Chettiar with a foray into money lending and banking, by the end of 2025, the Murugappa Group had a turnover of $11 billion and a net profit of $1 billion, with a presence across agriculture, engineering and financial services. Subbiah carries that legacy lightly as he leads the diverse businesses under his charge with quiet efficiency and takes them into the next phase of growth.

With forays into areas like semiconductors and clean mobility, Subbiah resonates with what he calls national themes. “It is very important for leading corporates to align with the national agenda. That is what will make things like semiconductors and the new technology spaces successful,” he says. Combine that with a comprehensive solution that comes from industry and a lot can happen. “It is a part of the transition that I think is beginning to take place with we are doing today.”

Subbiah cites the examples of Japan, South Korea and China, where a similar alignment between corporate and national interest helped those countries grow at a fast pace. Indeed, that broad understanding is central to Subbiah’s thinking, having benefited from studying in two different parts of the world—he earned a civil engineering degree from the prestigious IIT Madras before heading to the University of Michigan in the US for an MBA.

Vallabh Bhanshali, Co-founder & Chairman, Enam Group, says Subbiah brings a certain intensity and focus to the table. He feels a lot of that has to do with upbringing, especially by virtue of the legacy of his father, former Executive Chairman of the group. “He was a tall corporate business leader and some of the governing principles have been initiated by him. He brought deep insights into governance.” Bhanshali, who has known the family well, describes Subbiah as “extremely value-conscious” and says his early stint at consulting major McKinsey honed his skills.

One of Subbiah’s biggest achievements was buying electrical equipment maker CG Power and Industrial Solutions and turning it around. The company was involved in a `2,435 bank fraud case that came to light in 2019. It was acquired in 2020 for `700 crore.

Sougata Ray, Thomas Schmidheiny Chair & Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship Practice, Indian School of Business, says l’affaire CG Power is one of the most remarkable examples of corporate revivals in recent Indian business history. “When TI acquired it in 2020, the company carried more than `2,100 crore debt, had been through a serious fraud case and lost the confidence of almost everyone connected with it. It was a wreck,” he says.

Subbiah brought in a new management. “By 2022, it was debt-free, and today has genuine scale of ambitions extending into semiconductors. The lesson Vellayan taught us is that turnarounds are really about restoring trust,” adds Ray.

Bhanshali says Subbiah displayed his array of skills during the CG Power takeover. “It was a risky decision and his top team handled issues related to legal and accounting. He was completely in charge of the business side, hired the right people and asked all the relevant questions,” he points out. Subbiah, in his view, has a commonsensical approach to any problem. “It is all about math that brings in the value. He wears his brilliance lightly and those who mean business love him.”

For Ray, the bigger challenge is transforming TI’s identity. “It involves convincing everyone—employees, investors, customers, partners—to let go of a story they are comfortable with and believe in a new one. A business once defined by bicycles and steel tubes is now a credible platform for advanced engineering and manufacturing,” he says.

TI has set up a subsidiary, TI Clean Mobility, which runs the brand Montra Electric, and has launched three-wheelers (last-mile mobility), tractors, SCVs and HCVs. “TI is looking at new-age sectors. Here again, Vellayan has done his math and will not go by popular perception,” says Bhanshali.

Y. Rama Rao, Senior MD & CEO of Chennai-based financial services firm Spark Capital, says Subbiah is a new-age entrepreneur but still embodies the values of the group. Rao’s company first took note of him in 2012, when Cholamandalam was going through a rough patch. “Chennai is home to some large names in financial services but Vellayan was different. He spoke a different language, understood technology and was very ambitious. In many ways, he was a breath of fresh air.”

Perhaps there is no better metric to assess Subbiah’s stewardship of Cholamandalam than the fact that it now employs 65,000 people, up from 1,500 when he took charge. “Cholamandalam, which has emerged as one of India’s most respected NBFCs, does not get as much attention as CG Power,” maintains Roy. Even when NBFCs stumbled on asset quality or got caught by liquidity mismatches, Cholamandalam “maintained strong credit culture, while diversifying its product suite.”

That is down to the deep focus Subbiah brings. In early 2018, he went on a 1,500-km road trip in a 14-tonne truck, with only the driver and cleaner for company. That was because a good part of Cholamandalam’s loans go to the trucking industry and the trip was a good way to understand the borrowers. The fitness freak did a bit of yoga in the vehicle as well.

Patience and perseverance shine through in the conversation with Subbiah. He often speaks of companies that last for years. “Look at TI, it has been around for 75 years. It’s not really old and we must think of it being around for 200-250 years,” he declares. Institutions evolve and there is no end to that process. “If you don’t evolve, it’s all over, be at the company or an individual level.” That is a philosophy he understands well and practices quite effectively.

@krishnagopalan