People Business

Chancellor Nadar?
The story about a boy who neither spoke nor understood a word of English as a first-year student of engineering but went on to become one of India's leading industrialists has been told several times. But the story about how this boy, now a grizzled man, plans to become one of India's leading educationists is yet to be written.

Shiv Nadar has a vision of turning his SSN group of educational institutions in Chennai and the soon-to-be established Shiv Nadar University in Noida into global hubs. Nadar announced that his institutes will be tying up with the Pittsburg, US-based Carnegie-Mellon University to offer undergraduate engineering degrees from next year. Daughter Roshni Nadar Malhotra wants him to introduce liberal arts courses in the future. Nadar built some of India's first computers, but will his aim of building India's first "global" university work out?

-Kushan Mitra

Wheels of desire
Cabinet ministers P. Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh, among others, are trading in their Hindustan Motors' Ambassadors for the Maruti-Suzuki SX4 as their official transport. Maruti officials reckon they are selling 50 SX4s a month to the government. With the Army also replacing the Ambassadors used by Major Generals and above, the lal batti Ambassador seems to be on its way out. But do not expect Pranab Mukherjee to give up his Amby yet.

-Kushan Mitra

In the clouds
In the 1980s, Polly Sumner helped Larry Ellison grow into a technology mogul and today she is trying to work her magic with salesforce.com, a maker of cloudbased software that helps companies run their internal processes. As Chief Adoption Officer, Sumner helps clients such as Dell and Starbucks make the transition to Internet-based software. "I think Oracle and SAP were caught napping when the Internet-based software transition happened," she says.

However, salesforce, with revenues of $394 million for the last quarter, remains a small player in a market dominated by SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. "We have an aggressive growth plan and we can scale our business to rival our larger competitors," she adds.

In the past, Sumner has been thwarted twice in her attempts to retire but it seems she is not even thinking of retirement now.

-Rahul Sachitanand

The love of links
Jason Bierholm discovered golf as a nine-year-old, much before he learnt to surf the waves crashing on southern California's shores. No wonder that after completing a management degree in finance, he ended up as the Asia head for a golf company. As Vice President and MD, Asia, TaylorMade, Bierholm gets to play on some of the best golf courses across the continent. "The best thing about my job is that you get to do your job and also hold meetings on the golf course," says Bierholm. Golfing in India is very much "a rich man's game," he adds. The good news is that it's catching on as a lifestyle as well.

-Shamni Pande

The online payoff
Rajesh Kamat laughs it off, but for those who followed the court battle in the United States between entertainment company Viacom and Googleowned online video service YouTube, the irony is not lost. Colors, a joint-venture company between Network18 and Viacom, is the first Indian general entertainment channel to host entire episodes of its leading television shows, including the controversial Bigg Boss 4, on YouTube. As for making money, the shows have some advertising online, though limited. "The idea is to think about the future when many millions more Indians will be online." For Internet surfers watching Bigg Boss 4 online, getting former Playboy Playmate Pamela Anderson on the show was an ingenious way to grab eyeballs and get around the government's diktat of broadcasting the show only after 11 p.m.

-Kushan Mitra

Dedicated designer
A National Institute of Design graduate, Michael Foley used the power of design to make watchmaker Titan cool again. He designed, among other things, the Titan Edge, the world's thinnest watch of the time. Four years ago, though, Foley left the amniotic fluid of the corporate world and struck out on his own. Foley Designs, which he set up, has ITC, UB and Caf Coffee Day among its clients. Next, Foley wants to move beyond industrial design. "We've worked as design consultants for years, but there's much more to be done," he says. If the aim is to use basic design principles to solve problems, why not apply fluid flow analysis to help in traffic decongestion? While this work will be part of Foley Designs' plans, he has just set up another firm called TLV for design innovations in packaging and consumer touch points. Another firm, yet unnamed, will work on intelligent devices specifically for the Indian market. You can actually buy into some of Foley's work if you pick up the "Violet" Home-Theatre system from Bangalore's Snap Networks. He clearly believes in the power of design. His next challenge is to make ThinkPads available in colours other than black.

-Rahul Sachitanand