People Business

No Tin Ear Here
Charles Darwin invited the ire of the Church with his seminal book On The Origin of Species in 1859. More than 150 years later, greatgrandson Felix Padel's book Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel did not anger the Church but won him few friends in the Orissa government.

The book helped build the case for the Ministry of Environment and Forests' rejection of the project for bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri Hills. The bauxite was intended for the Rs 36,000-crore Vedanta refinery expansion project at Lanjigarh.

Padel, who, like his illustrious ancestor, is a distinguished academic but in anthropology, believes that the system of corporate largesse as proposed for most large industrial projects is a recipe for disaster.

"There is no way to hold them (the industry) accountable in this model," he says. Padel is also a trained western classical musician, who carries his violin wherever he goes. He learnt dhrupad, the north Indian style of classical singing, at Benaras, and even gives classes on Indian music in London. It is, however, doubtful that Anil Agarwal, owner of the Vedanta Group, will be attending one of Padel's performances anytime soon.
The Digital Doyenne
As more Indians get connected online, marketers are rushing to take advantage of this digital dividend. It is this opportunity, along with a chance to meet her Indian clients and colleagues, that brought Laura Desmond, Chief Executive of Starcom MediaVest Group, or SMG, one of the world's largest brand communications companies, to India for the first time.

"Digital is not one size fits all. Internet, mobile and social networks are all different," she says. Digital is not a threat, she argues, instead returns will be better as digital is more effective.

Keep Truckin'
The Hindujas have been in business for over nine decades and in that time they have been on a roller-coaster ride. Fortunes seemed to have hit rock-bottom when the family was forced to flee their headquarters in Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Since then, the family has been caught up in controversies in India and Britain.

But the appointment of Dheeraj Hinduja as the Chairman of flagship Ashok Leyland could turn out to be a masterstroke. The first third-generation member of the family to take the helm, the London educated Dheeraj, 39, wants the Chennai-based truckmaker to be in the global top 10 within five years. But does he have a plan to combat the vice-like grip of Tata Motors on the truck industry?
Sliding at High Speed
Almost everything about Abhisek Sarda is quirky. He came to Goa from Rajkot after his high school exams, loved the bohemian atmosphere and stayed back for good.

Sarda, who has never been to college, is the founder of pptsalon.com, a website that helps companies and individuals produce "well groomed presentations". For Rs 4,999, Sarda and his team will turn out groovy PowerPoint presentations within 48 hours.

Two months into his venture, Sarda has churned out fancy ppts for clients like Dr Reddy's, Saregama and Deloitte. Quick tips from the presentation whiz about how to spruce it up? "Never use Arial as a typeface," says Sarda. "Don't try and put everything in the presentation. You are supposed to talk, too."
The Illusionist
In between handling the ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games and the opening of Gurgaon's new theme destination, Kingdom of Dreams, Viraf Sarkari, Director and Promoter of Wizcraft, has hardly managed to catch enough sleep.

"All's well that ends well," he chuckles while still overwhelmed by all the congratulatory messages that came his way. But he is not resting on his laurels, as he aims to open the third phase of the Kingdom of Dreams project soon.

"We saw the Venetian (Las Vegas) and Moulin Rouge (Paris) and wondered why we could not have them here," he says. Getting the capital's notorious freeloaders to pay up at Kingdom of Dreams might require more than a little magic.


On the 'Track' Ball
It has been 18 years since the first ThinkPad laptop rolled off the production line, and every one of the 60 million ThinkPads since then has been conceptualised by Arimasa Naitoh and his team. Naitoh, Vice President of Notebook Development at Think Product Group, joined IBM in the 1970s well before the first portable computer was conceptualised.

And he has gone on developing new generations of laptops even though the ThinkPad brand is owned by Chinese company Lenovo now. His biggest learning while developing computers is that business executives often treat their expensive gadgets the same way a baby does a rattle.

At the Yamato Product labs in Japan where he works, his team comes up with concepts to improve the durability of their computers, giving machines unprecedented protection from frustrated workers (shock absorption and carbon-fibre body shells), spilled coffee (industry-leading drainage) and the ability to work in extreme weather. His next challenge is to make ThinkPads available in colours other than Black.