15 HSBC and the Ten Dollar Solution

Working in PwC and IBM, there were many clients that I had dealt with - for example Bells Control at TISL, Teastall.com in PwC, British Petroleum at IBM - but the one that I remember most fondly was the HSBC project that spanned our transition from PwC to IBM. This was an epic project because of its geographic spread, the complexity of delivery and the rewards that we picked up as a team.

It all began in 1999 when PwC US decided to embrace the eBusiness paradigm wholeheartedly. In India I had embarked on TINTIN - The Internet Initiative, within the firm and when I was elevated to the partnership of the firm, I was given the mandate to lead this new practice as an offshoot of the ITSI - Information Technology & System Integration - practice.  However most of our managers and partners were still wedded to the huge cash cow of SAP and were reluctant to explore the uncharted territory around the web. For these intellectual laggards to understand the immense possibilities of the web, I had created an animated Powerpoint presentation that was shown in the Partner Manager meeting at Goa. This presentation was such a huge hit that our management decided that this presentation should be carried to every potential client so that we could sell them eBusiness services.

One such presentation that I made was to HSBC in Mumbai and this was attended by, among others, Lawrence Webb who headed HSBC Payment and Cash Management Systems from Hongkong. He was so overwhelmed by this presentation that he immediately asked PwC to send me to their HK office so that I could make the same presentation to their executives. This was the first time that I flew Business Class on client's money and was picked up at the airport in a Rolls Royce taxi -- but that could be another story. Shortly afterwards HSBC Philippines floated an RFP for Cash Management System and Webb, who remembered me from the eBusiness presentation asked PwC India if they would like to put in a bid.

This was a little awkward because of territorial jurisdiction issues.  PwC India, which was a part of the PwC Americas territory, could not put in bid for a Hongkong client, which was in the territory of PwC Hongkong. However, HSBC put its foot down and said since PwC HK was nowhere as cost competitive as any Indian vendor, they would go to either PwC India or to some other Indian vendor like TCS or Infosys, but certainly not to PwC HK. That is when PwC HK backed down and allowed us -- PwC India -- to bid. Our pitch was pretty good and I, along with my colleague Anupam Haldar, travelled to HK to make the final presentation, which -- thanks to Lawrence Webb, I am sure -- was accepted after some tough negotiations.

The project was quite complicated. It was managed out of HSBC HK by Antony Solimini and Pei Fong but software would be designed and built in PwC Calcutta  and would had to be delivered - that is installed, tested and commissioned in HSBC Manila. It was a browser-based application software to be developed Microsoft tools -- IIS,  VB and a SqlServer backend. We had a project manager, Debashis Ghosh on our side but the real technical lead was Chinmohan Biswas and I was the project partner but unfortunately none of us had ever worked on a banking system before. Our so-called banking experts, based in PwC Mumbai were all paper tigers who would talk themselves blue in the face about systems but had never touched a keyboard in their lives. There were some peculiar requirements like Triple DES and RSA encryption for data that only Chinmohan could figure out and he did. Anyway, at some point of time the application was ready and our plan was that our deployment team would travel to Manila and start the user acceptance testing and subsequent processes.

Then disaster struck! There was an attempted coup in the Philippines in January 2001 and the government decided to stop the issuance of all visas except tourist visas. This was a huge problem for us because our six member team could not travel and for HSBC it was an even bigger problem because the new system was supposed to go live from April 1. The other problem was the encryption issue. Our understanding of implementing Triple DES was quite different from what HSBC was expecting and we did not have the time to rebuild everything in the way that they wanted. The whole project was suddenly in jeopardy.

First things first, we decided to use a free, open source product, namely PGP - Pretty Good Privacy to temporarily plug the encryption issue. But the visa problem was severe. If our team could not reach Manila then there was no way that the software could be installed or tested. I requested our Project Manager and Chinmohan to go to Manila on a tourist visa and start the process but our Project Manager was reluctant because of personal reasons. Chinmohan was prepared to go alone but I felt that pushing him out to the frontline alone would have been unfair. So I decided to join him as a tourist in Manila.

