T2 coverage on The Telegraph She Awards

Madhumita Basu, one of the three corporate winners of The Telegraph SHE awards, shares her journey with t2

Madhumita Basu, chief of sales and marketing, and a member of the country executive council of Lafarge India, receives The Telegraph She Award at ITC Sonar... My career started as a management trainee. I was fairly clear early in life that I would join the corporate world. My father (late Barindra Kumar Sircar) was in the pharmaceutical industry and I found it very exciting the way he travelled or how he prepared for his sales conferences. When I was barely 12, I used to help him prepare the charts for his conferences. Like a true leader he used to come back and give me feedback, saying people always asked him how his charts were the neatest and the best. My sister and I, we were brought up as ‘children’. There was no gender identity in the family space. For dad, we were two children who had to stand on their own feet. I believe the father plays an important role. If you see our Olympic stories this time, you’ll see the girls have been firmly backed by the father. Because he establishes a certain expectation from male colleagues and competitors even before you start your working life.  ... and Basu at her Sector V office.  I decided to give Calcutta a shot I was born in Calcutta, and raised in Bombay and Delhi. I did my graduation in commerce from R.A. Podar College of Commerce & Economics in Bombay and my management in finance from Bombay University. The year I was to start my career, 1985, my family moved back to Calcutta. My father was keen that I stay back in Bombay for my career, but we are a close-knit family and I decided to give Calcutta a shot. I got an opening at Exide, which was then Chloride India, a part of the Chloride UK Group, as a trainee. It was an exciting journey. I went on to take charge of the MIS (marketing information systems) and sales controller functions. In 1988, I was selected to go and work out of the Chloride Group office in London for about 10 months. I came back to India to a changing automobile market. I took charge of the advertising portfolio. New-generation cars were coming in, the manner in which you made batteries was changing…. Battery stores at that time were garage shops. In 1990, Exide led the transition from garage stores to high-end retail outlets. I am often asked why I chose to work in “male bastions” like automobiles or cement. But when I started, there were very few women as role models in the corporate space. Today we look at FMCG or banking as women-heavy sectors but I feel when all of us started our journey, we were a minority in our industry. I remember the first dealer conference I organised, the dealers confused me with the hotel staff (laughs). Frankly, I didn’t give much thought to this “male bastion” thing. And I was a general manager before I turned 30. In the year 2000, I was trained as an assessor by CII for its business excellence awards. I was also given a special citation for the CII Young Manager Award that year. I moved to Eveready in 2005.  Among the many products I handled, the interesting bit was battery-supported LED lighting systems. In 2006-07 it was still very new. Now it’s one of their primary businesses. Eveready was again a very different learning phase. Because FMCG and retail outlets are very competitive spaces, it’s very important to concentrate on the placement of your product, whereas Exide was more a franchisee model. I moved to Lafarge in 2010 as head of marketing and a member of the executive committee, cement division. The Lafarge Group is based out of Paris. Lafarge lays a stress on the channel-driven business, which is sale to consumers who build their own homes. One of our brands, Concreto, is across the country the most premium brand. We’ve had very innovative customer engagement programmes with this brand. Now I am handling the entire cement sales and marketing function and the entire branding direction for the organisation across its various functions. Work requires me to travel at least three days a week, anywhere from Gujarat to Haryana right up to the Northeast. In my previous roles, I have travelled to countries as diverse as Armenia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Dubai, even Afghanistan.  Women in middle management I am a past president of the Calcutta Management Association (CMA). I have actively tried to take time out for management sessions with the middle management in organisations like SBI or CESC or IBM or TCS. I came into contact with another The Telegraph She awardee, Smita Pandit Chakraborty, because I had held a couple of sessions with her team (at Phoenix Conveyor Belt India).  When I interact with women, particularly in the middle management, I do feel that the ones who make it have very definite leadership goals in mind. What challenges us most as women is you have your job and you have your family. In handling these two roles, many women take shortcuts in their own self-development. These, in a way, becomes limiting in a middle management career. So you don’t invest time in networking, in skill development… I know this lady who now has her own HR consultancy. She used to take a week off every year to go and skill-build in her field. Unless you do that there comes a time when you feel challenged by other colleagues around the table. If you don’t invest in your network, then when the time comes, you cannot leverage it.  A safety net of mentors You may not be able to move the system or an entire organisation overnight. What you can do is you can have senior ladies like me who have reached a certain goal, who have faced certain challenges, take on an active coaching or mentoring role. Because, you know, it’s a critical one or two years when you feel all these challenges are coming so somebody needs to show you the light at the end of the tunnel. A mentor-coach can also guide you to develop yourself. I need to recognise the role my family has played. Also the role my organisations have played. I have been lucky to work in organisations that have a gender-neutral footprint where what mattered first was the work you were doing. During a dealer conference tour in my Exide stint I had a miscarriage. My colleagues helped me to not only get to a hospital but get better and continue with my pending conferences. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh she has had a problem, put her on the next flight back home.’ What I would like to reach out and tell other young women managers is if you are not finding that ecosystem in the place you are working, but you still love your work, you must try to reach out to an ecosystem that can help you. And today social networking gives you that space to connect with other women managers. She Awards  Honestly, it was very exciting. To see that it is people in the business and corporate space who have noted your contribution, then you feel you are adding value, not only to others but more importantly to yourself. For me it was not just that moment of going there and receiving the She Award but a feeling that I am in a direction where I want to move forward.

