A M Naik to focus remaining tenor to mentor young leaders at L&T

Naik has served the largest engineering and construction behemoth for more than a half a century

Larsen & Toubro's (L&T) chairman A M Naik, who has already announced S N Subrahmanyan as his successor, is on a "mission to prepare the next level of leadership" before he retires on September 30, 2017.

"There are many things that are yet to be done before I retire next year. Apart from restructuring the small businesses and making the company asset-light, I want to create the next level of leadership in the next one year," Naik told shareholders here over the weekend.

He has served the largest engineering and construction behemoth for more than a half a century.

Naik said during his 13 years of chairmanship, he has so far mentored as many as 50 leaders, who are now on the company's board, and is busy now training another 20 young leaders for the next level of leadership.

"I am hopeful I will do a pretty good job (in mentoring them). I will hold a meeting with them once in two months to guide them and keep up with their progress," said Naik, who joined L&T way back in 1965 as a junior engineer. He went on to become the the CEO in 1999 and the chairman in 2003.

In 2012, the board gave him an extension till 2017.

"I have personally mentored over 50 future leaders and equipped them with the competencies and strengths of character to steer the company through the challenges of the future," said Naik, son of a Gujarat village school principal.

The company already has a seven step leadership programme designed to build a robust pipeline of future leaders.

The stages include training in some of the world's leading business schools like IIM-A, Ross, Insead and the Harvard and at the final stage, to mentored by Naik himself.

He also told the shareholders that he has set a target of doubling the revenue to Rs 2 trillion (Rs 2 lakh crore) by 2020/21 by focusing on an asset light strategy and sharpening the business focus.