Manila was a bit dicey. Even though the coup had been quashed, there was a sense of unease in the city. Unlike in other assignments, where we had the luxury of looking around the city,  Chinmohan and I kept ourselves restricted to our hotel and the HSBC office next door. But what was most important was that the implementation finally got going even though the our team had been reduced from six to two. Also, this was perhaps the first and only PwC project where the Project Partner was seen crawling under the table plugging in wires to routers and switches. 

HSBC Manila was very helpful but their testing was extremely rigorous. They performed actions that no sane banker would ever perform but justified it by referring to a little black book that had records of all kinds of foolish things that people had done in the past. The idea was of course to see whether our software could handle such unlikely scenarios and very often it did not. However Pei Fong assured us that this was not a problem as long as we could fix them in time. Chinmohan, alone in Manila and his backup team in Calcutta rose to the occasion and did a great job of fixing bugs as and when they were reported. By and large the HSBC Manila team was happy and the Manila Branch manager -- I forget his name -- took me out for lunch where we had Bird Nest Soup! 

But there was one nagging issue that refused to go away and this was about the encryption problem. We had given a patch and solved the problem but HSBC IT department were not happy with such a solution. So I left Chinmohan in Manila, to continue with the user acceptance testing and flew to Hongkong to meet the head of HSBC IT. This was a long and difficult meeting where I alone had to argue our case with a whole bunch of HSBC IT folks for whom such a novel and non-standard idea was truly scandalous. Nevertheless, I persisted and eventually,  they agreed that the third party based solution that we had offered was indeed safe, secure and trustworthy and met their Bank's technical requirements.  

However, we were not yet done, because then, one of their internal auditors through another curve ball, or in our parlance, a googly, in the shape of another, non technical but nevertheless complex issue. Since PGP was piece software that would be used by HSBC, that was built by a third party their auditors would need to see an invoice, evidence of payment against the invoice and a contract for the support of the software. PGP however, was a free, open source product that could only be downloaded from the web and so there was no question of an invoice, payment or support. Hence it would be unacceptable. For a moment, there was a pin drop silence and all discussion came to a halt. That is where, I thought for a moment and played my trump card, or as they would say in bridge, a 'ruff'. I said that PwC India would "sell" this software against an invoice of HK$ 10, accept the payment and issue the warranty under my signature as an equity partner of PwC India. For a moment everyone was stunned at the novelty of the idea and then, much to the relief of everyone around the table, the audit team accepted this as a valid solution. 

Meanwhile, Chinmohan's testing was going very well and all bugs were being swatted successfully. The project was on course and there was no danger of missing the 31st March / 1st April deadline. Everybody -- from HSBC Manila, HSBC HK and PwC India -- was very happy. In fact, the success of the project had percolated upward into the HSBC hierarchy and it was being said that this was perhaps the first software project in HSBC that was going live on schedule. So much so, that  Aman Mehta, the CEO of HSBC had indicated his desire to meet me for a dinner in his private penthouse

This came as a shock or a surprise for the HSBC team because no vendor had ever been invited to the CEO's penthouse on the top floor of the iconic HSBC building that was a landmark in Hongkong. The HSBC was so tall that the top floor would generally be above the cloud and the lifts that went up there had had its walls plastered with paper so that people would not get dizzy by having to look out.

Dinner with Mr Mehta was a grand affair and I had the honour of being accompanied by Lawrence Webb. Sipping champagne with the CEO in that penthouse was something that I, as one of the junior most partners of PwC, could never dream of.  I do not remember what was on the menu but I do remember that Mr. Mehta was delighted to know that the work had been done from Calcutta because he had been a manager at the HSBC Branch in Dalhousie Square. I do remember that we talked about what Calcutta was, what it had of late become and perhaps what could be done to bring it back to its former glory. One idea that was discussed was whether the vast premises of HSBC in Dalhousie could be converted into an in-house software development facility with the assistance of PwC. We all thought that it would be a wonderful idea but unfortunately it never happened. People moved on and the idea died a natural death.

What happened instead is that after I got back to Calcutta, we started a second auxiliary project to support the software that we had developed, for another three years. Under the leadership of Arindam Chatterjee we set up a mechanism of having two of our staff being on standby. Their task would be to fix any new bugs that were reported after the system had gone live or more importantly carry out any other enhancements that may be required.  This support project was carried out successfully for another two years until the consulting practice of PwC India was bought over by IBM. The funny thing was that even though the contract value of the support project was lower than the development project, our profits were far higher because there was hardly any problem with the original software but we were billing HSBC for the support staff.