A to Z Work Travelogue : A for Afghanistan

I could name a place, for almost every alphabet, that I would have traveled to on work. With the exception of a Q, X, V and Z, I could draw up a fair list of cities, towns and countries, traveling since the last 27 years. Each place is etched in the mind through first impressions, negotiations, food and sometimes a 'must visit' tourist site. Some of the memories are fading and unlike these days, photographing (and uploading on Instagram or FB) and recording food, people and moments was not a way of life. The act of listing the places, itself, brought back some memories and the urge to record these before they completely fade away.

I am yet to make up my mind on whether to do this in alphabetic series, by preference, randomly or basis my recall of the visit / place. 20 plus blogs is a long way to go, so let us see how this unfolds. On the first country, though, there is no second thought as A for Afghanistan is in alphabetic series, stands for intrigue and holds vivid memories.

The first images as we land in Kabul is a single word - devastated.

We traveled as part of a CII organised exhibition of products from 170 companies. The previous year, in December 2001, President Hamid Karzai had taken charge of a transition government of post- Taliban Afghanistan. Riding on the back of Indian aid, CII started working on meets and delegations from early 2002 and this particular exhibition was held at the sprawling Kabul Polytechnic Grounds in early October. 

The bus ride to our hotel and thereafter for the next 3-4 days to and from the exhibition grounds, stays in my 'ears'. I was caught by surprise at the blaring number 'Soldier - Soldier' from Preity Zinta's first movie and it stuck in the mind as appropriate for the dry, barren, bombed and destroyed structures on both sides of the road.

The next memory is of our car as it wound its way through the more crowded bazar streets. We had the luxury to move the wrong way on a one-way street. The crowds parted to make way for the 'mehmaan'. This beautiful Urdu word for guests was something we kept hearing for the next few days, as everyone stepped in with a smile to help us. 

The bazaar was crowded, with mainly street vendors. What caught our eye was the mounds of dried mulberry.

Highly recommended for the diabetic, was this white variant but the more popular type was black. I brought home a fair quantity and would probably still find some tucked in a corner of the refrigerator.  One adventurous member of the team picked up a Persian rug but otherwise there wasn't much to buy other than dry fruits, asafoetida  (of excellent quality) and maybe saffron.

.

In fact, the Indian exhibition was the shopping destination for the locals, who thronged the place during general visitor hours. We had engaged a young college student as assistant and interpreter. He stoically stood by us, fussing around and helping at the stall, while furtively checking his watch for the open hours. His day 1 shopping list included Sona Chandi Chyvanprash for his father! In comparison, the business sessions in the morning saw very little footfalls.

Not to say, though, that need and potential business opportunities were missing. We did manage a couple of business meetings, including one past 7pm, under armed escort. On the outskirts of Kabul, we visited a community living in row houses within a walled space. The only source of electricity was a generator set with loosely hanging electrical lines and light points in the homes of the 18 odd families that lived in this enclosed space. Clearly, there was need for storage batteries and mini wind power systems - our product line that was on exhibit. The need was, however, not backed by ability to pay.

A couple of business contacts, later touched base with us in Delhi & Kolkata.

They endorsed the Arsalan biryani and recommended a portion of roomali roti to be eaten at the end of the meal to facilitate digestion. In Delhi, I recall a marathon 12 - 14 hour negotiation round, punctuated by just their Ramzan prayer break. That too, at our office, they sought my help for a piece of cloth to spread out on the floor. My colleague was quick to pull out a banner, stating that it would bring our business luck. 

Wonderful moments, those. I learnt patience and tenacity and wish we could have converted it to some good business.