Feb 05, 2001

CEOs in their 20s and 30s...the new economy is certainly getting younger. So, is age no bar any more? Some of the very young CEOs in India share their moments of highs and lows.

Report: Anjali Prayag First imagine a typical modern corporate office. Seamless? Wireless? Paperless? Right. Now search for the CEO heading this organisation. Savvy? Right. Educated abroad? Maybe. Fortyish? Wrong! Alok Kejriwal, Rajkumar Koneru, Sunil Dutt Jha, Binita Bodani and Puneet Dalmia belong to that genre of under-35 CEOs who have filely moved from the "crib to the corporate office". How does it feel to occupy the prime place in the boardroom at such a young age? Isn't it important to be hardened by experience before becoming the chief? Doesn't one need a weather-beaten face to be accepted by peers and subordinates? And, importantly, how are their mint-fresh young minds able to cope with the pressures of a highly competitive business world? Let's ask them...

Does age have nothing to do with position in the corporate world?

Koneru: I believe that age has nothing to do with position in business. What matters are ideas and execution capabilities.

Dutt Jha: It is more important to put the right team together.

Kejriwal: Well, I think age naturally gifts you with 'wisdom' which is so essential for a CEO. Frankly, being young deprives you of that benefit. But it is only natural that founders (who are very young) become CEOs very early on.

Binita: To a certain extent, age and experience are highly co-related. Equally important is the quality and the intensity of the training a person experiences. What might take one individual three years to master might take another just one. Unfortunately, the structure in corporate India plays more emphasis on age than on an individual's abilities and skill sets.

Dalmia: To fight the 'Big Boys' a company needs to be agile and open to new ideas and, most often, these qualities are found in people who are young in the mind.

How did they achieve the maturity needed to head a company at a young age? Are they jumping phases in work-life by taking up such an awesome responsibility?

Kejriwal claims he attained the maturity by doing everything himself. That's a natural fallout of starting a company from scratch. "And you do it when you have a passion to succeed. That inculcates an 'egoless' mentality which, I think, is 90 per cent maturity in any case." Koneru: When one starts in business at an early stage there is not much unlearning in the mind. Every decision you take and the results that you generate teaches you as you grow your business. Maturity comes with hands-on learning.

Binita is very confident. "Yes. Being a second-time-round entrepreneur and starting a company from scratch all over again within the span of 2 years, managing multiple tasks, jumping unexpected hurdles and managing people at the same time without cracking up under pressure and, most importantly, believing in one's self and the desire to succeed automatically makes one mature." Being not only a young CEO but also a woman, how do people react to her? Binita: The respect one earns has nothing to do with gender or age. The business community has evolved from such discriminations.

Relying on the collective experience of the dream team is common to all new-age companies. What about the team behind the young CEO? When Dalmia along with Alok Mittal, COO, JobsAhead, was putting together the business concept for JobsAhead, he was fired by the dream of setting up a world-class e-recruiting enterprise that would "showcase Indian talent globally. To turn this dream into reality, we knew that we needed a team that would not only back us but would collectively, through its specialised skills, give us an extra edge over competition. To get this team was a challenge".

Dutt Jha confesses that to most people his career-graph sounds like a fairytale. "My biggest strength is to be able to capture others' experience. I learn from the mistakes of others." He also stresses that young people benefit when they have a team of experienced people. "My CTO is 60 years old and a member of the National IT Task Force. And I don't see a need for me to undergo all that experience." What about the drive to reach the top position? Was it always in them or was it circumstantial? In other words, were these baby-CEOs thrown into the deep waters before they learnt to swim?

Kejriwal: No, I think entrepreneurs are born in deep waters - they are always driven. I joined my father's hosiery (socks knitting) business when I was 22. I decided the same day that I wanted to convert his local business into one of the world's largest players quickly. Within seven years we made it one of Asia's largest exporters.

As for Koneru, the responsibilities and position grew as the business grew. "I take each year's challenge as a new one and put all my energies to achieve that year's objectives." Binita chose to dive into the waters not once but twice! She feels entrepreneurs are very driven and take to deep waters easily.

Dutt Jha admits that he has this element in him that enjoys challenges. "They give me a kick and that's the way to go."

Dalmia agrees that it was the entrepreneur in him that made him venture into untested waters. "From the very beginning I was very excited by the Net's opportunities. Having made up my mind, I finally jumped in the new economy business, thereafter swimming in totally uncharted area came very naturally to me." How do they make up for the 'lack of experience'? Kejriwal: Good question... I made up for it by aggregating the 'best of breed' talent as team members. I think it's impossible to compress experience - one has to rely on team members.

Dutt Jha agrees: My director, Dr. Thomas J. Mowbray, is one year ahead of the industry and I benefit from his talent." He says CEOs must understand the vision of the company and convert that vision into quantifiable output. "The CEO plays the role of an office boy "fulfilling the needs of all departments.

Koneru feels that one can manage by using a set of rules derived from experience and other rules based on gut and instinct. "As an entrepreneur, one learns every day and applies that every day. That is more valuable than experience." Binita is confident she has considerable experience of over seven years and her team makes up for her lack of experience.

How do their peers and subordinates treat them? Are they taken seriously?

Kejriwal says that at office he is like any other team player. "The environment has been designed for the same. We sit in the same large floor - without cabins - eat together, etc. In meetings I am introduced as a colleague."

Dalmia: I see myself more as a team member rather than get involved in the senior-junior power equations. JobsAhead is structured such that employees function as a team of wealth generators both in letter and spirit.