09 - Building Yantrajaal

Yantrajaal is a word that I coined to represent the phenomenon of the Internet visualised as a network of devices. But when and how? My fascination, if not a love affair, with this technology began when, in early 1996, I was invited to the IBM Software Lab at Cary, North Carolina to be felicitated for my efforts to push DB2 in India. Once the IBM business was over, I hopped over to meet my IIT KGP friend Dr Ananda Mitra who lived next door at Wake Forest. Here, in his attic study I "saw" the web -- or rather, visited a few websites that formed a part of the world wide web -- using Mosaic one of the first graphic web-browser .. and I was hooked!

Almost immediately, I saw the immense potential of this new technology and the way it would change the society and economy but most people around me did not. In fact, even though IBM had already built a website, in India, in its TISL avatar it had no vision at all of doing anything with this new technology. TISL in India was still obsessed with pushing its expensive hardware onto unsuspecting Indian clients. I did try to use a text only browser through the IBM network that had just reached Calcutta but of course, after Mosaic, the experience was pathetic.

Fortunately, at this time, I ran into Jaydeep Mukherjee, who had been my senior in IIT Kharagpur at IIM Calcutta. He was then a partner in the newly formed MCS practice of the audit firm Price Waterhouse and he asked me join his practice in their newly built office in Salt Lake. Leaving a technology giant like IBM and to join a tiny consulting practice of an audit company seemed madness but after talking to Roopen Roy, in his Sukh Sagar office, I took the plunge because Roopen believed in my vision of an internet based eCommerce practice.

But as soon as I had joined Price Waterhouse, I was packed off to a completely different project that was tasked in creating Computer Based Training modules for the SAP practice. First this was a great deviation from my desire to get into eBusiness, second this was not really SAP itself  but training material for SAP. I was roped in because with my background in IBM, it would be easy for me to get a visa to go to the US and kick start the project. So with a heavy heart and sense of betrayal I joined the project but then I saw a way to convert this threat to my dreams into an opportunity! 

I suggested to Roopen that the CBT project could be done very elegantly if we could set up a digital connectivity between the PW office in Philadelphia and our Salt Lake office using the internet. This would require a radio based, wireless, leased line connectivity between our PW office in Salt Lake and the VSNL office that was also in Salt Lake. The cost for this 64 kbps connection would be an astronomical Rupees Ten Lakhs ( I forget the exact cost) but I managed to convince Roopen that this would greatly facilitate our "off-shore" business.

Back from the US, I ditched the SAP CBT project and got into this connectivity exercise with Chinmohan Biswas and Angshuman Chakravarty as my key collaborators.. First job was to get VSNL connectivity -- which meant signing a mountain of paperwork and agreeing to a draconian contract that threatened a ₹1 crore fine if we diverted traffic outside the office! This connectivity was not easy. The VSNL staff -- who were barely literate in networks matters -- thought that their work was over as soon as the modem in our premises started blinking. Now what? None of us had any clue but after a lot of effort we discovered that we would have to install a DNS server which was something we had never even heard of before.

A machine was procured but how to configure it? And mind you, our internet was not yet operational so that we could not search the web for answers! After a lot of phone calls, we discovered that the NCST in Pune had the expertise to configure the DNS and we begged them to do so. Since we had a leased line we also had a domain PWA.CO.IN and this meant that we were technically a client of NCST who controlled domains in India. That is why NCST agreed to help us. Finally, we connected a Linux machine "in the raw" TCP IP mode -- simply by setting the IP address of the machine to one of the 16 IP addresses that VSNL had given us --  and allowed the gentleman in NCST Pune to access this machine with the root password! That is how he logged into our machine and then installed and configured the DNS server. 

The next job was to set up a firewall that would allow any machine in our local area network to connect to the internet. Chinmohan and Angshuman had by then figured out how to install and configure the Gauntlet Firewall Server and this served as a proxy and gateway for all machines to communicate with machines anywhere on the internet.

