ET BCA 2015THEECONOMICTIMES

BREAKING THE BARRIERSET felicitates BM Khaitan for his inspiring life in the world of corporate culture and YC Deveshwar as India’s most visionarycorporate leader,with a host of entrepreneurs for their oustanding contribution towards bridging business and life at large

AND THE AWARD GOES TO...

BEST FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

FASTEST GROWING COMPANY

THE HIGHEST JOB CREATOR

Strassenburg Pharmaceuticals(upto ̀ 100 crore)

La Opala RG ( ̀ 100-300 crore)

Vedant Fashions (`300-1000 crore)

Shree Cement (over ̀ 1000 crore)

Bengal Speech and Hearing(upto ̀ 100 cr)

AKA Logistics (`100-300cr)

Kanoria Chemicals & Industries (`300-1000 crore)

Anmol Biscuits (above ̀ 1000 crore)

Bengal Speech and Hearing(upto ̀ 100 cr)

Ambey Mining (`100-300 cr)

Vedant fashions (`300-1000 cr)

Bandhan Financial Services(above ̀ 1000 cr)

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INNOVATION IN BUSINESS MODEL: INFOSOFT GLOBALSOCIAL IMPACT EXCELLENCE: KOLKATA GIVES

tax collections from .̀ 21,000 crore to .̀ 40,000crore in just three years, he said. He urged thestate’s budding entrepreneurs to come forwardto seize opportunities that could either be inthe form of filling a gap, fill in an incompletemarket or to create a whole new market.

Deveshwar, who gave an enthralling accept-ance speech, drew applause from the audiencewhen he said that business would always re-main underutilised if it only creates sharehol-der value. “In India, we need 12 million jobs buteven when our GDP was growing at 8-9% peryear, we managed to create only two millionjobs. Business needs to transform society to re-move abject poverty, income inequity and cre-ate sustainable development. For this, corpo-rates need to create innovative businessmodels to build environmental capital and cre-ate greater societal value” he said.

Businesses, according to Deveshwar, shouldinculcate ‘responsible competitiveness’wherein the environment, dignity of labourand societal capital is enhanced. “For this, weneed to harness our education and financial re-sources not only for multiplying capital but al-so to grow its social-environmental and finan-cial or triple bottomline. ITC is driven by thevision to create multiple drivers of growth.While companies need to juggle the ball be-tween short, medium and long term, the inter-est of capital and national interest need not bedivergent. For that, a company needs to thinkdifferent”, he said.

When policymakers said do not cut trees, De-veshwar said, ITC took a bet to create value forIndia. It was easier to import from China butdifficult to compete with automated farms inFinland or Myanmar. To source wood pulp forits paper business, ITC had the option to buy acorporate farm in Indonesia, for instance. In-stead, it decided to grow the wood that wouldtake 80 million man days, chose saplings thatmultiply faster, re-charge the ground water re-sources. Today, it has created 2 lakh hectares ofsocial forestry that is owned by farmers.

“If you invest in long term, you will also beable to get results in the short run. If success-ful, you will manage to create thousands ofjobs,” he said. In ITC’s case, it has been a spec-tacular transformation that created 45,000 di-rect jobs, apart from an additional linkage of

six million people. The applause that followedhis speech clearly indicated how much it wasappreciated. The buzz generated by the awardscould be felt a day or two in advance when ET re-porters started getting calls from corporatesabout invites. This was evident on the eveningof the awards too, as guests started arrivingwell ahead of time.

As BM Khaitan walked up on stage to receive

the award with grandson Amritangshu hold-ing his hand, members of the Khaitan familywho accompanied him, including son Adityaand other family members, were seen record-ing the moment on their cellphones. As he re-ceived the award from Mitra with Joy Chakra-borty, president, Times of India Group, onstage, the audience got up to its feet to give hima standing ovation. And Deveshwar’s passionfor creating social wealth was evident in the in-terest with which he watched screening of ashort film made on ITC.

The category for India Visionary Award wascreated this year, Gautam Sen, associate VP,Times of India group, said. The event, organis-ed by Association of Corporate Advisors andExecutives (ACAE), celebrated entrepreneur-ship and corporate excellence in the small, me-dium and large category. Rishi Katore, presi-dent of ACAE said the award recognises initi-ative of the awardees who are poised to becometorchbearers in the regional, national and evenglobal business scenario in years to come.

