Rajan Jetley

Business, like everything in life, is all about relationships”

He has been a super achiever all his life, with many firsts to his name – the youngest head of marketing, the youngest CEO in a public sector when he was hired, a rank outsider who created history in civil aviation in India, by turning the ailing white elephant Air India into a money spinner. Today the globe trotting Rajan Jetley has his fingers in many pies and has made it all work. In an exclusive interview the biz whiz talks about his life’s journey and why his biggest regret has nothing to do with the world of making megabucks.

What are the early memories of growing up in India?

My father was in the army and coming from an armed forces background, we didn’t really live in one place for more than 3 years. So right from the beginning I was exposed to great diversity in culture, people and places. At one time we were in Orissa, then we ended up in Chandigarh, then Jabalpur, and so on. It gave me a much wider perspective and also made me very open to change and people from diverse backgrounds.

So were you expected to excel in academics and join some prestigious profession?

Well I was the first born and as such while the expectations from my parents were more subtle, I think I was competing within myself to excel and be a role model. My mother was the eldest and my father the only son in his family and since we are all very close knit, I think I felt I had to also be an example for kids of our extended family.

The first choice was to follow in dad’s footsteps and join the armed forces which were considered at the top of the heap when it came to prestigious careers in the 60s. I however wanted to join the Navy and not the Army, because I loved traveling. At the age of 11, I ended up in a boarding school, the RIMC(Rashtriya Indian Military College, a private school for young boys who then went on to join the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun. The RIMC in the British days trained young boys to go to the Royal Military College in Sandhurst, England to become officers. It was formerly known as the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College, and had been inaugurated on 13th March 1922 by Prince Edward VIII the Prince of Wales.).

After 1 ½ years however my mom started worrying and my dad felt I was too young to decide on a set career path. So I quit and went back home and started regular school. I did well in school and then came to the US on an AFS (American Field Service) scholarship. AFS was an NGO in the US and it hand picked youngsters from all over the world and brought them to the US, to create better understanding among nations. Only 8-10 kids were picked up that year from India. I went to a High school in Chatham New Jersey and lived with an American host family.

What was your first impression of America?

It was mind-blowing, and at 16, one of the most memorable and educational experiences of my life. At that time in the mid 60s very few young Indians had this opportunity to come abroad and live with an American family. On top of that there were about 500 plus youngsters from so many diverse countries, doing what I was doing. It really gave an understanding of what it means to be truly international and enriched me tremendously.

The affluence of America was an eye opener. I had never seen such infrastructure and quality of life, in spite of the fact that the army life style was many notches above how the rest of India lived. It was unlike anything I had seen back home.

It made me independent and gave me a pretty wide exposure to the way people from diverse cultures think and respond. It was a very valuable lesson at a very young age, because more than anything else it taught me that there is no one way of looking at life situations. While my way may be the right way, the way others look at situations is not wrong either, just different.

So what changes did your parents see in you when you went back after a year?

(Laughs) That my hair was a lot longer than it should be! Woodstock was just happening when I left! Also that my attitude was a lot more casual; I was always hanging around in jeans. I actually took to America like fish to water, and also adjusted back with ease, thanks maybe because of our nomadic lifestyle.

After college you joined the ITC (Imperial Tobacco Company also known as India Tobacco Company at that time).

Yes, every one had earlier decided that I was going to be an engineer, but I sucked at math and ended with an MBA instead. The ITC experience was a very interesting one and taught me a lot. My work took me to all the rural villages of India, for selling cigarettes and creating brand recognition for ITC. It was not an easy thing to do because there were so many market segments where customers were concerned- those who smoked the top notch brands to those who smoked the cheapest ones. I had to cut through all the layers, take the customer need and convert it into marketing just the right product for them. I would travel in a car with my driver almost 25 days in a month, hang around in dak bungalows and cook my own food and get to know the distributors. I also learnt so much about how rural India lives.

And then you left to venture out on your own.

