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| Newsmaker: N V Tyagarajan | | The Tiger who has earned his stripes |
| Piyali Mandal / New Delhi May 20, 2011, 00:45 IST |
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Running a company is not new to N V “Tiger” Tyagarajan, the newly-appointed CEO of the country’s largest business process outsourcing (BPO) company Genpact.
 In his third stint, as he gears up to lead Genpact, once a GE subsidiary, he joins the ranks of the few chieftains of India Inc who have got the opportunity to lead different subsidiaries of the global giant as CEO more than once.
When his predecessor and founder of Genpact (a GE company till 2003), Pramod Bhasin, decided to hang his boots, Tiger was the obvious successor.
His name had been doing the rounds for quite some time and it was no surprise when Bhasin passed on the baton to Tiger.
But how is his third stint as CEO going to be different? For starters, when he left GE Capital International Services (GECIS) as CEO in 2002, it had only 12,000 employees. Now, in its independent avatar, Genpact employs over 45,000 people. Moreover, Tiger is taking over the reins of Genpact at a time when the BPO giant has already stepped on the growth accelerator. With the acquisition of Headstrong, which gave the company additional IT muscle, it is well placed to compete with the IT giants head on.
An MBA from IIM-Ahemedabad, Tiger started his career with a summer internship with Pond’s India Ltd. Even before he completed his MBA, he had an offer from Pond’s to be the area sales manager of the company. He spent the next six-and-a-half years with Pond’s before leaving the organisation in 1991 as a regional sales manager.
He joined Citibank as a vice-president and auto business director (global consumer banking) in 1991.
When he joined GE in 1994, little did he knew that he would spend the next 17 years leading different group companies and later, Genpact. According to him, the joy of working with GE was that you got to work on different businesses at the same time.
In 1996, he became the CEO for GE Capital’s global consumer and auto financial services operations in India.
During this time, Bhasin was busy convincing GE top bosses that they outsource part of the company’s business to India. In 1997, Bhasin founded GE Capital International Services (GECIS, now Genpact). It was under him that GE hired Raman Roy to spearhead the voice BPO in India. When Roy left the organisation to start his own venture, GE appointed Tiger as the CEO of GECIS in 1999.
According to Roy: “Tiger is a hardworking and a clear-headed person. He puts in a lot of effort, is a team player and a people’s man. All that augurs very well for Genpact now, especially after their Headstrong acquisition.”
Living up to his reputation of being a team builder, Tiger built a team of 12,000 in just three years. When he had joined GECIS in 1999, he was managing a team of 599. The vision was to have 3,000 people in the next five years, a target he surpassed.
Industry insiders also view Tiger as a good manager. While Bhasin is more of an entrepreneur, Tiger is a team man. Even Bhasin exudes confidence in him, saying: “He is the right person to take Genpact forward in its next stage of growth.”
He is hailed as one of the pioneers who transformed GECIS into a high-end business services and technology solutions company with over $1 billion in revenues, serving global enterprises in the banking & finance, insurance, manufacturing, transportation and business-services sectors.
In October 2002, he was transferred within GE to its multi-billion-dollar Commercial Equipment Finance division, Six Sigma and Global Operations, as a senior vice-president. The very next year, GECIS sold 60 per cent stake to General Atlantic Partners and Oak Hill Capital Partners in 2003 and was renamed Genpact.
Tiger rejoined Genpact in 2005 as an executive vice-president based in New York City, and was promoted to the position of COO in 2009.
The COO’s position was specifically created by Genpact to make the transition smooth. Genpact is one of the few companies that have been meticulously planning succession to its top leadership for years.
When Tiger is not expanding his territory, he is busy watching Captain Dhoni lead the Indian cricket team. An avid cricket fan, he tries not to miss any match that India plays. He loves the game in every form — 20-20, ODI or test match — and appreciates Dhoni for his leadership skills. He also loves reading and works out whenever he gets time.
He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and an MBA in finance and marketing from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Is his timetable going to change when he sits in Bhasin’s chair from next month, pat comes the reply “nothing is going to change from tomorrow… Just that the canvas has got a bit bigger.”
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