Doon Online - Executive Focus: Tea pro par excellence

By: Aloka Majumdar

Born: 26 February 1940 Education: Senior Cambridge, Doon School, Dehradun, 1956; BA (Hons) in History, St. Stephen's College, Delhi, 1960 Career: James Finlay: tea assistant, 1961; assistant manager, 1969. Tata Finlay: manager, 1976; assistant visitor, 1978; deputy general manager, 1979. Tata Tea: general manager, 1987, senior general manager, 1992; executive director, 1994; managing director, 1997

For Sayeed Maqbool Kidwai, the recently appointed managing director of Tata Tea Ltd, it has been a case of a dream fulfilled despite the odds. Till recently under fire along with other top Tata Tea executives for the company's alleged role in funding United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) militants, Kidwai's appointment as a successor to R.K. Krishna Kumar is a personal triumph for this one-company teaman whose career has spanned over three decades.

In fact, his name did not figure in the initial list of successors which included the likes of outsiders like Deepak Atal of Rossell Industries and N.A. Bopanna of associate company Consolidated Coffee, and many were surprised when he breasted the tape ahead of the rest. The company has since managed to survive the raging controversy. Kidwai took charge at a time when the prospects for the tea industry and tea companies could not have looked better. Tata Tea is now talking of additional cash flows totalling a whopping Rs122 crore this fiscal, chiefly on account of higher average price realisation. This is expected to shore up the bottomline considerably.

By all accounts, Kidwai is the right choice. "I must say I have been very lucky to have been appointed at a time when the industry is in the midst of a boom and the prospects of the company are bright," he says. At 58, he is a tea industry veteran. Having graduated from Delhi's revered St. Stephen's College, he would, in fact, have preferred an Army posting had his spectacles not been a handicap. At the time, the next best alternative for an ambitious young man was a 'tea company job'. Kidwai decided to give it a try, joining James Finlay in Copyright 1998 BUSINESS INDIA February 23, 1998

1961, then one of the largest plantation owners in the country, as a tea assistant in the company's garden in Assam.

"When I joined Finlay," he recalls, "it was mainly the expatriates who dominated the tea gardens. Though the gardens offered a wonderful atmosphere, I noticed the relationship between the management and the workers was far from comfortable." Expatriates owned as much as 60 to 70 per cent of the tea estates at the time, but were not too concerned about the welfare of their workers. Those were also bad days for the tea industry, with prices and profits at a low. Consequently, the expatriates began selling off their gardens and moving out. And so, in the mid 1970s, the Tatas acquired the Indian operations of James Finlay, with whom they had had a marketing joint venture. In 1983, Tata Finlay's Indianisation was complete and its name was changed to Tata Tea.

With Indians in the driver's seat at most tea companies, the good days were back again -- investments were being ploughed into the gardens and relations with workers were improving substantially. The Tatas played a major role in trying to improve the socio-economic plight of the tea garden workers through their social schemes, which gradually became very popular in the gardens. "Though I joined the gardens in Assam, it was only when I moved to the Dooars in North Bengal that I really matured as a tea industry man," Kidwai says. It was at the Dooars that he began learning the ropes of tea production and became far more result-oriented in his approach.

In 1978, Kidwai's work life saw a major change -- he moved away from the garden side, where he had been located for so long, and was sent to Calcutta as a visiting agent to supervise a number of gardens from Calcutta. The shift initially caused some problems for Kidwai who found it difficult to adjust to city life after having been in the quiet ambience of the gardens for so many years. "In the gardens, the level of job satisfaction was very high, since I saw my own hard work bearing fruit quite literally before my eyes," he says.

But with additional responsibilities, Kidwai made the transition from a tea garden man to a complete tea professional. Calcutta was great for Kidwai on the personal front as well -- having been used to the club life in the gardens, he found Calcutta, with its club culture, a pucca sahib's haven. An ardent golfer, Kidwai spends much of his precious free time at Calcutta's upmarket Tollygunge Club. He also relaxes by listening to music and likes to read, particularly on issues related to history. "I listen to all kinds of music, even Hindi film songs," he says candidly.

Kidwai rose thereafter to senior general manager and then, in 1994, was appointed to the Tata Tea board as executive director in which position his contribution was mainly by way of his knowledge of the tea business. In this Copyright 1998 BUSINESS INDIA February 23, 1998

he complemented Krishna Kumar's strong administrative skills. Kidwai is well liked by his colleagues. Says Percy Siganporia, vice-president, marketing: "His key strength is his ability to empathise with people at all levels. He also gives freedom to perform and deliver results and there is a lot of accessibility, which allows everyone to approach him with any or every matter." Siganporia adds that Kidwai has a strong focus on the bottomline of the company and, having been in the industry for a long time, a wealth of knowledge about tea.

What are Kidwai's priorities as managing director of the Rs850-crore company? He says he's proud of the legacy of his predecessors, but is concerned about the problems and issues of Tata Tea's gardens in south India, which make up almost 50 per cent of all its gardens. He has never, in his long stint with Tata Tea, worked in the south. Branded tea would also be a key area of focus and he sees retaining leadership position in this segment as a key challenge. But for Kidwai, simply heading the company which he joined years ago as a bright-eyed manager is reward enough.