Getting everyone to browse the web was fine but was more important was the ability to send and receive mail. For this we managed to install and configure a basic linux  mail server so that anyone with a userid in the Linux machine would now be able to send a mail with an email id like prithwis@pwa.co.in . Today, this might seem trivial but then this was such a big issue that once this was achieved, we had a grand dinner that night ! We celebrated the fact that we could send a mail from our office to the world.

Then things moved rapidly. Lotus Notes was the preferred platform that Price Waterhouse used to store and transmit documents and information across the world and Roopen Roy was the only person in PW India who could access by using an  hideously expensive international phone call to connect to a server in London. Agnimitra Biswas and Shiva(?) helped by connecting a local Lotus Notes server to the internet through our newly installed leased line, now everyone in the company could start using Lotus Notes. Our email id became prithwis@notes.pwa.co.in in line with Price Waterhouse staff in other countries and geographies. 

One of the unexpected outcomes of this free and open email was that one of our senior lady colleagues started getting obscene mails from a userid called fakguni@hotmail.com After some investigation I discovered that this man was sitting in an AT&T office and sending anonymous emails. We wrote to the the admin of att.com domain but he never bothered to reply or take any action. So we sent a threatening note to the the offender telling him -- or rather bluffing -- that we knew where he was and the security will catch him soon. We banked on the fact that such people are generally cowards who love to work anonymously but cannot handle exposure. Sure enough, he was soon shitting in his pants and telling us that he had a young daughter at home and that he would not do it again. We left it at that though in reality there was little that we could have done. AT&T security never helped us in any way. 

Now that the basic infrastructure of DNS, mail and Lotus Notes server was up and available, the SAP CBT project took off like a rocket on steroids and I was allowed to drift over to my primary love of eBusiness.

My first intention was to create a website for Price Waterhouse but learnt that this was not permissible as per global standards. So I did the next best thing by building my personal website on tripod.com, geocities.com and angelfire.com 

In 1997-98, there was hardly anyone in Calcutta who knew let alone used the internet for any kind of business and all my efforts to get some business for Price Waterhouse went in vain. So I decided that we must organize a conference in Calcutta to educate people about this technology and in the process, hopefully drum up some business. Roopen supported the idea but made it very clear that I would have raise the requisite money from the participants. The company was prepared to offer only non-monetary, moral and material, support.

Inspired by the magician PC Sorcar's brand Indrajaal, I coined the phrase Yantrajaal -- the network of devices -- to represent the internet and the conference was called the Yantrajaal conference. This was a paid conference, not a free one, and I was surprised and delighted when nearly 100 people signed up to attend the event in Science City.

Unfortunately, I do not have any of the presentations that were made in the conference but there was some money that was left over at the end and guess how did I spend it? I used it to purchase the yantrajaal domain from the InterNIC in the US for the princely sum of USD 35 per year. The idea was to have a similar conference every year but unfortunately, that was the first and the last!

However, I decided to create my own personal website using this domain name and since 1999, this website, www.yantrajaal.com  has been my personal portal and storehouse of my thoughts and ideas.

06 - The Midnight Meeting : Twelve Good Men

Edward Lorenz was a mathematician and meteorologist who is credited with articulating the “butterfly effect”. In the context of Chaos Theory, he said that by flapping its wings, a butterfly in, say Borneo, can set in motion a chain of events that can cause a tornado in Texas. A similar, unseen flutter sent tremors through the consulting world in the closing years of 2001.

Enron, a US based energy company -- that also had a small footprint in Dabhol, India -- was indicted on accounting fraud along with its auditor, Arthur Anderson, who were also delivering other, non-audit, consulting services to the company. The resultant upheaval led to the Sarbanes Oxley Act that in effect debarred audit companies from offering non-audit services to the same client. This was a big blow to all consulting companies and especially so to the so-called Big 4 of which PwC was one. All these companies had a strong technology business based that, though rooted in  original audit relationships, was far bigger and more profitable than the audit business. In essence, all large consulting firms were to separate their audit and non-audit businesses and in effect break up into two separate companies.

PwC in India had a very unique corporate structure in line with Indian laws and global practices. There were multiple audit companies, led by partners who were all chartered accountants. Then there was another consulting outfit, a private limited company,  led by executive directors who were not not chartered accountants. However the pool of partners and executive directors were all collectively referred to as partners of the PwC as all of them had a financial stake in the enterprise. The profits ( and losses, which were never there) were shared among this entire pool in ratios that were calculated based on the seniority in the “partnership” and certain result based parameters. Clients were delivered services from the company that had the required competence and payments were pooled into a “common” kitty that was expertly and honestly managed by some of the finest brains in the accounting profession. Net-net It was one big happy family — a Camelot, where King Arthur and his knights ruled with justice and integrity..

