Devil in Pinstripes (8 page)

This was despite the fact that unlike other normal acquisitions, NYB had been very sensitive towards the employees of the NBFC. They had tried to ensure that people in NFS did not feel threatened or overawed by the presence of a number of people from NYB and had deputed very few people from the bank. This included the managing director to run the company. It was important to have the senior-most person at NFS as someone from NYB, since it aided the cultural integration of the two organisations. However, as far as day-to-day running of the show was concerned, NYB had largely left it to the local management of NFS.

Irrespective, the likes of Gowri were unhappy. They were used to running the organisation like a mom and pop show, like their own fiefdom. Suddenly a large organisation was forced onto them, and they had to follow laid out policies and procedures of NYB which had, to a large extent, curtailed their free run. This was not acceptable to them. Rules often come with fixed accountabilities and that was not something they liked.

As a consequence, Aditya’s strategic oversight of the organisation was a sham. There was no reporting relationship between NFS and NYB on paper. The country statutory regulations required that the two organisations operate independently and NFS used this excuse to prevent any kind of interference from NYB. Such was the state of the politics between NFS and NYB that on the face the employees were very cordial to one another, but behind the scenes, it was a completely different story. Hari, the managing director of NFS, who was sent by NYB to oversee the integration, was too weak to take on the NFS coterie and soon, he too fell in line. Rather than take on the militant staff in NFS, he too joined them in the crusade against NYB.

Gowri was in one of those defiant, anti-NYB moods, when he got a call on his internal line. It was the receptionist.

‘Yes Neelam?’

‘There’s a lady waiting to see you at the reception.’

‘Does she have an appointment?’ The call came to him because his secretary had not come in by then. In the normal course she would have left a printout of his schedule for the day on his table.

‘Yes Gowri. She says she has an appointment and that it was lined up last evening.’

‘What’s her name?’ A silent pause at this end, ‘. . . OKAY. She will have to wait for some time. Send her after about ten minutes.’

‘Sure Gowri,’ and the receptionist hung up. Gowri got busy with his emails.

‘Knock knock!’ his concentration was disturbed by someone at his cabin door. Through the glass, he could see a pretty young girl standing there holding a brown leather file in her hand. He looked up and nodded, asking her to come in. The girl was nervous and did not understand Gowri’s nod. This made him get up, walk to the door and open it for her. ‘I asked you to come in.’

‘Thank you sir,’ she said sheepishly.

Gowri, held the door open till the lady had crossed him and then stretched his neck, looked outside in the direction of his secretary, who had not come in by then. He looked towards Manish’s secretary, who was normally quite punctual and shouted,
‘Do chai bolna
’. A second later, he looked at the lady seated in his room and asked her, ‘Will you have some tea?’ The demure thing didn’t have a choice and just nodded her head.

Gowri came back and settled in his executive swivel chair.

‘Aditya had called me yesterday. Spoke to me about you. He obviously thinks very highly about you.’

‘He is just being kind sir.’

‘I know. I know . . . he is very kind,’ he said cheekily.

After about thirty minutes of sarcastic conversation, he finally asked her, ‘So young lady, what kind of job would you like to do?’

‘Anything which is challenging and gives me an opportunity to learn new skills.’

‘Even a secretary’s job is challenging.’ When he saw that the comment was not appreciated, he softened. ‘Just kidding. Give me five minutes. Just wait outside my room, I will call you in.’

When the girl had stepped outside, he picked up the phone and dialled a number. ‘Come to my room. We have to hire someone.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now. Please come quickly Sunil. I have lots of other stuff to catch up on.’

He kept down the phone and dialled another number,
‘Kakke yaar, yahaan aana’
. Kakke was what Manish Kakkar was called in NFS.

Kakke and Sunil (the head of HR) were in Gowri’s room in five minutes.

‘
Yaar, yeh bank walon ne toh is company ko dharamshala samajh rakha hai,
’ NYB was referred to as ‘The bank’ in NFS circles. Gowri was implying that the people from NYB were under the impression that NFS was like a free guesthouse, where they could park anyone they wanted to. He was irritated that the NYBankers had sent someone to him to hire and he did not have a choice.

‘Sunil, please hire her and give her a job.’ After a pause he added, ‘Any job, else that bastard Aditya will be after my life.’

After another short bitching session about the bank, Sunil came out of the room. He looked around the office and called out loudly. ‘Chanda! Is Chanda here?’

Chanda was sitting on a single-seater sofa on the other side of the hall. Hearing her name being called out, she stood up and started walking towards Sunil. ‘Yes sir, I am Chanda.’

‘Great. Chanda, come with me.’ Chanda quietly followed him to his office.

By the end of the day, Chanda was hired by NYB Financial Services as a product executive in the personal loans department and had to report to Gowri. A forty percent hike in salary demonstrated how low her salary in the previous organisation was.

That night, Amit called up Aditya to thank him for his help in getting Chanda a job with NYB Financial Services.

‘What’s your plan?’ Aditya asked him.

‘Plan?’

‘About GE . . . are you planning to join them? I believe they have made you an offer.’

‘Aditya . . . I . . .’

‘Listen buddy. Don’t bullshit me. I know you have got an offer from GE. If you are going I need to know.’

And without waiting for him to respond, he added, ‘Give me three to six months. You are important to me. Let me manage your career. I will take care of you.’

‘Aditya, it’s a business manager’s role.’ Finally, Amit accepted that he was in discussions with GE.

‘I will give you a business manager’s job in six to twelve months. Trust me. In this growth phase we need good people like you. And what’s twelve months in a lifetime?’

Natasha was in the room when Aditya was talking to Amit. She just shook her head and walked out of the room. She knew that Aditya was conning one more guy.

