Newsmaker: Mallika Srinivasan

The conservative's bold gambit

Mallika Srinivasan

The Chennai-based Rs 2,500 crore Amalgamations Group is known to be conservative, with most companies under its fold being closely held.

So it's no surprise that Mallika Srinivasan, the 40-something head of Tractors and Farm Equipment Ltd (Tafe), the group's flagship, hardly finds mention in the fraternity of mergers & acquisitions meisters.

But that could soon change as Tafe snapped up Eicher Motors' tractors business in a Rs 310-crore all-cash deal earlier this week.

The Eicher deal puts Tafe in second position in the tractor industry with a 22 per cent market share. Mahindra & Mahindra leads the sector with about 26 per cent market share.

But more than the spoils, Eicher complements Srinivasan's strengths: while Tafe is strong in 31-40 HP segment of the market, which accounts for around half the tractors sold in India, Eicher's strength is in the sub-30 HP segment, an area that Srinivasan feels has huge potential.

Acquiring Eicher's manufacturing operations also gives a Tafe a presence in North India, the biggest market for tractors. "It allows us to respond much faster to customers," she says.

On her part, Srinivasan says that she has moulded herself after her mentor, Aditya Birla. "He taught me how to get the most out of assets," she says.

Apart from Birla, Srinivasan says that her father and Amalgamations Group chairman A Sivasailam influenced her approach to the human side of the business.

A salient feature of Sivasailam's approach was the trust and loyalty he evoked from all stakeholders in the business.

A case point, Srinivasan says, is that Tafe's original partner in the tractors venture, Massey Ferguson, is still around after investing in the company over four decades ago.

The other person of influence would be husband Venu Srinivasan, the helmsman of TVS Motor Company.

Mallika and Venu Srinivasan's marriage in the mid-eighties was seen as a 'social merger' of two of the largest groups in the South - TVS and Amalgamation.

The wedding reception was conducted at the residence of the bride's father in Chennai, which is still one of the single-largest residential properties in the heart of the Tamil Nadu capital.

Grapevine also suggested that a full Rs 1 crore was spent in the lavish wedding "" that's a seriously large sum two decades back.

Friends who had attended the wedding distinctly recollect the grandeur of the function with the musical events led by none less than the patriarch of Carnatic music, the late Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer.

All guests were given zari-bordered dhoti packed in a cover that looked exactly like the dhoti inside. Mallika and Venu today have a daughter Lakshmi and son Sudarshan, both in their teens.

Her sister Jayshree Venkatraman, younger by two or three years, handles the automobile battery making company Amco and also heads the power-source division of Tafe.

Jayshree is married to Murali Venkatraman, who heads a company outside the Amalgamation Group "" W S Industries and is also the president of the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry. But Srinivasan's control over Tafe suggests that she will eventually become the chairperson of the Amalgamations Group.

Apart from Tafe, the best known companies are India Pistons, IP Rings and Simpson & Co - all in the auto component sector. The group also has plantation companies such as Stanes that are minuscule by comparison. Higginbotham's, its bookshop chain, is also tiny. Tafe makes up about one-third the group.