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: The Financial Express on Sunday raises a toast to Padma award winning industry captains — Vijaypat Singhania, Nandan Nilekani, Deepak Parekh, S Ramadorai, Suresh Krishna and Shahnaz Husain.

At 67, most corporate honchos usually hang up their working gloves and prefer to lead a retired life, passing on the baton of their empire to the younger generation. Not so for Vijaypat Singhania who is as busy as ever. After setting new sporting records in 2005, he has just been sworn in as the sheriff of Mumbai and has also been conferred the Padma Bhushan.

Singhania broke the world record in November 2005 for the highest flight in a hot air balloon and reached the fringes of space.

He surpassed 21,000 metres (69,000 ft), a little more than two hours after taking off in his 40-ton (44 US ton) balloon. Singhania, the chairman emeritus of the Raymond Group, one of India’s leading textile companies, also set a record for ultralight aviation 17 years ago when he flew 9,655 kilometres (6,000 miles) from Britain to India in 23 days.

In his new role as the Mumbai sheriff, Singhania hopes that he will be able to contribute to the city of his residence. “I want to do so much for the city. We need to ensure everybody gets good quality of life,” he said shortly after the swearing-in ceremony. Apart from aviation, Singhania is also a man of myriad interests and has donned a number of hats with effortless ease.

Belonging to the fourth generation of a prominent industrialist family, Singhania has been a management professor (teaching postgraduate students at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies). He has also served a term on the board of governors of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. And then Singhania has also been active in the sport of horse racing for three decades, serving as a member of the Royal Western India Turf Club, Mumbai, for several years before retiring as its chairman in 1996/97 and is a keen photographer.

He is also a keen philanthropist who has initiated numerous projects like animal husbandry and cattle-breeding programmes. And late last year he even wrote a book, Angel In The Cockpit, describing his flight from UK to India.

One can’t help wondering how did he manage to juggle so many interests and break world records to boot along with his high-profile job. Singhania has been quoted saying that if “you want to do something you just do it. If you don’t want to do it you will find many reasons for it.” Like they say where there is a will there is a way.

Born as the second son to Mohan R Nilekani, a manager in Minerva Mills, Nandan Nilekani, spent his first 12 years in Bangalore. His father's job was transferable, and he had to move to his uncle’s place in Dharwad for his studies. Being good in his studies, in 1973 he entered the portals of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, without much hassle. One day after graduating in 1978, Nandan walked into the cabin of N R Narayana Murthy — the then head of the software group at the Mumbai-based Patni Computer Systems — for a job.

Their chemistry clicked and Murthy hired the young engineering graduate rightaway. Neither of them realised then that the relationship would last long and get etched in India’s corporate annals.

Three years later (1981) seven enthusiasts (including Nandan) decided to start their own outfit (Infosys Technologies Ltd) with Murthy in the lead. Their decision rewrote the domestic software industry of India.

He became the chief executive officer (CEO) of Infosys in March 2002. He currently functions as the president, CEO, and managing director of the company.

He is a co-founder of India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM). He is also the chairperson of Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF). He has been named one of ‘Asia’s Power 25 — the most powerful people in business in Asia’ by Fortune magazine, 2004.

The most memorable moment (until he won the coveted Padma award that is) in Nilekani’s professional life was the listing of Infosys on the Nasdaq in 1999.

The chairman of HDFC, Deepak Parekh, can add another tag to his name —Padma Bhushan. Parekh is not just the best-known name in housing finance in the country; he is almost always the first choice of both government and industry on business matters of the highest importance. He has stood up for liberal real estate and housing policies both at the Central and state levels.

Parekh heads Housing Development and Finance Company (HDFC), India’s first and largest mortgage finance company, which has now grown into a large financial conglomerate. HDFC Bank was the first of nine private banks set up in the mid-1990s to showcase India’s liberalisation and economic reform.