I think even while I was at ITC, I had always wanted to venture out on my own and the opportunity came when a friend of mine Sanjiv Gupta decided to start his own business. I had realized that there was a great untapped consumer market out there. So I asked to be let go from ITC, even though I was quite happy there and moved to Patiala in the mid seventies where we started manufacturing detergents and soaps for the rural markets. The company did very well. Three years later, I realized that I wasn’t going to get a big stake in the company, as it was a family concern and I had no money of my own to invest. This experience however taught me all about entrepreneurship.

When I had decided to leave, the marketing director Mr. J.N Sapru and the Chairman Mr. A.N. Haksar, had been very gracious about letting me go. When I decided to return, had it not been for the kindness of these two men, my career with ITC would have been over. I still remember very vividly, walking in to Mr. Haksar’s living room in Calcutta and the grace and graciousness with which he took me back. He said, “I have decided to treat your years of absence away from ITC, as years of learning entrepreneurship.” He also took me back in a much higher position than the one I had left. To this day I remember these two men for their graciousness and their thoughtfulness. With that one act of kindness Mr. Haksar earned my life long loyalty. My return to ITC taught me a very valuable lesson-how important good relationships are in life. Much to my sorrow, Mr. Haksar passed away last year, but I will always remember him and Mr. Sapru as two of my key mentors.”

You were put in charge of Marketing for the Welcome Group of Hotels. Quite a change from selling cigarettes and jumping into an arena already very competitive.

It was indeed a tough arena, since both the Taj group and the Oberoi group of hotels were pretty well established and all we had was the very popular Mughal Sheraton in Agra, the Chola in Chennai and the newly erected Maurya Sheraton in Delhi facing stiff competition from the already very popular Oberoi and Taj Hotels there.

I think that is where my entrepreneurial training paid off. Very few professional managers had it in those days. I have combined the two wherever I worked subsequently and it has reaped great dividends in return. I think Mr. Haksar recognized that and encouraged my approach. I have realized that no matter what the product, the key is to fit it to the consumer’s need in such a way that it becomes the perfect match. While most companies only wanted to deal with a chain of hotels, and we were the upstarts with only three hotels, I tied the very popular Mughal Sheraton to the new Maurya Sheraton. So each time someone rented rooms at the Maurya we gave them discounted rooms at the very popular Mughal which was usually always booked out. We never looked back and did very well. I was only 29 when I started and a year later I became head of marketing for the ITC hotels.

Then came ITDC (India Tourism Development Corporation which had at that time the largest chain of hotels and duty free shops in India). At 32 you became the youngest Managing Director and an outsider. It was considered a pretty controversial appointment. Whatever made you take up a government post where politics and red tape run rife?

Yes it was the youngest appointment in the entire public sector at that time and the company itself was so highly politicized and unionized that it would have been virtually impossible to run it without support.

Thanks to Rajiv Gandhi and his cousin Arun Nehru who was also a key advisor to Rajiv, I received complete support and non interference from his government to put my own ideas in place. We gave ITDC a complete new look, kept the politics out and proved that a public enterprise can do as well as a private one if it is allowed to be run in an autonomous way. ITDC went on to build new hotels and became a highly profitable organization.

What memories of Rajiv Gandhi do you have? He was a young Prime minister. So I guess both of you were the young upstarts-he the new PM and you the rank outsider being inducted into ITDC. How did he approach running the country?

(laughs) I guess then you could say his approach was as good or as unpredictable as mine would be in the eyes of the olde world. I guess we were both perceived as not being well enough equipped for the job!

Jokes apart, I can never profess to be a close friend of Rajiv Gandhi, but whatever I knew of him as a man was that he taught people around him to think outside of the box. When Rajiv installed computers in the government offices he was laughed at, but I think that is what laid the foundation for India becoming an IT super power today. He infused fresh young blood, approved of many young, dynamic people to head various arenas and that changed so much in India.