The collapse of Enron in distant Houston, was the butterfly that flapped its wings and caused a tornado in the PwC India Camelot.

Even though PwC India had no equity participation from PwC US or any other entity impacted by the Sarbanes Oxley Act, it was still a member of the PwC global network, as were all other member firms in every country. Since PwC US was the dominant partner in this network, all other firms had to do what PwC US was doing; break up the auditing and consulting arms from each other. In India, this was like a breakup of a joint family and since the days of the Mahabharat, this has never been a very cordial or pleasant exercise. Just as the lure of the Holy Grail led to the breakup of the Round Table, so did the lure of picking up the spoils from this rupture led to the break up of all cordiality in the PwC family.

All across the world, elaborate plans had to be made for the separation of assets and people, and these were presented in, what else but, Powerpoint slides. In all these slides, the audit function and its assets was shown on the Left Hand Side (LHS) and the to-be-broken-away consulting function was shown on the Right Hand Side (RHS). This became the standard nomenclature while discussing the separation event.

In India, the RHS partners were led by Anjan Mukerji, Sharat Bansal, Amitabh Ray and consisted of D Ashok, Susheela Venkatmaraman, Ravi Trivedy, Shovon Mukherjee, Arvind Mahajan, Anjan Majumdar, Suman Mazumdar, Ramesh Srinivas and me. There was a thirteenth person whose name I will not mention here for reasons that will become clear later on.

The LHS partners were led by two industry stalwarts, but strangely enough included four consulting partners, including the consulting leader and three of his ultra loyal followers. These four should  logically  have been in the RHS, but they moved across to  the LHS because the LHS had covert plans of restarting the highly profitable consulting businesses with this coterie.

Globally, there was a plan to create a genuine MNC listed in the US Stock Exchange that would acquire all the RHS assets, all across the world and all RHS partners were required to join this company. But they would not be partners any more but employees. However,  they would be given a stake in the new firm in the form of stock options and restricted stock units, or equivalent instruments in compliance with local laws. The LHS partners would have to sell their equity entitlement in the new firm for cash raised through an IPO. This would mean that PwC India -- or rather its different constituents -- would continue as a pure audit firm as a partnership of the LHS partners as per Indian Law, while the consulting business from which the LHS partners would cashed out,  would move  -- with its assets, people, partners and clients --  into a global MNC headquartered in the US and operating under US company law.

For us on the RHS side, this seemed like a fair deal but the LHS partnership had other other ideas. Since the LHS partners were senior in rank and were dealing with the US partners, they floated the idea that (a) the RHS partners were not happy with this arrangement and that (b) the preferred alternative was to form a private limited company registered, not in the US, but in India.  Once again the LHS India partners would be compensated in cash while the RHS India partners would only be given shares in the new India registered company.

For the LHS this arrangement would have been very lucrative. First the valuation of a consulting company in the Indian market would be far higher than a similar company in the global market, so the local cash out for the LHS would be far higher than a proportionate cash out from a global IPO. Secondly the covert consulting operation would eventually emerge and grow because it would be part of, and be subsidised by, the global PwC LHS network. Third, the local consulting company run by RHS India would not be able to compete with the LHS operations because it would neither have a brand or network nor would it entrenched audit relationships that the LHS would have retained. And if in the process the twelve RHS partners perished, then so be it. Who cares?

This offer from the LHS to the Global PwC leadership was done without the consent or concurrence of the RHS partner but once this information got leaked, the RHS swung into action. First, Amitabh Ray called a secret meeting of the twelve RHS partners, excluding the 13th, late in the night in the Oberoi Hotel in Calcutta. So secret was the meeting that air-tickets for the non Calcutta RHS partners were not purchased through regular PwC India travel booking channels but by Amitabh Ray’s personal secretary. 

