The dotcom duke
by Patrick Jonas
IF YOU ask Mr Girija Pande's children how they learnt the Pythagoras theorem, they will tell you an interesting story.
It stems from a trip the Pande family made to Greece.
In the early 1980s, Mr Pande was working in South Korea for ANZ Grindlays. And when it was time for a family holiday, the Pandes decided that it should be to one of the Greek islands.
But which one? They had no idea.
So they took an atlas, opened the page with the map of Greece and just dropped a pencil. It fell on the island of Samos.
Only after they arrived on the island did they find out that Pythagoras was born in Samos. Mr Pande's children - Aakanksha and Rahul - were then in primary school and eager to know all about the great mathematician.
"Even today I tell my son about that trip. It sparked off my children's interest in maths," Mr Pande, 58, told tabla! Rahul, 28, who went on to Stanford is working with a hedge fund company in Wall Street. And Aakanksha, 27, is married and a scholar at Harvard doing research in health policy. She also teaches statistics as part of her work in Harvard.
The children had a role in Mr Pande returning to India in 1989. "After 25 years in banking, working overseas, I went back to India so that my children would get to know India better. I was then the fund manager for the mutual fund division of our bank. But I was also yearning to do something different. It was the time the dotcom story was starting and I realised the potential of technology. I knew Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as we were their clients and I also knew their CEO," he said, explaining how he got to join the tech major.
Given his knowledge of the Asian region, he was asked to set up the Asia Pacific office, which he did in 2001 in Singapore.
Why Singapore?
"It was a difficult decision not to choose Hong Kong, especially after having worked and lived there. But I chose Singapore for the strong support from the Singapore Government. This was the best place for a technology company."
And therein began a long success story. TCS today has offices in 14 Asian cities with 5,000 employees.
He is also instrumental in opening the door to China in 2003.
TCS was the first Indian tech company to set up shop in China. Today over 1,200 TCS employees, over 90 per cent of them Chinese, work there.
Mr Pande feels India can learn a lot from China.
"India can learn social order and discipline from China, which we lack sometimes. The Chinese also tend to have a very strong view across the community on growth. In India we sometimes get sidetracked with other issues. There is a single-minded focus on growth to improve the lot of the ordinary Chinese."
He recalled a remarkable experience he had while dealing with the Chinese authorities.
In 2003, after TCS decided to set up an office in Hangzhou, he often had to meet the mayor and vice mayor of the city. "They were always readily available, even on a Sunday, unlike Indian bureaucrats. One day I told them that food was a problem with the Indians working there as most of them were vegetarians."
The mayor noted this down.
When Mr Pande visited him three months later, the mayor asked him whether he had visited the local vegetarian restaurant. "When I said no, his reply was: 'We set it up for you'.
"Tell me, how many countries will do that for foreign investors," asked MrPande.
Since then one more Indian vegetarian restaurant has come up in Hangzhou.
The IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, who was born in Nainital, lives in Singapore with his wife, Bharoti, who teaches Business Communications at the Singapore Management University.
In his free time he plays golf and bridge. In fact, he was part of the TCS team that won the Forbes Sentosa Golf tournament last month.
Reading is a passion too. He was midway through Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize-winning book when this interview was conducted.
He has fond memories of Nainital. As a child, he and his parents would spend two months every year at his grandfather's home there. It was also a time when his relatives would join in and that bonding continues even today.He considers Singapore an amazing amalgam of the East and the West and loves it here. To him, it has the high Western standards when it comes to infrastructure but it is very much an Asian city.
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