A Conversation with Giridhar Sanjeevi
In the third episode of Bizdom, Deepak Narayanan sits down with Giridhar Sanjeevi, former CFO of Indian Hotels, whose career has spanned the Taj Group, Diageo, Merck, Wockhardt, and ITC – or as he colorfully describes it: “cigarettes, booze, drugs, and hospitality.”
From navigating global leadership across continents to balancing the tension between pace and process, Giri shares hard-won insights on building purpose-driven organizations where profits and goodness coexist. He discusses managing teams in an AI-first world, why ESG needs to move beyond compliance into strategy and purpose, and the non-negotiable importance of ethical leadership – illustrated through gripping stories like firing an entire leadership team for corruption and emerging vindicated from a CBI investigation through sheer process excellence.
With stories that are both thoughtful and unexpectedly amusing – from airport systems freezing in New York to the transformative power of the Bhagavad Gita – this conversation is essential viewing for CXOs and future leaders. Giri’s central message resonates clearly: develop breadth across industries, geographies, and roles; embrace the growth mindset required for continuous reskilling; and remember that the world is now a world of opportunity for those willing to take calculated risks with grit, clarity, and heart. An edited transcript follows:
Giridhar: My career has been what I simply say: cigarettes, booze, drugs, and hospitality. I sold cigarettes at ITC, booze at Diageo, drugs at Merck, and rounded it off in hospitality.
Deepak: And then you brought everyone to the hospital!
The Evolution of Leadership
Deepak: You’ve worked across continents – Asia, Europe – with Indian multinationals. How has leadership evolved over the years?
Giridhar: I’m very fortunate to have gotten that breadth of industries and geographical exposure. Leadership has clearly morphed over the years, with both pluses and minuses.
On the plus side, there are far more opportunities opening up today. People can be more risk-taking, more enterprising. In India particularly, I see what I loosely call a “hustle culture”: focusing on growth and getting things done, with processes and systems following later.
The concern is whether we’re building long-lasting corporations. The Fortune 500 has churned significantly. Companies that grew rapidly can suddenly come down. This means time spans are much shorter for leadership development.
When I joined ITC or worked at Merck or Taj, people put 30-plus years into their companies. There was structured career progression, mentorship, and leadership development programs. Now companies realize people don’t stay long, so both company-sponsored development and individual leadership growth happen on-the-job, on-the-go rather than through structured programs.
This can be both positive and negative. You learn very fast because you have to hit the ground running. Earlier, you could be a trainee going through a long internship. Today, people are much smarter and need to be ready immediately.
I’m optimistic about the opportunities available today: they’re much greater and more global. As long as people have a growth mindset and are open to opportunities, these changes represent progress. Growth mindset and grit are becoming essential leadership principles, even for professionals in their mid-40s. What worked so far won’t necessarily work in the future—you need to reskill and rebuild.
Hustle Culture: Process vs. Speed
Deepak: You mentioned hustle culture, where you figure out how to make money first, then processes follow. Is this very Indian?
Giridhar: It’s not just an Indian phenomenon. In the startup world across Asia and the US, you see hustle culture focused on solving the here-and-now rather than process. As companies grow, processes set in because you can’t operate without them.
Even in established corporations like Diageo, going back 15-20 years. we divided the world into major markets like the US and UK, and venture markets like India and 120 other countries. We found distinct cultural differences.
Getting a decision from the US market took four months with extensive research. In venture markets like India, it was always going after low-hanging fruit, keeping things moving: a pay-as-you-go culture. We found tremendous value there.
As growth started to struggle – and every company goes through this – Diageo realized they were being too slow in markets like the US. They asked why they couldn’t learn from more agile markets. Ivan Menezes then became CEO of US operations before becoming global CEO, bringing those principles into play.
As a CFO, this creates a typical challenge: Is it pace before rigor, rigor before pace, or pace with rigor? In hustle culture – really experimentation culture – as long as you understand the risks you’re taking, it’s okay. You can do A/B testing instead of endless debate.
But if I say “rigor before pace” as CFO, that causes problems—people say let’s get things moving first. Ultimately, you need systems that enable pace with rigor and support an experimentation culture.
Deepak: How do you build rigor with pace? It’s like fixing a car in motion.
