For the rain is falling

“The rain is falling …
Now I am staring …
Deep in my heart
I would like to find a place for love
and all this time, all the time we've lost
Just to follow a dream”
Bob Marley

At the time it made a decision to diversify into Information Technology, the firm was a
conservative partnership of chartered accountants. It was well known for its audit,
accounting, tax services and an offering of “non-IT” consulting services. The decision to
set up an IT practice was, not surprisingly, made after some intense debate. Some
partners felt that it would be better to stick to the knitting. Some felt it would be foolish
to stray into uncharted waters. It was more an apprehension and trepidation for the
unknown rather than a desire to defend the status quo.
With the wisdom of hindsight, I would submit that had it not been for the vision and
leadership of the senior partner Kamesh Prasad Bhargava a.k.a. KPB ,the project would
not have seen the light of the day. A number of decisions were taken under his leadership
which may seem intuitive and easy today .But they were tough and courageous decisions
at the time..We had to break away from traditions. From entrenched culture and mindset.
1. First ,it was decided to use a shell company called Price Waterhouse Associates
(P) Ltd to house the proposed IT practice. The limited liability nature of this
entity appealed to the partners who were not certain of the success of this venture.
What was designed primarily to firewall the core business from uncertainty and
risks, turned out to be a great positive for the fledgling practice.
2. The sole purpose of housing the practice in a corporate entity, however, was not
to avail of the advantages of limited liability. It had several distinct business
advantages: a) as it was not a chartered accountants’ partnership, it could admit
non-chartered accountants to the highest echelons of leadership. This was a
fundamental requirement if we were to attract high performing engineers, MBAs
and computer scientists to our fold. b) We were not bound by the limitations of
the audit profession and could compete freely c) We could pay compensations
that were driven by the market and not stymied by debates of “uniformity” within
the same “group” and d) we could to hire a CEO who might have to be paid more
than several partners, even perhaps the senior partners.

There was yet another reason which was kept low key .It was my belief that a new
practice like IT needed a new, scrappy start up environment to flourish.In fact I argued
and succeeded in convincing the senior partner that we needed to operate in a different
physical location away from the watchful eyes of a doting parent.
When the first rudimentary business plan was written on a twin floppy Wipro PC which
was sold to me by Sudip Bandyopadhyay (a stalwart in Wipro now) and printed on a dot
matrix printer at my home , IT company was about to be born. Dick Wheaton who had
just relinquished Global MCS leadership to a Canadian partner Dick Mineau appeared on
the scene. He had assumed an Asia Pacific management role that included oversight of
the Indian practice.

He suggested that he provide help in interviewing the potential candidates for CEO and
assigned Ran Advani, then a MCS partner in the New York practice to come out and
help. He also mandated that an Indian partner should be dedicated to the IT practice.
It was at this time that a debate began as to where we should locate the IT practice –in
Calcutta or in Delhi. The MCS leader at that time was Amal Ganguli. It was his belief
that the practice should be located in Delhi. It was my belief, and I was then a fairly
junior partner, that it should be located in Calcutta. There were a number of reasons why
I differed with him. My clinching argument that resonated with the leadership was: the
start-up must incubate peacefully with the Senior partner providing it with nourishment,
protection and support until it was able to stand on its own two feet. I still remember the
afternoon we were all gathered in the Burma-teak paneled “board” room in Gillander
House that changed the trajectory of my career and my life. After debating like true
gentlemen, we had a show of hands and it was decided that the IT practice will begin
initially in Calcutta under my leadership. I was directed to convert it into an all-India
practice under the overall direction of KPB.I still remember what KPB said, suppressing
with great difficulty all the affection he had for me, “Gentlemen, the young man will now
have to swim or sink with the new company”.
The second step was even more difficult to take. I requested that I should report to KPB
directly. In those days this was heresy. The MCS leader was Amal Ganguli. The MCS
leader in Calcutta was Subhra Jyoti Dutt (fondly called SJD by his numerous followers
that included me).SJD had an enormous affection for me. There were two other senior
partners in MCS –Atin Chaudhury under whom I had served as an articled clerk and
Amarnath Sadhu. Amarda was a delightful gentleman whose mind was a well spring of
the most novel ideas and lateral thoughts. My request meant that I would bypass them in
a reporting sense .KPB had a lot of push back but I know the organization chart then had
to live with strategic ambiguity. I continued to report directly to KPB and was not sure
what the Org Chart would say if it had to be printed.
We were scouting for a 2500 sq ft flat and had looked at several properties in South
Calcutta. On one of his morning walks KPB heard that a flat belonging to the nuclear