Parekh, who trained as a chartered accountant in London and worked with Chase Manhattan Bank early in his career, has helped in a general insurance joint venture with Chubb and a tie-up with Standard Life, UK, for asset management and life insurance. He has advised various governments on high-powered, government-appointed panels to lay out the blueprint for reform in the banking, insurance and housing sectors. This has meant telling the government to take hard decisions.

Parekh is the non-nxecutive chairman of HDFC Asset Management Company Ltd, HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company Ltd and HDFC Chubb General Insurance Ltd. Before this, he has won awards like the JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award from the All India Management Association (AIMA) and is the first recipient of the Qimpro Platinum Award for Quality for his contributions to the services sector.

Sixty-one-year-old S Ramadorai, one of the most low-profile CEOs of India’s oldest and largest software services entity, the unlisted Rs 4,187-crore Tata Consultancy Services, has won the Padma Bhusan in 2006. A Master’s in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, Ram, as he is popularly known, was the man instrumental in acquiring CMC for the House of Tatas, completing a successful and painless privatisation smoothly.

The cerebral and soft-spoken Ramadorai holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from Delhi University and a Bachelor’s degree in engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He took the senior executive development programme at MIT’s Sloan School of Management in 1993.

He was an integral part of the TCS team that pioneered the trailblazing concept of offshore development centres (ODCs), set up in India to provide high-end quality solutions to global corporations. He was at the forefront of TCS drive to establish excellence hubs in India that worked as repositories of knowledge, expertise and equipment in specialised technology areas.

Among the more prominent of the many honours that have come his way are CNBC Asia Pacific’s ‘Asia Business Leader of the Year 2002 Award’, being named one of the ‘25 most influential IT consultants in the world’ by Consulting magazine, and being appointed IT advisor to China’s Qingdao City.

After work, Ramadorai enjoys listening to Hindustani and Carnatic music, reading and taking long walks.

It has been said in industry cricles that the IT industry in India wouldn’t have taken off without the vision, perception and leadership of K P P Nambiar, 75.

Born in a middle class family in Kannur in north Kerala, Nambiar went to school in Kerala, while his higher academic pursuits were in Chennai, Mumbai and London. He did his Master’s in Electronics and Communication from Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London. He started his career doing research in semi-conductor technology in Imperial College during 1954-57 and in early sixties he left his job in Texas Instruments, US, to come to India as manager of projects for Philips.

Nambiar founded the Tata Electronic Research and Development Labs and also served as general manager of Nelco. He was instrumental in Tatas diversifying from electrical to electronics and communications.

In 1973, the same patriotic spirit that brought Nambiar to India attracted him to Kerala, where he was offered the responsibility of nurturing India’s first state government-owned public electronics enterprise, Keltron.

Nambiar was also instrumental in taking electronics to the villages by setting up 50 women’s co-operatives that produced most of the consumer products sold by Keltron. He also developed the R&D Centre for Keltron. After serving Keltron for a decade, he took on the post of chairman and managing director ITI Ltd and later on secretary, Department of Electronics (1986-89). A few years back he set up Kannur Power Projects Ltd in north Kerala.

Paralysis and age has not withered Nambiar nor his enthusiasm and determination to keep working. At present he is chairman, IIM, Kozhikode, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala, and Namtech Group, Bangalore.

Nambiar was honoured with the Republic Day Award in 1973, by CSIR, National Design Award in 1985 by the Institution of Engineers and Electronics Man of the Year in 1995 by ELCINA.

He has been given the Padma Shri this year.

Shahnaz Husain, the undisputed queen of herbal care who rewrote beauty concepts, has been honoured with the Padma Shri in 2006. Husain belongs to a royal family, which originally came from Samarkhand and she had to comply with family traditions and get into an arranged marriage at 15. Husain trained for 10 years in cosmetology and cosmetic chemistry, in some of the leading institutions in London, New York, Paris and Copenhagen and started her own herbal salon for skin and hair care. Instead of following the existing salon treatment methods, she decided to adopt the principle of ‘Natural Care and Cure’ and to apply the Ayurvedic system and formulate custom-made products for skin and hair problems. Thus was born the legendary Shahnaz Herbal range of therapeutic products. She devised clinical treatments for specific problems, like acne, pimples, rashes, pigmentation, skin-sensitivity, dehydration, premature aging, scars, dandruff, hair damage, hair loss, alopecia, and so on.