As a man he was a very decent, caring human being. The one thing that stands out in my mind about him is the fact that even in a huge gathering of people when every eye would be on him and I would be sitting in some corner in the audience, he would take the time to send that one glance of recognition and acknowledgement my way. Rajiv Gandhi had that very rare quality of making each person who interacted with him feel they had a special relationship with him. I rarely see that in many people.

Five years in ITDC and then you went on to the most controversial appointment ever, as Managing Director of Air India. If ITDC was olde world, this was the royalty of olde worlds! You created quite a few ripples and one heard that you left and joined Britannia because Ratan Tata who was your chairman and you didn’t get along.

I think the kind of resistance I faced from everyone when I was appointed was unbelievable. Air India, in the 1980s was a very proud, old school company, and so the apprehension that surrounded a rank outsider like me was pretty understandable. I was very young and strong headed and would get scattered at times. It was Ratan Tata who would patiently get me back on track and get me to focus.

The first year I was there I got into major trouble because we made huge losses. But the next year we made the greatest turn around in civil aviation history by posting the biggest profits ever.

I found the culture of the company to be too laid back and not competitive enough. We were the last airlines to approve nonstop flights from India to London. There was a lot of opposition from the pilots when we tried negotiating. I was young and impatient, so I had an executive order passed that the non stop flights will happen and that created a furor. Fortunately we were able to eventually join hands and both the pilots and the airlines benefited immensely.

I am very proud of the fact that we gave the company a total makeover and changed its image and its culture. The old values were so deeply imbedded that I couldn’t have done it without Ratan Tata’s support.

Sometimes there were disagreements between Ratan and me but there was nothing personal just that each one of us had a strong belief in how things should be done. Ratan had already left Air India much before I did. The fact is that Ratan is shy, sensitive and a great human being on a personal level. On a professional level I have rarely met a man who looks at things with the kind of focus, clarity, maturity and far sightedness that Ratan does. As a result each company he has headed has always had a very strong and solid foundation.

Why did you leave Air India and join Britannia? There have been lots of stories about Rajan Pillai. He died under tragic circumstances after the legal hassles and being incarcerated.

I left because India was going through a huge transition politically at that time and no public sector can be run well without a stable and strong governmental support. Also I was only 40 at that time, and felt that I had another 15-20 years left, and somehow I just could not visualize myself staying all those years with Air India. I felt that I had put Air India back on track, so when I got the opportunity to join the Ex Nabisco company then known as Britannia in the Far East, the offer was too good to turn down. So I came to Singapore but again, after 4-5 months with Britannia, somehow I didn’t see myself selling cookies and biscuits for the rest of my life.

I worked with Rajan Pillai for 6 months and found him to be a very fine human being. He was a great entrepreneur, one who had created something so substantial out of nothing. I have tremendous appreciation for people who can do that. Three or four years after I left the company I heard he had got into trouble with his share holders which ended very sadly for him. I felt bad for him and his family as we knew him and his wife Nina well.

I quit Britannia to do because I wanted to do something on my own. I had started a consulting company, and was helped greatly by my current partner B.S.Ong (the Singapore based hospitality, property and retail baron), a great entrepreneur and human being. I have learnt a lot from him. He introduced me to a lot of people and set me up as a joint venture partner in a financial services company which is now called Jacob Ballas. The company provides private equity investment advisory services in a joint venture with NY Life. This has been a very successful business as we now manage over 150 million dollars in private equity for international investors, in India.

The other business which I had started on my own was to help with the development efforts of Carlson Hospitality, the world’s largest hospitality and travel group in South Asia. This has also been very successful with establishing the TGIF(Thank God It’s Friday) restaurant chain in India and bringing Regent hotels which are a brand of the Carlson group and several Radisson Park and country Inns hotels under our brand and management in South Asia.

What unique differences do you see across the continents, especially in India, as you continue developing your businesses?