scientist Dr Bikash Sinha was available for lease. It was not fully built up then. We went
to the site pompously called Sukh Sagar (The Ocean of Happiness).It was multi-storyed
building under construction .We liked it and liked the rent even better. The deal was
sealed in no time. Now that we had a “brick and mortar” home for the practice, it was
time to look for a practice leader.
We advertised in the Press and Ranjit (Ran) Advani flew in from New York to assist us
with the recruitment. There were three shortlisted candidates –all from established
MNCs-ICI, ITC and Dunlop. We liked the candidate from Dunlop the best. He was an
Electrical Engineer from Jadavpur University who had joined IBM in hardware
maintenance. When IBM installed its first 1401 in Dunlop he was located by IBM at the
customer site in Sahagunge . And when in 1977 IBM withdrew from India following a
spat with Minister George Fernandes , he was absorbed by Dunlop.
At the time he applied for the position in Price Waterhouse Associates Private Ltd
(PWAPL) he was in charge of computer applications in Dunlop and in addition he looked
after some commercial activities like procurement in Dunlop. Dunlop had changed hands
and the RPG group had taken over the management. He wanted to switch over and was
excited about our start up venture. We found him to be most enthusiastic among the 3
shortlisted candidates .We offered him the position. His name was Arnab Bhattacharya.
The capital structure of the fledgling company was interesting. The partners of the Indian
firm contributing a total of Rs 1 lac (Rs 100,000 only ) in equity. The world firm
guaranteed an overdraft of upto Rs 20 lacs as overdraft with Citibank.
Now that we had a company, a physical home and a practice leader we needed some
business and clients. While Arnab was serving notice with Dunlop, two significant events
happened. Our audit partner Tapas Ray was ill one day and I was asked to stand in for
him at the Indian Aluminium (an Alcan subsidiary) at the AGM. At lunch, I was seated
with Tapan Mitra, then the CFO of the company and Mr Black, the Asia PacGroup CFO
from Hong Kong. At lunch I told them about the new venture. Tapanda said that they
were trying to computerize their financial accounting system. But their attempts to do so
with M N Dastur and TCS had failed because the consultants were unable to comprehend
the intricacies of their complex costing and metal accounting system system. Tapanda
knew that my team and I were intimately familiar with their accounting system. I finally
popped the question over dessert whether they would give us an opportunity. Tapanda
said that we were fully conversant with their requirements and he would not mind giving
us a shot.I typed the proposal on my now famous Wipro twin floppy PC and we landed
the job. Next week Rathinda organized a meeting with Bhaskar Rao Chaudhuri of CESC
who as an act of faith awarded us the assignment of computerizing the payroll of some
13,000 workmen.
I went into KPB ‘s room one morning and delivered the good news and the bad news.
The good news was that we had bagged two substantial assignments .The bad news was
that Arnab was still serving notice and we did not have the resources to deliver. KPB was
visibly worried and he reminded me that bad news travels fast. We hurriedly recruited N

Pillai a programmer and Rumee Roy, an MBA from ISWBM. We also rccruited
Subhendu Goswami ,Abhijit Mitra and Shishir Dandapat –all from Dunlop and began the
assignments. Arnabda joined us in due course and we flagged off our IT practice.
Both projects were completed to the satisfaction of the clients and we began to win new
projects and expand our team. In 1989,in quick succession Jaydeep Mukherjee,Vivek
Halder, Anjan Majumdar joined from CMC and Ambarish Dasgupta from Bata. We
recruited Joydeep Datta Gupta from a start up software outfit and Jaideep Ganguli as
well. ,Amitabh Ray and Shovon Mukherjee followed. We went to the ISWBM campus
and hired half a dozen MBAs with IT specialization .Later Partha Bardhan joined
followed by Rajarshi Sengupta who was working with our US firm.
Meanwhile Dick Wheaton took me to the US to meet the MCS leader of US Tom Beyer .
Tom had never been to India and he looked at me with great suspicion. He was ,however,
willing to try us out.Over dinner with Tom Beyer and Woody Brittain, we struck our first
staff augmentation contract at Santa Fe Railways .The project site was in Topeka, Kansas
where a team of Indians led by Anjan and Subhendu Datta were sent to work on a large
project.
IT was catching on in India. Arnabda received an offer from GKW where we were
working on a project. GKW wanted to set up an IT company and the CEO of GKW Mr
Batra offered Arnabda the job of the CEO of their IT company.In those days GKW was a
blue chip company and Arnabda left suddenly.
The company was faced with a twin crises. It was losing money hand over fist and the
practice leader left with two key executives. We were on the brink of disaster. One
morning towards the end of the month, I discovered that we were overdrawn to the hilt
and did not have enough cash to pay salaries.
That was the closest that we had ever come to catastrophe. We had our back to the wall
and the possibility of sinking was real. The chances of swimming was bleak. That
was my baptism by fire on cash flow management. Thereafter, I have
never neglected cash flows.
I confided to Bhaskar Ray Chaudhuri of CESC about our predicament and appealed to
him to provide an undeserved advance of Rs 2 lacs against work done in CESC.
He was understanding and he agreed to provide the money to enable us to tide
over the crisis. I took complete charge of cash management and signed every
single cheque in the next one year.
The US secondments accelerated and the dark clouds were blown away.
It was a tribute to the young team which worked very hard with me to tide over the crisis.
We transitioned our custom software practice and thanks to a chance opportunity with
Bill Niergarth in Philadelphia we sent 40 engineers to the US headed by a cranky
PhD to help create a CBT system for SAP R/3.

Thereafter, we never looked back. We became the largest implementer of ERP systems in
India.
In 2002 October we had to divest a large part of our MCS practice. I was vacationing
with my family in Interlaken in Switzerland .I had to interrupt the vacation and I
took a train with my family to Zurich. The final deal of divestment was sealed
there.
Kotak ,an affiliate of Goldman Sachs had valued our business at between $ 105 to $130
million . A business which started with Rs 1 lac had grown in value. Our
rainmakers made sure that the rain was falling. We parted with our friends, our
partners, our colleagues and our comrades. It was a painful day for me and those
who stayed back with the firm and it was painful for those who went with IBM.
It was the beginning of a new journey for us who stayed back and those who took a new
road. But we were determined to succeed it our new careers and in the journey to
our new destinations. Tagore had said that the past is never lost, the bright stars of
the dark night always remain in the depths of daylight. The sky was dark but the
rain was still falling.