Giridhar: We’re not just scorekeepers; we also help hit the goals. A key CFO role is enabling risk-taking. One method I’ve found useful: if investment is required, I say take $250,000 today, but let’s define milestones for 3 or 6 months. If those milestones are achieved, we invest more. This gating process enables risk while ensuring things don’t blow up. You need to build alignment—it’s more about testing with no collateral damage.
Cultural Differences in Processes
Deepak: How do you see different countries managing processes versus growth? In India, it’s hard for people to follow systems, but when we get it right, we get it right.
Giridhar: Change is glorious at the end, but painful at the beginning. It’s very hard to institute processes in India, but when they start working, they work well.
In developed markets, process comes first, with pluses and minuses. They’re so process-oriented that when something doesn’t work, they don’t know what to do. I was at New York airport a week ago: their system wasn’t working. For 15 minutes, they didn’t know what to do. Imagine that happening in India – we’d find a way to make it work.
The plus is they won’t deviate: you know they’ll wait until it’s fixed. In our case, we find the workaround first.
Deepak: What about leadership evolution specifically?
Giridhar: To be successfully aligned with the global mindset, there’s no real difference between an Indian leader and a global leader today. They behave universally the same, talk the same language, and operate on principles of trust and integrity. These have become hygiene factors. This has been a remarkable shift in the last 10 years.
Beyond process, it’s also culture. In the Anglo-Saxon culture in London, if we agree on a plan with specific dates, it generally gets done. If someone can’t meet a deadline, they communicate that. In markets like Indonesia, China, Ireland, or Poland—even within Europe—people can agree to things and just not do them.
Team Management: From Hierarchy to Influence
Deepak: How has managing teams changed from when you started to today?
Giridhar: We’ve moved from hierarchical organizations to matrix structures to sometimes quite loose organizations. This requires a different mindset.
In hierarchical organizations, the boss is right. The question becomes: do you work for the cause or for the boss? Some organizations work that way, putting pressure on the boss to make the right decisions while sometimes stifling initiative from levels below.
In matrix structures, you’re part of teams with people from different functions. You work as a group, you collaborate. The shift goes from directing to influencing. Moving from directing to influencing is the new theme.
With technology, remote work, and looser groups becoming the norm, it’s more about influence today.
AI’s Impact on Teams and Work
Deepak: How does AI fit into this? People say you don’t need many people interfering with what you do.
Giridhar: AI is evolving. Clearly, processes can easily be handled by AI. Agentic AI can do lots of different things. It’s wait-and-see regarding all implications, but many jobs are at risk.
If you’re a risk manager in a bank, for example, JP Morgan has implemented software spending billions that can write risk reports for proposals pretty accurately. You just need oversight. Many jobs will be at risk, and sometimes we think creative jobs aren’t, but creative jobs can be too, because AI is capable of really creative work.
Like every change, while there will be job losses, there will also be new opportunities and new roles. It has implications for countries: look at IT companies following a certain model now experiencing plateauing. They need to reinvent themselves.
Our education system needs to prepare children for different roles. They need flexibility to do different things. AI is still playing out, including big ethical issues, but we’ll see how it evolves.
Deepak: Do you see the need to manage people differently with AI as co-pilot?
Giridhar: You may not need as many people. You use AI to give certain outcomes, then use your team to understand the outcome – explainability – and how to implement. Explainability is becoming very important.
I was talking to someone in high-tech programming. A team member used ChatGPT for complex programming, which was fine. But when that program gave problems, he didn’t know which part was causing issues because he didn’t write it. So oversight on teams becomes critical: making sure usage doesn’t negatively impact the organization.
Profits with Purpose: The Tata Way
Deepak: One of your philosophies is “do good, do well.” This has social angles beyond just ESG, correct?
Giridhar: Ultimately, it’s profits with purpose. Profits with purpose is absolutely important. The days of just shareholder capitalism and wealth maximization are gone completely.
The Tata Group over my last seven years was a great example where everything had heart and purpose. When Jamshedji Tata said, “Community is the real basis for our existence”, all actions are motivated by that.
