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The man behind the manager

LUNCH WITH BS/Ravi Uppal

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Subir Roy Bangalore
Ravi Uppal is one of the most homespun top bosses you can find in corporate India. The managing director and country manager of ABB India retains a bit of the accent and a lot of the outgoing openness of the Jalandhar-born boy who grew up in Delhi.
He wears so very lightly the dual mantle of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, and Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, institutions whose alumni today are at the forefront of emerging India.
Fifteen years in Europe have not given him any kind of airs, other than a versatility. "I can now eat anything except humans," barring, of course, some of the reptilian delicacies that they savour in Hong Kong and China.
Dakshin, the speciality restaurant of Bangalore's Windsor Sheraton, is his favourite eatery and from the F&B manager to the maitre d', all come to say hello.
It has a range of south Indian cuisines that Uppal likes to savour when he wants a change from the Punjabi khana his wife prepares so much better than her brave attempts at dosas. Dakshin's thali is as sumptuous as its fare is varied and we both settle for it.
As we do justice to the rasam and banana fry starters, he describes his favourite Swiss dish, schnitzel (pork steak in flour batter with mushroom sauce) and rosti (diced potato with cheese, grilled to a crusty brown).
IIT-Delhi was where Uppal went by choice, but IIM-Ahmedabad was where he landed up through happenstance. He was all set to go for his post-graduation to Stanford but there was a tragedy involving a family member in the US and his parents would simply not have their eldest boy go to the same country.
"Those days you didn't argue with your elders" and so, after considering several job offers, he finally landed up at Ahmedabad and never regretted it. "It was a fantastic institution," with great teachers like Ravi John Mathai, Samuel Paul and S K Bhattacharya, and he spent "two incredible years" there.
For a young man straight out of a technical school and had soaked in quantitative techniques for five years, it was a "culture shock" having to deal with unquantifiables like managing human beings and learning the art of "what it takes to make an enterprise work."
In terms of exposure to the best of India, Uppal was lucky to land his first job as an executive assistant to V Krishnamurthy, then chairman of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL). He recalls how Krishnamurthy aggressively took BHEL global by winning its first contract in Libya.
The exposure to the best continued during his years in Sweden with ABB. He found Swedish organisations to be very democratic, open and honest. To them, "commitment to quality is a way of life".
A particular experience left a mark on him. When he asked an electrical guru in his 60s, who has spent three decades at the same place, whether he wanted to try other situations, the person replied, "No, there is so much to be done here." There was such dedication and passion in him for his work even after so many years.
Uppal finds this such a contrast to today's youngsters who are so "impatient, wanting to make quick capital, without the perseverance that goes with the pursuit of excellence." Though it is not as if nothing has changed for the better, he adds. Organisations today are more rational, transparent and plural; earlier they were very power-based.
In a way, fate has moved in step with Uppal. He is a natural optimist and his own life, the state of the country and its economy gives much scope for optimism. He recalls how in the past BHEL took pride in marrying 20 different borrowed technologies. Today, the likes of Ranbaxy and Dr Reddy's are investing heavily in developing their own research and development (R&D).
As a result of the change in attitude, the quality of Indian hardware, which was earlier nowhere, has started improving. The likes of Bharat Forge want to be global leaders in their own sphere. There is simultaneously, a concern for, and commitment to, quality. "Earlier we were suffering from the Japanese syndrome of the 1930s when their products were synonymous with poor quality," he says.
Uppal is so upbeat because of what is happening in ABB India. "We are putting ABB India on the radar screen of the global management of ABB so that they see India as not only a market but a resource for soft services like R&D and engineering," he says.
ABB, which had one R&D centre in India ( in Bangalore) is well on its way to getting a second one, at Nasik, which will focus on medium-voltage technologies. These centres are collaborating with group operations in developing new products and applications.
ABB India is growing fast; it has doubled its turnover in the past four years and wants to do a repeat in the next four. At 20 to 25 per cent annual growth, it is still behind ABB China's 35 per cent. But it is implementing a range of capacity expansions across its major manufacturing facilities in Vadodara, Nasik, Bangalore and Faridabad.
His confidence and optimism stem from two other elements. One is his faith in "our entrepreneurs". They have learnt "to do business globally". Now the open trade agreement with Asean and Thailand, in particular, "will go a long way in giving a reach to our goods." India will be a net winner and "the government should have acted along these lines long ago."
The other ground for optimism stems from India's factor endowments, both physical and human (skills). What it has to change is its "productivity" which is a "manageable challenge". Take aluminium. To be a global leader you need bauxite, which India has.
It has to additionally produce power at very low cost by running plants at very high capacity. That is a management task that is clearly achievable today. "In fact, one captive unit is producing power at around Re 1 a unit," Uppal points out.
Between two stints in ABB, Uppal went and set up from scratch Volvo's operations in India that would "change the lives of people in the transport industry". The conventional success of the project was that it was set up in 13 months, instead of the targeted 15. But what is really "gratifying" to Uppal is the role he played in touching the lives and raising the self-esteem of a forgotten section of society, the truck drivers.
The most touching is the way they react when they are given training, put through medical tests and at the end of the day given a certificate: "they have tears in their eyes," Uppal remarks. Procurement managers first questioned why air-conditioned cabins for trucks were required, but when it was pointed out that looking after drivers well greatly increased productivity, they "sat up and took notice". Volvo's technology and products have changed the face of Indian bus travel and greatly hiked productivity in areas like mining and construction.

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First Published: Dec 23 2003 | 12:00 AM IST

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