I think the western economies have matured and have a high level of sophistication in the way they do business. In India, there is tremendous potential. Three decades go when I was starting out I wanted to come to America, but today if I was 20, I would go to India because there are fortunes still to be made there.

I know the world sees China as a huge competitor, but I’m not sure the current Chinese model is sustainable. At the end of the day an open democratic system has greater chances of surviving in the long run. China orders change, India negotiates it and that brings diverse views, opinions and talents to the table. Yes we have our ups and downs in the democratic process but whatever changes do take place become deep rooted. China had made great progress, but again eventually the human spirit has to be set free and unless China can do that I’m not sure this successful run will continue.

I think the biggest positive change I have seen in India is how little the government interferes in business now. Every major political party today is set to out do the other when it comes to encouraging economic reform. Foreign investment is no longer looked at suspiciously because those who were the direct victims of colonial days are not at the helm in most places. The new faces that are, were not directly affected by it and so their approach is very pragmatic.

You have known the Ambanis for a long time. Can you share some thoughts on Dhirubhai Ambani and the Ambani split? Did you see it coming, and what do you think is the future of Reliance industries?

I had the privilege of knowing Dhirubhai Ambani and one thing that will always remain with me is his astute understanding of human nature. He knew I was in the hospitality business and once he said to me, “Unlike others who tip the waiter after a meal, I give a handsome tip prior to the meal. That way I ensure impeccable service.” Just that statement taught me volumes. Dhirubhai’s personal relationship with everyone at every layer of the empire was what made it such a success and he was lucky enough to have two very capable sons to carry on his work.

No one saw the split coming. In fact the brothers Mukesh and Anil were very close on the face of it. Anil rightly said they did not inherit the empire; they were equally instrumental in building it. Both of them are extremely competent. I know Anil more closely and his energy and the way he works round the clock to ensure the success of any thing he undertakes, is the key to his success. I guess after Dhirubhai died, both brothers wanted to also fulfill their individual potential and personal aspirations, which is only natural.

I personally think both of them will make a great success of their companies. They worked very well in tandem, and I hope in time they can do that once again.

You are now on the board of Zee TV. That is another great success story.

You have to meet Subhash Chandra, the man behind it to know why Zee is the success that it is. I have never seen a man who is so patriotic and has such a deep passion for India. He has pioneered the advent of private television in India. Everyone else has followed in his footsteps.

Now when you look back, what advice would you give young entrepreneurs about the right way of doing good business?

Nothing has really changed about doing business, except that, today, the arena has become global. The one key ingredient that makes you excel at anything you choose to do personally and professionally, is the respect with which you treat and interact with people. At the end of the day it all boils down to interpersonal relationships. You have to find a personality match at least in relevant areas, and nourish and nurture that partnership. I have never believed in prenuptial agreements. I believe that once you decide to get into any partnership or relationship, you tell yourself there is no other choice than to make it work. Then you focus on the rest of the things that may come in the way of it succeeding. You sign a prenup and you are already thinking-this may not work and set yourself up for potential failure.

I have had great long term partners, and though we may not meet every day, we have tremendous, respect, admiration and trust in each other.

My message to the youngsters, is that unlike them, we never had the kind of opportunities available today. Give a good thought to what you want to do, and then pursue it single-mindedly. If you build strong interpersonal relationships, and give people the respect and leeway they deserve, you will seldom lose out.

Having been the whiz kid in business for 3 decades, having so many firsts to your name, are there any regrets?

That my mom died when I was very young and she didn’t live to see any of this. I do believe she is watching over me. It’s really uncanny, whenever I have faced a dilemma, or an obstacle, I think of her and the answer to the dilemma comes to me as a sign from her. I miss her to this day.

And the fact that I couldn’t replace Elvis Presley! I was blown away by the sound of his voice on the radio, in the early 60s and it was my dream to follow in his footsteps. My dream remains, but alas, it may not happen in this lifetime! But, I haven’t given up – I’m still working at it!