“Some 261 entries were received for five awardcategories,” PR Ramesh, chairman of Deloitte,which was the Knowledge Partner, said, givingan indication of the popularity it had gained inbarely three years since inception. While De-loitte prepared the parameters based on whicha shortlist was presented in each category, a ju-ry comprising Prof Vidyanand Jha, MohandasPai, PR Ramesh and an ET representative, se-lected the winners in each category. The awar-ds were given out by Amit Mitra. The co-spon-sors were Anmol Biscuits, Bengal Energy,Emami, JIS Group, Manyavar and Swash. Itwas supported by Atha Group and SKM Group.

Our Kolkata Bureau

Corporates would do well focusing onlong-term business objectives to reapricher dividends for society at large,rather than on short-term gains tomaximise shareholder value.

If a company’s business goals are alignedwith that of the larger society, it can lead toprosperity all around. Corporates thus need toengage in business with an eye on the triple bot-tomline. That was ITC Chairman YC Devesh-war addressing the city’s top industrialists andbusinessmen at the third ET Bengal CorporateAwards (ETBCA) ceremony on Sunday wherehe won the Indian Visionary Award.

Exhorting his fellow businessmen, managersand industry owners to rise to a new form of ‘pa-triotic capitalism’, he said: “It is easy to leaveBengal, leave India too, and do business else-where. But who will take care of our mother-land?” Triple bottomline.

Guest of honour and chief awards giver, AmitMitra, West Bengal’s unique finance, com-merce and industries minister, took the dis-course a step further on the need to create so-cial infrastructure like education andhealthcare that corporates can build on. Hesaid corporates do not understand the govern-ment and the government cannot realise thepain of corporates.

Mitra’s uniqueness lies in the fact that he hasstraddled both the worlds of business and poli-tics with consummate ease. And therefore, ashe shared his experiences, he said that the gov-ernment has to look at public interest with tra-nsparency and the challenge lay in how the gov-ernment can make corporates appreciate thegovernment’s role and make business confid-ent of fairness in government. “However, withan ageing population, the state has a small-time window of around 30 years to achieve thisgoal. We must therefore do it quickly,” he said.

Calling on businessmen to climb the valuechain of entrepreneurship, Mitra urged every-one to emulate the two chief industry luminar-ies who he felicitated at the third edition ofETBCA on Saturday: BM Khaitan, chairman,Williamson Magor Group, and Deveshwar,chairman, ITC. Khaitan, arguably India Inc’smost low-profile gentleman industrialist, re-ceived the ETBCA Lifetime AchievementAward for his patriarchal role in making McLe-od Russel the world’s largest integrated teacompany and Eveready Industries the coun-try’s largest battery maker, beside his group’scolossal contribution to CSR and philanthropy.Deveshwar, a blue-blooded professional man-ager, whose vision and astute steering of ITC’scorporate and CSR work, has made the compa-ny climb up from being a .̀ 5,000-crore companyto an approximately .̀ 48,000-crore monolith, re-ceived the award for being the country’s mostvisionary corporate leader — as outstanding asa Sachin Tendulkar or a Clint Eastwood in ageneration of exceptional talent!

Understandably, Mitra was overwhelmed. Hiscall to businessmen of all hues to emulate thetwo was therefore a genuine one. Mitra said thestate is trying hard to bring ease of business. Itsinitiatives in area on e-governance and taxa-tion have been lauded on a national level. Thestate has also bagged top awards in its efforts tobuild social infrastructure. “No corporate en-deavor can be fulfilled without social and hu-man capital,” he said. He invited corporates toparticipate in public-private partnerships inthe state’s infrastructure and social sector andreap rich dividends. He called on businesses toadopt Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) be-ing set up in every block. The state had initiatedmassive fiscal reforms that led to doubling of

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Mitra urged the state’s buddingentrepreneurs to come forward toseize opportunities that couldeither be in the form of filling agap, fill in an incomplete market orto create a whole new market

The buzz generated by the awardscould be felt a day or two inadvance when ET reporters started getting calls fromcorporates about invites. This wasevident on the evening of theawards too, as guests startedarriving well ahead of time.

Some 261 entries were received forfive award categories. WhileDeloitte prepared the parametersbased on which a shortlist waspresented in each category, a jurycomprising Prof Vidyanand Jha,Mohandas Pai, PR Ramesh and anET representative, selected thewinners in each category

BM Khaitan, chairman, Williamson Magor Group, receives the Lifetime Achievement Award and YC Deveshwar, chairman, ITC, receives the India Visionary award from Finance Minister Amit Mitra.

PHOTOS: SUBHAJIT PAL