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who is facing extradition charges to India to face allegations of fraud. Mallya inherited India’s United Breweries
at the age of 28 when his father died and led it on an ambitious expansion strategy into a variety of sectors including aviation, real estate, and fertiliser. His empire has crumbled since Kingfisher Airlines’ collapse in 2012 with 17 Indian banks trying to collect INR 9,000 crore ($1.3 billion) in outstanding loans. “There were a lot of profitable companies under
[Mallya’s] belt. But the value systems were not there and he went into too much glamour, which is the case with most big Indian families these days,” Suman warns. “[The next generation] want to do their own
things, some are successful, some are not. We hear the success stories, but we do not hear the millions of unsuccessful ones. There may be millions of unsuccessful stories, but they hear one success story and the nextgeneration come to take that as the benchmark to say, ‘We can do that’ with starts-ups also. We can think of Uber, Amazon etc, but so many start-ups have failed, how many unsuccessful stories are there? So many brilliant minds have failed.” “I feel a lot of mentoring is required for the
next generation to take the business to the next level. Just studying in business schools without experience, without industry knowledge, I do not feel that the business can be grown by the next generation. They have to be mentored,” he says. Suman recounts how his nephew, Snehil, was
adamant he wanted to spend INR 300 crore ($44 million) setting up a pelletisation power project
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700km from Hyderabad. “My brother told him, ‘We will set up a INR
3,000 crore plant, but only if you spend one year on the shop floor of the factory’. After spending one year in the factory he decided it was not as easy as it was in the books. There are no Mills & Boon stories in real life,” he adds. How then is it working with your brother? “We work from the same office and we get
along very well. We have our own conflicts. They do happen when some decisions he supports, I do not—that is bound to happen. But 99% of the time we see that one plus one is equal to eleven, not two.” The brothers have a succession plan in mind, but
it is too early to engage in formal planning, he says. “We still have four to five years to work on that,
but we will start with advisory services on how to do the succession plan. We need professionals to guide us through the process. We have started thinking about it to reduce the conflict in the next generation,” he adds. As our conversation draws to a close, what are
the greatest challenges and opportunities he sees for family businesses in India? “The main challenge for family businesses in
India is if anyone has an inflated ego. That should be controlled. If that is controlled then there are no issues that a family business cannot face. One plus one plus one is not three, it is 111. It is very difficult to control today’s generation from conflicts, but we have always tried to tell them that you will grow only if you are united and keep your egos in check.”
ISSUE 75 | 2019
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