BS People: Pranab Kumar Choudhury

Chairman by chance, not design

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As a primary school student at Derupur village near Shantiniketan, Pranab Kumar Choudhury, the new chairman of credit rating agency ICRA, wanted to be a writer. As a student of Goenka College of Commerce in Kolkata, he was determined to be an army man. Now, as the chairman of ICRA, he wants to take up farming after retirement.

Choudhury’s life from a village school to the head of a prominent rating company has been more the result of accident than design. Having denied admission in the Economics (honors) course at Kolkata's Presidency College for not studying mathematics in higher secondary, Choudhury decided to study commerce at the Goenka College. But as luck would have it, the boy who was “not very good at maths” would end up spending most of his career as a number-crunching analyst.

After finishing his Master’s in commerce, Choudhury joined a manufacturing firm, but soon realised accountancy lacked the respect which engineers of the day enjoyed. “That use to hurt me. I tried my luck with chartered accountancy, and subsequently realised that my real interest lies in the world of finance,” he says.

After a brief stint at UCO Bank, he joined the Industrial Finance Corporation of India (IFCI). That proved to be a major turning point in his career. While at IFCI, Choudhury won a scholarship to study at Maastricht School of Management in the Netherlands. After his return, IFCI asked him to set up a credit rating agency, called ICRA.

“I was in a state of panic, when I was first asked to head the company. I thought it was a punishment, and I tried to wriggle out of it. But my seniors had confidence in me, and I was given the option to return to IFCI, in case I did not like my new job,” recalls Choudhury.

As the chief executive of ICRA, Choudhury was given a seed capital of Rs 3.5 crore. The initial months were a lot of hard work as he was the only employee of the company.

“I was the chairman, and I was the peon. I would take an auto rickshaw to office, and stand in queues in post offices to deliver documents myself,” he says.

It was only after he had made some money on the seed capital in interest that he recruited a bunch of fresh graduates to formally launch ICRA.

“The new team was highly motivated, all brilliant boys and girls. We used to cook Maggi in office, and some would even sleep in the office to establish the new company. Even those who left the company contributed to its growth, ” says Choudhury.

The real turning point for ICRA came after its tie-up with international credit rating agency Moody’s.

Since then ICRA has diversified in various non-rating areas, and extended its rating operations abroad under Choudhury's leadership.

It's been a long and eventful journey for him at ICRA. But Choudhury is not the one to look back. Before he settles to a life on a farm to spend his retirement years, he wants to groom the next generation of leaders at ICRA.

“ICRA is going through a transition. Along with this, I am already preparing a succession plan, so that everything is in place when I leave the company after three years,” he says.