{"id":1450,"date":"2011-10-19T19:46:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/tiger_genpact_ceo_part_101922\/"},"modified":"2024-09-11T10:25:22","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T10:25:22","slug":"tiger_genpact_ceo_part_101922","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/tiger_genpact_ceo_part_101922\/","title":{"rendered":"A big cat for a big job: meet Tiger (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NV "Tiger" Tyagarajan is the new President and CEO, Genpact (click for bio)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

One company has done more than most (some argue any) to change the very face of Business Process Outsourcing over the last few years. <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Its origins can be found in a\u00a0world-class\u00a0finance and accounting captive that\u00a0commercialized\u00a0its operations with an army of enthusiastic process geeks, schooled in the arts of LEAN and Six Sigma… and\u00a0\u00a0at competitive prices. “Isn’t that the GE company” asked one CFO of me, when I ran him through a potential list of F&A BPO providers\u00a0candidates, “Get them in, I want to hear what they have to say”.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the rise to prominence of Genpact has been nothing short of remarkable, as the firm has reemerged in 2011 hungrier and more acquisitive<\/a> than ever.\u00a0Having survived a tough recession for the BPO industry, successfully fending off larger\u00a0competitors\u00a0baying for its blood, Genpact has recently taken a new direction: appointing NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan to take the helm from the irrepressible Pramod Bhasin, who preached process so poetically<\/a> with us last year.<\/p>\n

Anyone close to the business has always talked about the “Pramod-Tiger” double-act for several years, with Tiger initially being the US face of the firm, and Pramod coordinating activities from India. \u00a0More recently, Tiger returned to his native India, not only to reconnect with his first love, cricket, but also to take on the role of COO and ready himself to succeed Pramod, who had\u00a0inexhaustibly\u00a0led this firm, since its 1997 inception, to surpass $1 billion in revenue.<\/p>\n

Tiger is now settling back into New York – a short train ride from his son’s university in Georgetown, Washington D.C., where he is now in the process of adding his personal leadership style to the Genpact machine. \u00a0So the $2 billion questions today are: \u00a0what will Tiger do differently? \u00a0How will Genpact fare with its leadership team Stateside? How will Genpact continue to evolve its business to move beyond its mainstay finance and accounting service line?<\/p>\n

Well, you needn’t wait any longer, as Tiger recently spent some time bringing us up to speed:<\/p>\n

Phil Fersht (HfS Research):\u00a0 Good morning Tiger. Before we delve into the current business issues,\u00a0let\u2019s talk a little bit about your earlier career and about you as an individual.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan (Genpact):\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong> I did my undergrad in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. And while I loved the problem-solving, logic-driven approach that engineering teaches you \u2013 and I use that in many situations today \u2013 I realized I didn\u2019t want to spend my time with machines. I want to spend my time with people.<\/p>\n

So I did my masters at the Indian Institute of Management in India, and specialized in marketing and finance. And I loved those two years. I thought I had found my sweet spot, being able to use logic and numbers and finance while at the same time, driving change through groups of people to get to a decision or a certain point.<\/p>\n

My first job was selling, believe it or not, cosmetics for the Indian subsidiary of U.S.-based Chesebrough-Ponds. By my seventh year with the company \u2013 which by then had been acquired by Unilever \u2013 I had sales management responsibility for the country\u2019s largest region, which accounted for 40 percent of the company\u2019s sales.<\/p>\n

That was great management training, and gave me the chance to learn the ropes in managing sales teams, and in understanding consumer and business behavior. But I was getting a little tired of a single product market environment, so I decided to switch to financial services and joined Citibank\u2019s then new retail mortgage lending business. I held six different jobs in three years at Citi. And without going into all the ugly details, I was quickly termed the \u201ccleanup guy\u201d, the person designated to clean up a problem, and one of the ways I did that was by attracting and building up a team of A players. But my fundamental view was that if you really want to succeed, you’ve got to surround yourself with the A players, and I\u2019ve carried that view forward in my career.<\/p>\n

By that time, 1994, GE Capital announced it was going to set up a financial services company in India. I read Jack Welch’s two books and fell in love with GE. I knew it was a place where I could spend my entire career, going from credit cards to aircraft engines to healthcare to NBC, without ever leaving the company. I could also at some point in time actually see myself leveraging my engineering background and feeling good about it. So I joined GE Capital \u2013 and was probably the third or fourth employee in India \u2013 as risk head of its consumer lending business.<\/p>\n

I moved to the U.S. in 2002 as the Global Head of Operations and Six Sigma for GE\u2019s commercial lending businesses. Then I joined Gecis, which is now Genpact, and here I am.<\/p>\n

Phil: \u00a0Tiger, we all know what an amazing job Pramod did to get Genpact to where it is today. Can we expect anything radically different under your leadership?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tiger: \u00a0<\/strong>With the dynamics and pace of change in our industry, all providers have to be nimble and able to change rapidly, and Genpact did that under Pramod. There will continue to be dramatic changes, but that\u2019s par for the course for us.<\/p>\n

A few specific changes I am focused on are:<\/p>\n