In the Oberoi, that night, the twelve partners met for the first time and decided on the course of action. First, it was decided that we would go along with the original global plan and become a part of the new US based MNC. Once this was agreed upon, Amitabh made a phone call to Dave Lewis? ( or Luis, the exact name escapes me ) the Global PwC partner who was handling India matters and conveyed the desire of the India RHS to join up with the global RHS. This person was astounded that the India LHS had communicated a completely different picture and this was causing considerable difficulty in the global operations. 

However, he suggested that there had to be a formal meeting involving more members of the global partnership and this had to be done without the India LHS being aware of it.

Next week, a conference call was arranged where all non-Calcutta RHS partners joined from the privacy of their respective offices but the Calcutta RHS assembled in Amitabh’s office in the X1-7 building. But since a  number of LHS partners were in the same or adjacent building,  we had to make sure that they did not drop in and learn about the rebellion. For this purpose, Amitabh stationed two of his trusted lieutenants, Partha Chakraborty and one more, at the door to alert us if any LHS partner -- or even the 13th RHS partner -- was headed towards the room.

This meeting was  attended by the General Counsel ( or Chief Legal Officer) of PwC US, and it was communicated to him in no uncertain terms India RHS was fully in agreement with what PwC US had planned and they would enthusiastically join the new US registered company that would be formed.

At this meeting, we informed PwC Global that in India, some consulting partners had  decided to stay in the LHS and what was worse, they had also decided that some key managers would also be retained in LHS. This would have crippled the operational readiness of the RHS even more. On hearing this the global leadership immediately decided this was illegal and announced  that all managers and staff in the consulting practice would be given the option of freely choosing to join either LHS or the RHS.

Once this news of the rebellion got around, the LHS was furious. Not only were their plans thwarted but their dreams of exiting at very high valuations with easy and abundant cash came to a grinding halt. Moreover, when given a choice,  an overwhelming majority of consulting staff decided to join RHS thus showing how deeply unpopular the four LHS partners were.

This is when the bitter internecine warfare came to the surface. When personal interests are threatened, all collegiality vanishes and Camelot collapses. Fangs were bared  and the gloves came off.  RHS assets were illegally carted off and RHS partners were threatened with personal lawsuits that could result in time spent in jail. Personal insults were hurled by the LHS against RHS partners.  These were things that I could perhaps forgive, but never forget. However, thanks to the steady and unwavering leadership of Anjan Mukherji, Amitabh Ray and Sharat Bansal, the RHS circled its wagons, stood shoulder to shoulder,  firmly holding ground and waiting for the US cavalry to arrive and save them from the vengeance and wrath of the LHS.

Meanwhile in the US, the cavalry was getting into position! Sometime in the middle of the year 2002, a new company called Monday was registered in the US. This  would acquire all RHS entities -- along with their assets, people and clients -- across the world. We were also told that Monday would go for an IPO in the US stock market “soon” and with this money the LHS partners would be paid off.

But just before the IPO, sometime in September,  Greg Brennerman joined Monday as CEO  and in one week, Brennerman did what many PwC US partners could not do -- he found a buyer, IBM,  for this new company, Monday, that now carried the assets of all RHS entities. We had a global teleconference where Brennerman explained how the sale to IBM was better than an IPO and also what all contracts we would need to sign for the deal could go through. We all agreed to this sale and signed a lot of personal level contracts with IBM. Monday, the independent company, would now be a part of IBM as IBM Consulting.

But even as this end game was being played out globally, the last few weeks of September were a nightmare for the RHS in India. With the LHS partners engaging in massive asset stripping, the RHS company was on its last financial legs. One particularly heinous piece of skullduggery was asking one of the RHS clients, the notoriously corrupt Bangladesh Power Development Board, to invoke bank guarantees that the RHS company had given, which left us with a huge hole in our cash holdings. While we had clients and people, there was no cash to pay salaries in October.

Anjan Mukherjee, called one last and desperate meeting of RHS partners where he requested each of the 12 RHS partners to write a cheque each -- depending on their shareholding in the company -- so that the first salary payment of the new company would not fail. These were really hefty cheques and we were told to liquidate assets if necessary to ensure that these cheques would  be honoured. Fortunately,  these cheques were never presented, let alone being cashed!

