The God of IT on How to Bring Entrepreneurship in Management A man who inculcated managerial techniques for business growth

The CEO of one of the most celebrated Indian IT multinational companies, CP Gurnani is not just another manager. In his words, he is an "entrepreneur-manager' focusing only on getting things done. "I was a small-town guy who didn't even know what being a CEO meant. At 33, I was already the CEO of a small unit. At 38, I was a CXO. It was no longer a dream, it just came to me," Gurnani says, as he recalled his 36-year journey as a dreamer, achiever, and a giver.

Gurnani has held several leading positions with HCL Hewlett Packard, Perot Systems (India) and HCL Corporation. In 2016, he was appointed as the Chairman of NASSCOM. Financial Year 18, Gurnani counts as the "Year of Digital Transformation' at Tech Mahindra. "We are on a critical journey of transformation from Information Transformation to Digital Transformation.

This not only entails growing revenues, which are 25 per cent of the overall revenues currently but also means overhauling the organization and ensuring that the workforce is upskilled and re-skilled for the future," says Gurnani. Popularly known as the People's CEO, Gurnani encourages intrapreneurship and the ability to experiment and innovate. He aims to promote talent from within the organization to grow faster, especially young talent. Among his tenure's most daring steps, Gurnani counts the Satyam turnaround and the digital transformation of Tech Mahindra.

Being a part of the Satyam acquisition journey was a high-risk decision, especially, in the adverse circumstances. "While that registers as the big "daring' moment, what followed was a combination of "daring' and "caring'," says Gurnani. As the CEO, Gurnani aims disruption to remain relevant and drive a sustainable digital future. He believes, in this age of disruption, innovation cannot happen in seclusion, and hence, an ecosystem that supports collaboration in the real sense is needed.

As a step in this direction, Tech Mahindra has collaborated with start-ups and is also working with academia, drawing from the millennial workforce, jointly creating cutting-edge technology solutions with clients and partners, concludes Gurnani.

(This article was first published in the August 2018 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)