Book Review Mantras for success: India's greatest CEOs tell you how to win: The mantra of ‘firsts’

At the outset one must say that the subtitle of the book, “India’s Greatest CEOs Tell You How to Win”, is quite misleading. It is extremely difficult to accept the categorisation, in the strictest sense of the term, of all the 21 CEOs as CEOs whose mantras are the raison d’etre of the book. For instance, Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus, Tata Group, or Reliance Industries Limited’s Mukesh Ambani, Aditya Birla Group’s Kumar Mangalam Birla or even Kishore Biyani of the Future Group, K.P. Singh of the chairman, DLF, and Jet Airlines’ Naresh Goel can hardly be called CEOs. Of course, they are technically accountable to the board of directors. But the names that Suhel Seth has chosen for his book fit the phrase “most successful entrepreneurs” more appropriately.

Then the adjective “greatest” is grossly hyperbolic. It’s as misplaced as comparing Anand Mahindra to Abraham Lincoln, which Seth does, because of his so-called benevolence! Poor Mr Mahindra must be embarrassed as hell. Seth is entitled to his opinions, but when he claims in the introduction to his book, that “this is the first time that a constellation of business leaders as bright as this has been part of a single book”, it needs to be put in perspective. No one striving seriously to write a book titled Mantras For Success would select such names because the mantras are only half the reason for their success. So this business of “first time” is rather irrelevant.

Then there is another misplaced claim about the “Mantras for Success” which comes at the end of each chapter. The author claims rather theatrically, “After all Mantras For Success is the first of its kind in terms of getting this stellar cast of superb business leaders to share what they believe has led to the enormous success they have achieved.” Many of these pious mantras don’t give a true picture of how some of these “successful” businessmen really got to where they are. Well-informed readers will know the cut-throat, no-holds-barred, success-at-any-cost, the ends justify the means, money-can-buy-anything ruthlessness of some of the worthies in Seth’s list. Some of them have spent lavishly to buy government patronage to get ahead and destroyed competitors in the process. They floundered once this patronage was not forthcoming, so they would really be wrong, misleading examples.

One can appreciate that Seth is a professional, and an expert PR practitioner, but even these claims are rather fanciful, to put it politely. It is necessary to debunk some of his claims as he expects his unsuspecting reader to “benefit from this book; if it can ignite passion and stoke excellence in everyone who reads it, it would have achieved what it set out to do.” It is unbelievable that he is unaware of the chicanery and skullduggery of some of his “greatest CEOs”. Even if he is not, Sunny Sen, a well-known journalist who did the painstaking research for this book, as the author so generously acknowledges, must be aware of these unsavoury facts though these didn’t make it to the final cut.

Having said this, one would like to clarify that this is not to deny that these worthies are not brilliant, astute businessmen with true passion, drive and commitment towards what they do or did.
Seth has provided interesting information that is not widely known. For instance, it was a revelation that Anand Mahindra had his eye on Satyam long before he made a bid for it when promoter Ramalinga Raju quit after confessing to charges of fraud. He and Mr Raju were on the board of the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and at one meeting he asked Mr Raju if he would consider a merger with Tech Mahindra, a $800 million IT company. So when Satyam was put on sale, Mahindra jumped at it.

Then there’s Sunil Mittal who today runs the country’s largest telecom company Bharti Airtel. He began his career at the age of 18 making bicycle parts and then graduated to importing power generators from Suzuki motor company. Then, in 1984, under the licence raj, he lost everything as the government banned overnight the import of generators. Even more charming is how the “king of retail” Kishore Biyani saw one of his friends wearing stone-washed jeans, went and bought the cloth from what was then Jupiter Mills, sold it in the open innovative market and the rest is history.

Or this interesting fact about how the highly innovative Rahul Sharma of Micromax came up with a multi-tasking phone that doubled up as a mosquito repellant and another one for urban India that doubled up as a remote control for TVs and air conditioners.

Some of the people portrayed like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, one of India’s richest and very successful businesswomen, Ratan Tata, Kumar Mangala Birla, Aditya Puri of HDFC bank or Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl — are worthy of emulation. Other very readable chapters are those portraying Analjit Singh, chairman, Max India Limited, Kishore Biyani and to some extent soldier-turned entrepreneur-businessman K.P. Singh of DLF. However, it is intriguing how Mr Singh could have got into the soup he did, if he really is one of the “greatest CEOs”. But all this has been glossed over for the gloss.