A bundle of energy

Meher Pudumjee is confident her company can weather the storm.

Don't be fooled by that smile. Meher Pudumjee can be a hard nosed businessperson when she wants. In these challenging times, the chairperson of Thermax is choosing her customers carefully. “We’re not chasing every order because we want to make sure they come with the right payment terms. In this market, we’re particular about cash,” she says quite matter of factly.

That apart, Pudumjee’s making sure that her company minimises waste and cuts costs where possible. Besides, as she points out, since not every sector is going through a rough patch, Thermax is looking for new customers though, as far as the key boiler segment is concerned, it’s mainly the private sector power plants that are her target. “We’re trying to improve our marketing to see where we can make some inroads,” she explains.

The economic slump has meant that some of the new capacities created recently are struggling for orders. Thermax had set up a factory in China to manufacture absorption chillers and had commissioned a boiler unit in Baroda. So, the phenomenal pace of growth that the company saw in the last six years will be hard to repeat for some time now. Thermax grew at a compounded 37 per cent in five years – from Rs 680 crore to Rs 3,250 crore in 2007-08.

The 42 year old Pudumjee, who took over as chairperson in October 2004, admits it’s hard to convert capacity into orders but is confident her team can rise to the occasion. “As you grow you tend to become less efficient, so we’re really focussing hard on better on time performance and also quality,” she observes. Though a hands-on chairperson, she firmly believes that while the ‘vision may come from the top, the strategy can and should come from all over’. Thermax, she asserts, has always encouraged people to come up with ideas.

But even while she enjoys leading her company, she always remembers what her father, the late Rohinton Aga, taught her, namely, that “profit is not a set of of figures, but a value.” She also keeps in mind her mother’s advice about defining success for herself. “Success for me is not just about being a successful businessperson, it’s also about being a good mother, wife and daughter and being there for my family and friends.”

Unfortunately, her family bears the brunt of her spending so much time at work but she does try to spend as much time with her children as possible When she’s not accompanying her son Zahan to basketball practice or listening to him play the guitar, she’s catching up with daughter Lea, who, like her, loves to sing.

Come what may, Pudumjee rarely misses out on her Tuesday evening sessions at the Gulati Hall, where with other members of the Chamber Singers Choir, she sings the works of composers such as Bach, Schubert and Brahms under the guidance of Veronica Krishnayya. That’s something she does for herself.

She’s equally passionate about her firm’s social responsibilites. Thermax helps run two schools for 300 underprivileged children together with the NGO Akanksha and the Pune Municipality, in what is quite a unique private- public sector model. In another initiative to be launched later this year ,Thermax will be a member of the Teach for India programme which will allow young talent, across the country, to interact with underprivileged children.

In all this, she finds the time to be the chairperson of CII’s Employability Initiative, which trains the urban underprivileged, making them employable. Where does she get all this energy? “When you enjoy what you’re doing, you find the energy,” she says laughing. With that kind of attitude Thermax can’t but be a winner.