Rajshree Pathy’s relationship-building abilities stand her in good stead

“People are my assets”

Sangeeta Singh

Rajshree Pathy

Rajshree Pathy (45), chairman and managing director of the Rs 300 crore Coimbatore-based Rajshree group of companies, is one of the few women chief executive officers in the country. Importantly, she would be even counted amongst just a handful of CEOs in business families. Just what has been her leadership tenets in managing?

Started primarily as a textile company, the Rajshree group today has moved into the areas of food and agriculture, financial services, cotton yarn, energy, real estate, automotive and travel.

Belonging to a business family, Ms Pathy started involving herself in family business immediately after her graduation in commerce in late 1970s. She and her sister, Jaishree Varadaraj helped their father, Mr G Varadaraj. Subsequently, she started taking a more active interest in the group by the mid-1980s and partly due to her direction, the group diversified its activities into sugar in 1988.

Finally, in 1990, she took on the mantle of the company when her father died. And, from a turnover of 50 crore in 1990, today, the Rajshree group has grown its turnover six times. Growth has been a constant theme. The group has expanded by setting up two more units each in the sugar and textile field apart from an automobile retailing company where it has a tie-up with Mahindra and Mahindra to market the latter’s tractors and jeeps.

However, expanding business was just one of the objectives for Ms Pathy. Her larger goal was always to work with the people and further sharpen her business acumen so that she understands every detail of what’s happening in the industry, as also in the companies that she manages. “ I don’t want to do a business in which I am not physically present,” says Ms Pathy, who makes it a point to visit her sugarcane fields as soon as she is free from administrative work.

To further upgrade her skills, Ms Pathy underwent a owner/president management programme at Harvard Business School between 1994-96. “ This gave me a lot of exposure, specially since other students comprised similar owner or presidents from other countries. The peer group pressure made me take a fresh look and subsequently we made far reaching changes in the group,” says Ms Pathy. She also attended a strategic alliances and corporate ethics course at Fountainbleau, France in 1999.

Business came very naturally to Ms Pathy, as she grew up in a business family that has its origins in 1911 when her grandfather, PSG Ganga Naidu, set up of a ginning factory. Her father then diversified into auto retailing and started a textile unit, Ganga Textile Ltd in 1957 and Rajshree Spinning Mills in 1980.

The hallmark of Ms Pathy’s legacy has been the optimal utilisation of existing facilities and cashing in diverisification opportunities. For example, Ms Pathy diversified the sugar business by foraying into co-generation of electricity from its by-product bagasse and into industrial alcohol and distillary through molasses. Rajshree Sugars and Chemicals has also started producing high quality sugar (brown) under the brand name, Demerara.

In the textile business Ms Pathy was instrumental not only in expanding the yarn business into knitted fabric and export of knitted fabric but also merged some of the unviable units in the profit making business. “I see a huge potential in the Indian knitted fabrics as far as exports are concerned,” says Ms Pathy.

However, Ms Pathy emphasises that a woman’s role as a chief executive officer is much more than a man’s. “ One the one hand, she continues to be a wife, a mother and a daughter of old parents, and on the other, she has to meet the day-to-day challenges of being at the helm of the affairs,” says Ms Pathy. She also says that these are the years that she undergoes all the biological changes of womanhood and ageing and related harmonal disturbances.

“Surprisingly, these issues are never taken care of while relating to a woman CEO,” she says. She also emphasises that the abilities of a CEO is not an outcome of whether he or she is a man or a woman. “It is not written in the company’s balance sheet, whether it is headed by a man or a woman.”

Ms Pathy’s passion also lies in developing an underdeveloped region and getting people of that backward region gaining productive employment. “I would like to see my group much beyond the balance sheet.” Rajshree’s sugarcane fields lie in the backward regions of Tamil Nadu, but with setting up of factories and plantation, these areas are now part of the industrial map of the state. “ People are my biggest assets and it is their development that gives me ultimate satisfaction,” says Ms Pathy.

Her penchant for working for people is also reflected in her involvement in the Coimbatore-based Centre for Performing Arts through which young artisans, including those from rural areas get an opportunity to show their talent and exchange programmes enable them to give expression to their skills.

Ms Pathy has also been closely associated with the South Indian Sugar Mills Association, National Committee on Textile and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). She was also selected as one of the members of Global Leaders for Tomorrow in 1996 at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland. She has also tried to promote Indian art through the Forum.

A collector of contemporary art and sculpture, Ms Pathy does scuba diving and photography in her free time. “ I literally steal time from work and children, for pursuing my hobbies,” says Ms Pathy. A mother of a 20-year old daughter and a 15-year old son, Ms Pathy agrees that balancing family life and work is difficult. “ But I make sure that I do justice to both,” says Ms Pathy. With a clear business agenda and the right exposure, Ms Pathy seems to have learnt the tenets of good living and managing.