Koneru says peers and subordinates treat him as an individual who can work with them to solve issues and create opportunities. eJourno employees see Binita as another member of the team. "We are a very small team currently and all in our twenties!"

At iCMG too, Dutt Jha claims, there's no heirarchy although "Eighty per cent of the management team is older than me. It's a comfortable combination. It's a bit like running a huge family. I'm proud of it and feel good about it".

What about employees who are senior in age? Do they take the young CEOs seriously or dismissively?

Kejriwal is taken seriously as "they respect the visionary in me. It's important, however, to maintain that respectability - 'coz I have to constantly improve my performance".

Koneru: Age seldom plays a role in giving or taking respect in a dynamic entrepreneurial environment like ours. My employees, who are older in age, respect ideas and execution and focus on playing their role in the team.

At her firm, says Binita, age is no criterion for respect, performance is. "The fact that people joined my start-up, believed in my vision and me, shows that they take me seriously."

How does this young crowd handle tricky situations requiring them to tick off employees older than them but junior in position?

Kejriwal opines that the Internet business is extremely brutal and fast-paced, so there is no room for pleasantries. "So it's a straightforward approach... you just have to be honest and open with the senior employee and explain to him why he is not adding value to the organisation. Senior people appreciate such frankness and voluntarily resign when they see that they are adding little value."

Koneru: While running a business, the key element is to first gain respect through knowledge, ideas and vision and then being able to execute with professionalism and precision. As long as you stick to those elements, it is not a problem of 'ticking off' an older person.

Binita: The situation would not be any different if I had to confront a person junior to me in age. Keeping that in mind, I think the ability to effectively communicate my position, as well as my ability to manage people in such a situation, is more important rather than me being younger.

Dalmia: If you make a person see reason and if you are able to convince him about the merits of your line of thinking, conflicts on account of age and experience-levels can be checked.

The trend (CEOs under 35) appears to be more visible in the knowledge-based and service industries. Will it follow suit in the other sectors too?

Kejriwal: Frankly, it will depend on entrepreneurs embracing new industries. While the knowledge business is being attacked by young entrepreneurs currently, any new industry will witness similar trends.

Koneru says he cannot comment on that, "but my guess is that since CEOs under 35 are full of ideas, the industries that can use such ideas and innovate are knowledge-based..."

Binita: Yes, it is a trend being seen mostly in the knowledge-based and service industries. However, this is because more opportunities currently exist here. I think traditional industries will follow suit as young individuals prove themselves to be successful managers and opportunities open up in other sectors too. Obviously, you will see younger CEOs in entrepreneurial activities more than in corporate India, but hopefully that will change too.

Dalmia: Yes, young CEOs are mostly seen in the knowledge-based/ service industry because the rate of obsolescence and global competition is high here. To fight and win in such demanding conditions, it is the CEO who has to take the lead and adapt himself - traits that are exhibited by a young mind.

Did the young leaders ever feel, at any point in their career, that they should not have shouldered the responsibility at such a young age?

Kejriwal: Of course not. Entrepreneurs get immunised to the pressure that responsibilities subject them to. We take responsibility on from the day we start the company as a one-man show to whatever it becomes later. In fact, I feel depressed and insecure when my responsibility is reduced. Koneru: The only regret is that the amount of time one spends on personal life is less and, therefore, one misses out on some things that you can only enjoy when you are young.

Binita is clear that "if you set out to achieve something big in life and want to make a success of it, you have to be prepared to shoulder large responsibilities". Dutt Jha confesses that the only time he feels remorseful is when he feels "like going to the disco with my girlfriend and cannot because of work pressure".

Alok Kejriwal (31) CEO, Contests2Win.com After an initial stint in his family's knitwear business (Hindustan Hosiery) in August, 1998, Kejriwal took up the challenge of creating a business proposition on the Net. The result was a contest site - contests2win.com (c2w) - which has a registered user-base of 3,50,000 Indian members. c2w is also one of the few Web sites that not only generate revenue but also make monthly profits. Binita Bodani (25), CEO, Ejourno.com Known as a serial entrepreneur, Binita has set up two firms, ActiMedia Pvt. Ltd in 1998 and ejourno.com in 2000. The latter is the world's first 'jourtal' - an online community of journalists who can interact with other ejournos (electronically enabled new-age journalists), access "timely and relevant information and work effectively through the services offered by the site".

Rajkumar Koneru (31), Chairman, Indiainfo.com With a Masters' degree in management studies from BITS, Pilani, he prefers to be known as a technology entrepreneur. Before Indiainfo.com, Raj had co-founded Intelligroup, Inc., which was the first Indian IT-services company to obtain a Nasdaq listing in 1996. Raj is currently CEO of SeraNova Inc., a spin-off of Intelligroup. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and child.

Puneet Dalmia (27), CEO, JobsAhead.com As head of India's first online career management resource, Dalmia primarily focuses on strategic planning and marketing of the portal. With degrees from IIT-Delhi and IM-Bangalore, Dalmia's first job was at Dalmia Cement where he spearheaded the strategy behind brand launches and initiated corporate mergers, acquisitions and strategic investments.

Sunil Dutt Jha (27), President and CEO, iCMG This IIT-Kharagpur graduate and co-founder of iCMG had earlier worked at NextStep (now merged with Apple Inc.) and LG Software. He has conducted special sessions for senior technical managers and programmers on software components and architecture in Sri Lanka, Japan, Singapore, the UK and Philippines. Dutt Jha, who became a CEO at 25, believes that "learning is an endless journey".