Because …

On the last day of September 2002, and it was a Monday,  the word officially came through that IBM, the knight in shining armour, had finally completed the process of acquiring the entire stakes in all RHS companies  all across the world. Along with all assets they were also acquiring all liabilities and so the critical October 2002 salaries would be paid out of IBM’s bottomless global resources. Our cheques were safe.

Hurrah! We were through, we had survived! As Neil Armstrong had said on touching down on the moon, “Tranquility Base Here, The Eagle Has Landed.”

While I do not have enough information about the LHS, we believe that they came off quite badly in this game. The RHS got much more money than the LHS and what was worse was that the value of all the assets that they had illegally stripped off from the RHS was deducted from what IBM finally paid to them as their dues.  For all their bluff and bluster that they had deployed against the relatively junior RHS partners, the LHS never had the wherewithal or the backbone to stand up to the phalanx of IBM lawyers and accountants who descended on PwC India to finally seal the deal.

But  who was the 13th partner who was not invited to the Oberoi meeting? And why? I checked with Amitabh. He told me that he had a gut feeling that #13 never wanted to join the RHS and would like to go back to the LHS, which is what he eventually did. Not as a partner but as an ordinary manager. Why did he do so? Well, we shall let bygones be bygones. Everyone has their own reason.

I still have many happy memories of the partnership at PwC but all good things must come to an end and this was the end of our Camelot.  But had it not been for that midnight meeting at the Oberoi, the end could have been truly tragic instead of the magic that saw all of us, the RHS partners, being welcomed as Band D executives in IBM.

02 - Boiling Point | Two Moments of Corporate Defiance

This would have been sometime in 1993 when I was working in the Computer Services Department of Tata Steel in Jamshedpur. We had, after considerable effort, finally developed and delivered the rather unimaginatively named Jamshedpur Information System. This was a fairly comprehensive and integrated computer system that stored and processed commercial information  --  Maintenance, Accounts, Marketing, Production/Operations, HR  --  in a DB2 database on an IBM ES/9000 system running MVS. In hindsight, we might have been better off implementing SAP, but that is hindsight  --  and SAP was hardly known in India then.

I had been very closely associated with the design and development of this system as the head of the database administration function  --  one of the elite corps of systems programmers  --  and had even travelled to the IBM training facility in Sydney, where I spent seven weeks learning about this new platform.

Unfortunately, the system we developed was not as fault-free as management would have liked and was occasionally quite slow. This meant we were often fire-fighting to ensure that the critical operations of the plant weren’t too adversely affected. At some point, things got so bad that our Divisional Manager, Akhil Pandey, was effectively humiliated by having our department merged with another  --  Automation  --  led by Dipankar Sengupta, a favourite of the Managing Director, Dr. J.J. Irani. Just before or after the merger, Dr. Irani called a meeting of all CSD officers to understand what had gone wrong. Mr. Pandey was specifically debarred from attending, as the general view was that he was the one who had messed things up  --  which, to be fair, was not entirely accurate. Yes, he had his coterie of sycophants, but such politics existed in every department. Dr. Irani had been told that without Mr. Pandey’s presence, the junior engineers would speak more candidly.

The meeting was well attended by all CSD officers. I won’t go into all that transpired  --  mostly because I’ve forgotten much of it  --  but I do remember that Dr. Irani was quite critical of our work and said so bluntly, to our discomfort and dismay. Then he said  --  and I quote from memory  --  “I thought I was hiring racehorses in this department, but now I see I have donkeys.”

Though I doubt he meant it personally, I felt that this was directed at me, since Dr. Irani had personally intervened to get me employed at Tata Steel (that’s another story). My blood boiled. My anger surged.

And then I did something unthinkable in Tata Steel’s rigid hierarchy. I stood up from my seat and publicly asked him to take back his words.

There was pin-drop silence. No one could believe a junior officer had spoken so directly to the Managing Director  --  and in public. But to everyone’s amazement, and to Dr. Irani’s eternal credit, he actually did.

Dr. J.J. Irani, the MD and highest-ranking executive of Tata Steel, publicly apologized for calling us donkeys and took back his words. He remained highly critical of our work  --  but now used more polite language.

After the meeting, our department was split in two. A handful of my colleagues quietly congratulated me for taking a stand, but most kept their distance, wary of repercussions and eager to remain uninvolved. But the outcome was both unexpected and dramatic.