That night, Aditya had sealed two deals. He had managed to keep Amit from leaving NYB, thereby protected his own business numbers, and he had also bought Amit’s loyalty for life. The exit barriers for Amit had been raised.

G
owri was the undisputed king of NFS. Going from strength to strength in the company, he had become a power centre which even NYB couldn’t ignore.

In fact, he had played his cards brilliantly. In 1999-2000 when NYB acquired the NBFC, there was a general feeling of insecurity in the company. They had just been acquired and people feared for their jobs, and their careers. Like all takeovers, this one too was accompanied by the fear that the bank would come in and make their jobs redundant, by bringing in their own people, who in turn would bring in their own teams.

In such a volatile situation, Gowri was the most outspoken. He was the politician who emerged as the rallying point for the NBFC team. The only one in the NFS senior management who was quite vociferous in his dislike for the bank and for the people from the bank. These emotions came naturally to him because he was a part of the NBFC from the day it had been formed. Though it was rumoured that his dislike for the bank also stemmed from the fact that at some point in time, he had been interviewed by NYB but his application had been turned down. This was more than enough for him to be caustic towards NYB and NYBankers. Though he would never accept it, he secretly harnessed dreams of working in a multinational bank like NYB.

Gowri’s influence ran deep. There were around eight hundred people working in over hundred branches of the NBFC, many of them handpicked by Gowri. All of them who were involved in the business of giving out loans to the lower strata of society, loosely referred to as the subprime loans, and owed their allegiance to Gowri.

The business model of the NBFC was simple and straightforward. They had set up branches in residential areas, dominated by the lower middle class segments. Customers would be encouraged to just walk into the branch to avail loans. From cash loans and loans for buying consumer durables or two wheelers to mortgage loans for buying houses and cash loans against the collateral of property, the company offered every variety.

Loan approving officers (also known as credit officers) would be seated in these branches. They would meet the customer, understand his needs and based on his affordability, approve or decline a loan. The entire branch was managed by a branch manager.

In a branch, the buck stopped at the branch manager, who was responsible for sales, i.e. responsible for meeting branch targets for loan disbursals. He was accountable for approving loans and in case of a customer default, reaching out to the customer and collecting money from him was also his responsibility.

The branch manager reported to a regional manager, who eventually reported to a branch network head, who in turn was answerable to Gowri. The branch managers by vitue of this chain of command took instructions from no one but Gowri. Such was Gowri’s control over the organisation.

Gowri’s influence ran deep. The master politician, had his own network of informants and did not believe in relying only on his hierarchical control chain for information. The man had his methods. He had the knack to reach way down into the organisation, at times even down to the last level in the command chain. The network of informal ‘informants’ would feed back information about all the little but important details of whatever was going on in the company. Anything happening without his knowledge or consent would reach him in a matter of minutes. To him, loyalty and alignment mattered the most. He would dole out favours to anyone who was aligned to him – both visibly and in thought process. This also meant better increments, higher bonuses and even quicker promotions for those who towed his line.

Why wouldn’t guys at the grass root fall for such benefits? Gowri exploited this weakness in the system and the people. Such was his influence that everything including HR, credit and even financial control was under his sphere of control.

With that kind of power, it was but natural for anyone to resist the advances of an MNC bank. NYB taking charge would mean that all the adhocism in the running of the company would have to go. It could no longer be run as a small time mom and pop show. Everything would have to be accounted for and the central focus of power which rested with him till now was under a big time threat. The free run had to end. The company had to be now run in a manner which was explainable to compliance, human resources teams of NYB and everything was subject to an audit as per NYB policies, which were a lot more stringent as compared to NFS.

While Gowri’s control was not something which could be called a compromise of integrity, it was surely not a transparent exercise of power either.

Chanda joined NFS in this background. She had no idea what she was getting into. She joined them in August of 2001 as a product executive in their personal loans department.

The first few days for Chanda were eventless.

‘Go read this and come,’ Gowri had said after giving her some product and process manuals to read. The stuff was enough to keep her busy for the next three days. She took those documents and just when she was ready to scoot to the safe realms of the desk allotted to her, Gowri called her back. ‘And Chanda, if you want to clarify any doubts about anything, just walk up to Sangeeta. Chanda remembered her. She was introduced to her some time back by HR as the head of the branch network for western India.

As Chanda left Gowri’s cabin, she smiled at his secretary, who didn’t bother to respond. Though that was not what she expected, she just shrugged her shoulders and walked towards her cubicle. The secretary immediately dialled a number and picked up the phone, taking it off the speaker phone.

‘She’s left,’ she whispered into the phone, and hung up.

Within seconds, Sangeeta was up outside Gowri’s room. As usual, the colours of her clothes were similar to Gowri’s. As soon as she entered the area outside Gowri’s Cabin, walking awkwardly in her two-inch long spikes . . . err . . . stilettos, she took off her NFS ID card from around her neck and simultaneously pulled out the ID card which had the name of the old company (the name of the company prior to being acquired by NYB and prior to it being rechristened NFS) and hung it around the shoulder. Using the old ID cards was prohibited. Everyone was formally told to use the new ID card, with the NFS branding and logo. Sangeeta too used the new ID card at all times, unless she was with Gowri. She knew that Gowri was very emotional about it. In fact, Gowri had hung his old ID card along with a copy of his old visiting card on the soft board next to his table.

Gowri’s secretary saw it and smiled. Sangeeta winked at her, ‘Gowri will like it this way . . . thanks for calling me after that bitch left.’ And she made her way into Gowri’s room.

‘Gowri, why have you hired a product manager?’ This was basically a very loud echo of her insecurity.

‘What do I do? These bankers want to come everywhere. Our company is a dharamshala. Aditya called up and asked me to hire her. Her husband is one of Aditya’s
pappus
.’