Big Indian

Ice People

That's perhaps because Ayush Maheshwari, 26, director at the $ 7 billion IT company Automatic Data Processing, weighs about 200 kg.

But Maheshwari loves his friends and the Big Indian title so much that he launched a pop music album called just that.

Virgin Records, which produced "Big Indian" positioned it as a cause-based album that promoted empowerment. The album has tracks such as "Marching Ahead With Confidence" and "Why India is a Place Indians Should Live in."

Though Maheshwari is passionate about music, he's equally passionate about HR practices in his company.

He was recently in India to carry forward the employee relationship management programme he initiated last year at his company's back office operations in Hyderabad.

Called Karma Yatra, the programme involved bringing people together through singing, dancing and sheer fun and was meant to address the growing attrition problem in the BPO industry.

The song and dance competition, held before an audience of employees' families, apparently led to a drop in the company' attrition rate, from 14 per cent to 4 per cent within four months.

"But Karma Yatra is not just a one shot affair," explains Ayush. "It is very much like the six-sigma process and needs to be carried out on a regular basis."

Maheshwari now wants to build Karma Yatra as an HR brand. He is already planning a pilot project for an external BPO company.

Maheshwari's odyssey to the IT industry began after he ran away from the Welcomgroup hotel management institute at Manipal because he didn't feel he was cut out for the job.

So the younger son of Shyam Sunder Birla, a Kolkata-based entrepreneur, was sent to study IT at Marquette University in the US.

After graduating, he joined Automotive Directions in May 2000 as a systems analyst. But five days into his job, he realised that customer interaction at Automotive Directions needed a complete makeover.

He walked into the office of CEO Malcolm Thorn and asked for a laptop and a mobile phone and proceeded to develop a customer relationship programme that helped push up the number of Automotive Directions's clients from 8 to 45 in a year.

In July 2002, Automatic Data Processing bought into Automotive Directions and appointed Maheshwari as its youngest director.