Boston Consulting Group’s Arun Maira started his career with the Tatas. Due to family health reasons, he moved to the US where he worked with a firm called Aurthr D. Littl. In 1999, he and his wife moved back to India and joined the Boston Consulting Group.

Maira is of the opinion that one cannot measure the performance, the greatness and the strength of an organization just by only the amount of shareholder wealth it produces. “Unless our society, the conditions of people generally improve, things won’t be good for business. They won’t be good because as you might say, that markets won’t be there, people are not earning enough to be able to afford what corporations would like to sell them, so that’s one reason,” he opines. He feels it’s in the corporations interest to know what’s happening to conditions of people or at least know it. Secondly, he says, they should help do something about it so that the people feel that corporations are good for them.   

He is a terrific writer and Boston Consulting Group’s Arun Maira has published four books on corporate strategy and leadership. Maira’s advice to India Inc goes beyond the bottomline. Ratan Tata calls him one of India’s most caring managers and the man himself wishes corporate India would care more for society and the environment. For a man who writes Haiku poetry and breaks into a dance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Maira truly understands how to do business with pleasure.

Excerpts of CNBC-TV18’s exclusive interview with Arun Maira:

Q: But how is life as a consultant. I’m sure you must not be traveling so much now but you have been consultant for a while now living out of a suitcase, is it difficult with family and all of that?

A: Yes, it is especially as you become senior, you get many clients and wherever they are, they want you personally there because of discussions with the Chief Executive of the team at the top level they’d like you to come there, even if it is for few hours. So as I said they are all over, so within a week you have one trip here and one trip in the other direction and you are not at home. So during the week if there is something to be done together, my wife and I, during the week, I have keep her disappointing her saying that I’m unlikely to be home.    

Q: Not many people know that one of India’s top consultant actually started off his career with the Tatas. You’ve been a veteran of the automobile industry for a long time, about 20 long years. While you were there with Tata Motors, did you ever think that the company would come out with a car like Nano?

A: Well I wouldn’t have been expecting a particular product, but I was very confident with that company, the way it was growing, the ambitions that it had, the spirits of its people, it would be doing remarkable things and the Nano is great.

The car took me by surprise. It has taken the whole world by surprise that something which is so beautiful, which is a complete modern car, can be produced at such a low price.

Q: How do you deal with critics who say that it will be a menace on the roads of cities like Delhi and Mumbai?

A: I take more of a systems view that there are people who are today buying second hand cars which are even bigger, clumsier, more polluting and then there are people driving in three-wheelers, they will switch to this.

Q: How did consulting happen? How did it strike you to move to make towards consulting?

A: I had to make a move to go from India to the US because of family health reasons. So consulting offered me an opportunity. The firm called Aurthr D. Littl, where we had to live in Massachusetts, they said why don’t you come and consult with our clients here. I was a senior person, an older than usual consultant, so it was an unusual thing for them also to have someone of that age.

Q: And then you moved back to India about 10 years later?

A: That was another fork in the road and I took the road less traveled by because in 1999, no one at that stage wanted to come back to India, people were still going the other way. It was only five or six years after that, that people started thinking about it more seriously. But I wanted to be in India anyway, I hadn’t gone to USA because I didn’t like India, I had gone there for family circumstances. So as they were settled in US, I felt that my wife and I could come back to India, and we did.

India was changing and there were people looking for advice to tell them what lay of the land in the world was now, so it was like that and I found that I could be useful to people here. So when Boston Consulting Group, which was setting up in India around at that time suggested that we could be together, I could fulfill what I wanted to do and as they were growing and help them in a way, and it worked out very well.

Q: What about Indian corporates, they are seen as a very reluctant spenders, especially on something as consulting. You’ve typically being consulting the top management CEOs, MDs and all of that, has that changed as a mindset change over the past few years, ever since you have set up and now?

A: Yes, it has changed very considerably. When I first came back in India in 2000, clients wouldn’t pay the sort of fees that we needed to get and that we were getting everywhere else in the world including China. They wouldn’t pay because they wondered that some young guys come over, write a report and as they said, ‘my own people can do that, so why should I pay you any more’. But it has changed a lot, people pay very good fees, about a similar fees that one could get anywhere else in the world. Consultants are much more capable, clients are much more capable of using consultants, so together, a lot of value is being delivered.

Q: The global economy has taken everybody by surprise, at least here in India, we were all expecting a strong, robust economic growth. Now we are talking of recession in the US, whether that will have a spill over effect here in India as well.

A: I feel, as I say about the Indian economy, it is a robust economy right now.

Q: You have been a bull for a very long time, you’ve always been very bullish on the economy, very optimistic on the road, at least in the medium-term. So your opinion on that front hasn’t changed?

A: It hasn’t changed, my concern only comes in such situation where people overreact and they may.

Q: Are you seeing panic in corporate India?

A: Not yet. I don’t see corporate India panicking, that’s a wrong word, I see corporate India becoming, I’ll use a very benign word ‘curious’, about why is this going on, it’s not supposed to be going on. Amongst this curiosity, there is a bit of concern coming in too.

Q: India Inc has been having a great time, off late we have seen quarter after quarter of robust growth to an extent wherein we’ve seen a lot of Indian corporates get obsessed with building shareholder value, obsessed with building wealth for themselves. Does that worry you, as a consultant do you think that’s good?

A: To measure the performance of an organization, the greatness and the strength of an organization, by only the amount of shareholder wealth that it produces would be wrong. Unless our society, the conditions of people generally improve, things won’t be good for business. They won’t be good because as you might say, that markets won’t be there, people are not earning enough to be able to afford what corporations would like to sell them, so that’s one reason.

Second and more importantly, particularly in India which is a democracy and where people elect their representatives and ask and expect their representatives to impose regulations, which would be regulation which would ultimately benefit them, so if they do feel that the corporations are not paying attention to or are not caring about the conditions of people, then as a reaction, from the political side, you will get regulations which corporations don’t like. It’s in the corporations interest to know what’s happening to conditions of people, at least know it. Second is to help to do something about it so that the people feel, the citizens feel, and these are not only consumers but all the citizens feel, that corporations are good for us.   

Q: When you look at the rural economy, you as a consultant essentially offer consulting to some of the high and mighty Indian corporations, are they two India’s; one that’s in Gurgaon living out of the suitcase, flying off, having a nice quality of lifestyle and one India here. How do you reconcile the two India’s?

A: In Punjab, we have these people cooking around here cutting wood; I don’t know where they get this water from, look at the drain here, I know there is no sanitation around in this place. But this is where most of India lives, not very far from the shining places in which some of us are privileged to live.

So that’s where I come to that the model of development that we have to develop, the model itself, is one in which there will be much more rapid inclusion of people over here in the fruits of a growing economy. One is not talking about distributing the same pie, that’s a wrong idea. It’s not about a larger share of an existing pie, it’s about how you grow a pie and as it’s growing, many more people are able to cook and eat as the pie is growing at the same time.

Q: Some of the issues that you were consulting the government while you were a part of that mid-term plan panel committee, is that an experience that you would think of bitterly right now?

A: No, it was a very helpful experience for me because I felt that I had been invited, which was a great privilege, I never expected to be invited, that I would have a perspective which could be added to the perspective of the several other eminent people.