Today, the Shahnaz Husain Group has acquired a global presence with outlets, counters and salons in most prestigious locations. In fact, she was the first Asian to enter Galeries Lafayette in Paris in herbal care and the first Asian to be featured in the 18-ft shop window of the store. Husain has received several national and international awards, including the renowned World's Greatest Woman Entrepreneur Award from Success, the US business magazine. Other awards include the Arch of Europe Gold Star Award for Quality, Global Quality Management Award for Quality Excellence (won twice), the Golden America Award Udyog Ratan Award for Export Excellence (won three times), the Rajiv Gandhi Gold Medal for propagating the Indian herbal heritage and the Export Excellence Award (thrice) from the Delhi Government.

The chief mentor of India’s prime industry body, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Tarun Das, has been conferred the Padma Bhushan this year. Das has always being appreciated for his impressive work and disposition. That was the reason N Srinivasan, the current director general of CII, had to face loads of comparisons when he replaced Das for the most influential chair in the secretariat of India’s richest and influential industry body.

Stepping into the shoes of a man who transformed a once mundane Association of Indian Engineering Industry in 1974 into a world class, multi-faceted industry body known for its professionalism at every level, Srinivasan had a tough task at hand. During the tenure of Das as director general, CII has become the largest association of business and industry in India, with the broadest range of activities covering many facets of socio-economic development and developing international business and trade relationships for the industry.

The sexagenarian Padma Bhushan has been appointed chief mentor of CII for three years, the second person to have been given the designation after N R Narayana Murthy. Das was the man behind CII’s remarkable growth over the past three decades. He presided over the evolution of the Association of Indian Engineering Industry (AIEI) into the Confederation of Engineering Industry (CEI) and finally into CII.

CII today has a direct corporate membership of more than 4,000 companies, a budget of Rs 110 crore in 2004, staff of 750 and an office network of 35 in India and 14 overseas.

An Honours graduate in Economics and Commerce, Das was educated at Calcutta University, and Manchester University, UK. The recent Padma Bhushan award is the latest in the long list of awards and recognitions conferred on him. Among these are the felicitation of an Honorary CBE by Her Majesty for his contribution to the Indo-British Partnership.

He is also the proud recipient of the Blackwill Award by US India Business Council, and the 2004 Singapore National Award by the Singapore Government.

He is the co-chairman of the management board of the NAM Business Council and the managing trustee of Indian Business Trust for HIV/AIDS and of the India Development Foundation.

Suresh Krishna, the genialchairman and managing director of Sundram Fastners Ltd, has been awarded the Padma Shri this year.

Krishna received his Bachelor of Science degree from Madras Christian College in 1955. He went on to do his MA in Literature from the University of Wisconsin in 1959 and completed his postgraduate work in Literature at the University of Munich, Germany. He has been recognised as a constant source of inspiration for the company and its employees since its inception.

Krishna held the presidentship of the Confederation of Engineering Industry for 1987-88. He was also the president of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India during 1982-84.

He was awarded the prestigious Sir Jehangir Ghandy Medal for Industrial Peace by XLRI in 1991. He was also the Sheriff of Chennai between the years1994 and 1995.

Krishna was awarded the Qimpro Platinum Standard 1997 for being a role model for Quality Leadership for Corporate India, and the Juran Quality Medal by the Indian Merchants Chamber, Mumbai. The Asian Productivity Organisation, Japan, conferred the National Award for 2000 (for India) on Krishna for his outstanding contribution towards productivity improvement in the country during the previous five years.

An eminent industrialist, Krishna was choosen by the All India Management Association for the JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award for the year 2000.