Anil Agarwal of Vedanta Plc -
On India’s Mining Resources - Minerals are next only to oil on imports bill. India is richly endowed with natural resources, yet is not recognised or leveraged the way Australia, Brazil and China are. I wish India to quadruple share of mining industry, from 2.5% to 10% of GDP
Rajiv Bajaj of Bajaj Auto -
On Domestic business - We would have liked to be a little more successful in the domestic motorcycle market than we did. Every third motorcycle in Africa is a Bajaj. In India, our market share is now 21%...The time has now come after doing a good job overseas to do more here.
On Electric mobility - We believe strongly in electric mobility. It is a new technology and, therefore, there may be some shifts here and there. But our objective is to bring electric vehicles by 2020
On Current slowdown - There is a cycle in every business. But we are fortunate to be in a country which is the largest two wheeler market in the world. Our job now is to adjust the sails and ride out the wind. India is too big a market to fail.
Sanjiv Bajaj of Bajaj Finserv –
On ALM - There were a bunch of HFCs that were mismatched on funds and they got caught at the wrong end. They had short- term liabilities but did not have the assets. Clearly, if you have to grow, you have to match your assets to your liabilities. That is one of the first things you learn whether you are an NBFC or a bank. This is something that requires correction and RBI has taken some steps towards that.
On NBFC Crisis - Why did all NBFCs, HFCs fall in value by between 20 and 40% in a matter of a few days? This is systemic risk. Today. the top 10 NBFCs in the country each have AUMs of over Rs 10,000 crore and they are responsible for 30% of incremental credit going into the system. Consumer and SME growth in this economy has been helped by NBFCs. We u need to find a way to ring-fence them. It does not mean that you are going to create the wrong incentives but why did not banks fall because everybody knows that a bank license is a secure license under RBI. RBI will open up a window for liquidity. Why don’t you do that for big NBFCs?
On Banks vs NBFC’s - What is an NBFC? It is a license to lend with some limitations. A bank is the same but there are some differences. Why should NBFCs be associated with shadow banking? It is real banking. This is where some fundamental thinking and rethinking is required.
On Life Insurance - Life insurance clearly has evolved into pure protection of life but fare more importantly into both an investment product and a protection product. We are very bullish. We have transformed our business about three years ago and from there, we are showing steady growth in the overall top line, in the product mix as well as in the productivity across the different channels. That is growing well.
Abidali Z Neemuchwala of Wipro –
On Achievements in Last Three Years - Our digital revenues are almost now one-third of our overall company revenues. We restructured some parts of our business which do not belong to the future, like we divested our data centre business. We combined our Middle East business with the global business -- all these steps started delivering results and good growth rate. We have the capability through the acquisitions and we are internally building things like Design, Cloud, Cyber Security, some of the new age services like Appirio in sales force and others.
On Improving the Quality of Revenues - The quality of revenue looks at balance sheet items like un-built revenues, collectables, how we address clients who may have credit rating challenges and stuff like that to make sure that on a sustainable basis we do not surprise markets with volatility or unpredictability. We have come quite far.
Just to give you one data point, about seven or eight quarters back, more than 27% of our quarterly revenues were un-built revenues. This quarter that has come down to about 13%. Our operating cash flows are ahead of our revenues and billing.
On Healthcare Vertical - Over the last two years. revenue dropped almost $270 million to about $100-110 million. It is a very significant amount of revenue hit and then there are some of the amortisation acceleration etc that we have taken. In the next couple of quarters, we will at least hit the bottom
On Efforts to Localise Talent in the US - When we started on this, we did take a little bit of a margin hit because this needs investments and we are kind of done with those investments. Now it has become a part of our operating structure, our cost models and we are able to deliver margin expansion because it has become a way of life. Now mid-level talent is still short especially in our large markets whether you look at US and UK and Australia, but by building talent and cadre locally in the markets and having established employer brand ahead of our competition, we do well over there.