Soon after, I was promoted to Assistant Divisional Manager and given a plum assignment as Executive Assistant to Dr. C.V. Kamath, AGM (Scientific Services), in the office of Mr. K.C. Mehra, the Executive Director (Operations). One of my jobs? Writing speeches for  --  guess who  --  Mr. J.J. Irani!

1999 or 2000. A luxurious Taj resort in Goa.

I had just been admitted to the partnership at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and we were attending a Partner-Managers meeting in Goa. It was great fun. Partners and senior managers gave presentations on various topics, and I  --  as the leader of the e-Business group  --  spoke about this new, fast-growing domain. Globally, PwC was making major strides in e-Business, and my presentation was well received. Many senior partners  --  for whom this technology was still quite new  --  complimented me.

Beyond the presentations, there was amazing food  --  Taj hospitality at its best  --  and on the beach, under the moonlight, there was beer, music, and more, all to the tune of Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water.

While e-Business was the hot topic, our core revenue came from the SAP practice, where PwC was the clear national and global leader. In India, our biggest client was ONGC, the public-sector giant. As part of our “keep the client happy” ritual, Roopen Roy, head of the Management Consulting practice, had invited Subir Raha, the Chairman and Managing Director of ONGC, to speak on “anything appropriate”  --  and of course enjoy the hospitality.

So, one evening  --  post-dinner but pre-Bacchanalia  --  the one-and-only Subir Raha took the podium to share his wisdom on “what it means to be a consultant.”

Frankly, aside from Roopen and a few partners directly involved with the ONGC project, most of us had little interest in his remarks. Still, professional courtesy required us to attend in full strength and listen politely.

I don’t remember much of what he said. What I do remember is that he was extremely  --  and brutally  --  critical of consultants in general and, by clear implication, of PwC consultants in particular. According to him, consultants knew nothing. They learned from the client’s staff, repackaged that knowledge, and sold it back as “advice.” It was damning stuff. What surprised me more was how my senior partners quietly absorbed the tirade like it was a Kishore Kumar song.

But I was different. Once again, a direct insult to me, my colleagues, and my profession sent my blood boiling. I was seated in the front row, flanked by two senior colleagues. I stood up. One of them gasped. The other tried to pull me down  --  but I was already on my feet.

“Mr. Raha, may I interrupt you for a second?”

A PSU CMD isn’t used to being interrupted, so despite his arrogance, he didn’t quite know how to respond. Had it been me, I would have politely asked to be allowed to finish  --  but he simply grunted something like “OK.” That was all the opening I needed.

To my immense surprise, I didn’t raise my voice.

“Mr. Raha, before becoming a consultant at PwC, I worked at Tata Steel,”  --  though I didn’t say that I was in the Computer Services department; I let him remain unsure. “There, I had the opportunity to visit the collieries in Jamadoba and West Bokaro.” The exact names cemented my credibility with the audience. I continued, “And there, sir, a mine sardar once gave me a great piece of advice. Would you like to hear what he said?”

He was too stunned to respond, so I pressed on.

“साहब, कोयला जब तक ज़मीन के नीचे दबा रहता है, तब तक उसकी कोई क़ीमत नहीं होती। लेकिन वही कोयला जब हम लोग जान तोड़ मेहनत करके बाहर निकालते हैं, तब वो बहुत महँगा बिकता है।”

(No one had actually said this to me. My Hindi was weak, but the line came to me on the spot. The message was clear: knowledge buried in an organisation is worthless until we  --  the consultants  --  extract it and turn it into something valuable.)

I didn’t need to explain further. PwC partners and managers are all very smart people. They got the point. The room erupted in a loud round of applause and cheers.

One of their own had just delivered a solid punch to the arrogant nose of someone who had been insulting them all evening  --  and they loved it.

Raha, of course, was stunned  --  not just by my words, but by the enthusiastic support I received. He had nothing meaningful to say in response. He mumbled something like “I dig it”  --  an awkward attempt to be clever  --  and quickly ended his speech.

He skipped the late-night festivities, citing an early morning flight  --  a clear excuse to avoid further contact with us.

As for ONGC, they did give us a very hard time on the contract. But none of my senior partners ever blamed me for confronting him  --  because everyone knew that our own team had, in fact, messed up on the project.

But that, as they say, is another story.