The TCS Story .. and beyond- S.Ramadorai

After a gap of nearly a decade i read a business book.My First one was "Made in Japan" by Akio Morita in 2001-2002 when i was in college, that time i did not know much about how a big companies works.But now after joining in a job,i was able to correlate many things in this book with my job and with the industry which im in.

 When i was in college the name TCS struck a cord with me ,even though more of my friends talked about Infosys ,CTS and Wipro.To my surprise i got an opportunity to do my college project in TCS.I had a great 4-5 months,learnt many things technically and personally,found some good friends.That was the end of the relationship with TCS for me.

 So when i was asked to read business books, without thinking twice, i choose this book when i was in New Delhi.My decision did not let me down.This book is a wonderful book written by lovable CEO and MD.This is a story of Ramadorai and TCS,sort of semi-autobiography since he was with TCS for 40 years and he did not deny that.The approach of TCS was bit different from other companies-they started doing overseas business first followed by the local, this gave them an ample opportunity to explore in variety of industry starting with banking,insurance etc..

He explains the initial struggle to find customers specially internationally as there was no local business, then the struggle with government agencies to procure IBM/ Burrough Machines,in short he explains the Licence Raj of 70's. The author was well aware that by doing the initial maintenance work and dealing with onsite client that they were creating new industry in India, that thought motivated them to explore other models of business and other industries.

According to the author timesheet and meetings (i prefer to call participative meetings) are the two important components of a startup company.I firmly agree with that since in my limited experience i have seen how these 2 components brings the best of everyone in a company.The author vividly describes how Y2K problem created a whole lot of opportunities to Indian IT industry.Once he became CEO, he changed the hierarchical leadership and allowed everyone to involve in discussion, he used strong analytics to find out the reason for problems occurred which made his managerial style different from his predecessor Mr.Kohli who was like an autocrat.His anecdotal approach and one policy for everyone made him unique and popular with TCSers.

Even though the author is IT insider, he did not write anything bad about other IT companies like Infosys or Wipro,which is good on his part.In the final chapters he explains the role of IT in India's future specially in Education,healthcare and sustainable energy solutions.The typical Indianess of "more with less" was epitomized in his tenure as CEO of TCS as he shuffled his managers for more tough tasks and giving them all support which made them to handle variety of tasks at a time which made them more productive.

This book is not a typical retired businessman's memoir, it is more than that.Mr.Ramadorai seems to be good writer, his writing is grip and straight to the point.The book ends with the quote from the author

"A CEO should be judged not just by what he built but more importantly by what he leaves behind for his successor to build upon"

Overall a great book,not to be missed.

*Boxed quotes are taken from the book.