During the pandemic, when it hit, my first discussion with Puneet Chhatwal and Chandra went like this: Chandra told us, “Make sure you do not fire anybody.” While companies were firing due to zero revenues, our revenues had almost come down, but Chandra looked at me and said, “Giri, we’ll anyway make ₹5,000 crore losses. What’s another ₹50-60 crores to make sure people are protected?”
We went beyond that. While we weren’t firing anyone, some partner hotels were firing their lowest-level employees. We’d all taken salary cuts. Normally, salary cuts save cash, but we contributed that money to the Taj Trust. That money paid people from partner companies who’d been fired: they all got ₹50,000. That is unbelievable.
You can still profit: profit objective is not inconsistent with purpose. Goodness always wins. At Merck, the patient was at the center of everything. George W. Merck said, “Medicine is for people, not for profits. If you remember that, profits will follow.” Today, it’s a $235 billion market cap company, yet patient centricity remains paramount.
No Compromise on Ethics
Deepak: Tell us about an incident where doing good came into conflict with profits: where you were between a rock and a hard place.
Giridhar: There’s no compromise at all. If you believe you need to do the right things, there’s no compromise.
July 1, 2002: we fired the entire leadership team in Indonesia for anti-corruption at Diageo. We spent months thinking through how to fix the culture around anti-corruption and bribery. We held detailed workshops, met regulators and lawyers.
Ultimately, we morphed the business model completely. We decided we couldn’t run it: the risks were too much. We redefined our role as just brand custodians. On an arm’s-length principle, the business itself was transferred with full protection, so it wasn’t seen as outsourcing something we couldn’t do ourselves.
Then the business took off with full compliance. You need systems and processes to weed corruption out completely. There’s no question of forgiving it. You take the person out, send a strong message, understand why it happened, and implement processes.
Nothing is tamper-proof: it’s tamper-evident. You want systems where if something goes wrong, you know something has gone wrong. More important than processes is great communication – upward, sideward, downward. Usually, it’s the lowest guy in the company who tells you something doesn’t seem right, and usually, we don’t listen because he’s too junior. But if you listen and fix it, you’re fine. Even regulators are happy with that.
Process Excellence in Practice
Giridhar: At —, I had just joined as CFO when we got a CBI notice saying we’d paid certain doctors: could we confirm? We looked at our systems and confirmed: yes, we paid these amounts on these dates. Those doctors were under CBI investigation.
In medical parlance, when we visit doctors, how do we know they’re updated with the latest treatments? Pharma companies do continuing medical education meetings where experts talk to doctors. But many times these are just opportunities for wining, dining, and bribing.
Our process included photographic evidence from two different angles for each meeting.
We explained our scientific principle: time to prepare presentation, time to travel, time at the meeting, potential loss of clinical practice, compensated at a certain hourly rate equals ₹50,000.
What I’m trying to say: transparency and processes aren’t driven by regulators: you determine that you want processes that work. This was great practice for me.
Not only was I interrogated, but the medical representative who organized those meetings was also called. His skin was saved because he followed all the processes. We made this guy talk about processes to sales teams. When you tell sales to follow processes, they don’t listen: “Here’s a CFO talking about processes.” But this guy understood the value; otherwise his family would have been in trouble.
This is a great example of how a regulator saw best practice. We got awards from the tax department for honest taxpaying. That’s good governance.
ESG: Beyond Compliance
Deepak: Talk about ESG: the work you’ve done and your perspective on sustainability.
Giridhar: I’ve been looking at ESG closely over the last four or five years at Indian Hotels. ESG really took off after Larry Fink’s 2017-18 letter about companies working for the long term. He runs BlackRock, a passive fund, not even an active investor.
Based on a Harvard Law School article I relate to, companies can have three stances on ESG:
- First: Compliance-driven stance. The law says publish a BRSR report – I’ll do it. Don’t discharge effluent water into rivers – I’ll comply. It’s okay but not enough.
- Second: Strategy-driven stance. If it makes strategic sense, use ESG as a board agenda incorporated across the organization. When we implemented solar power with Tata Power in a Bombay hotel, it was a no-brainer: not only green power but significantly cheaper, saving 50% on regular power costs. Every hotel wanted to implement it. Whether these arbitrages continue long-term, I don’t know, but embedding into strategy becomes sustainable because people see value through the line.
- Third: Purpose-driven stance. Like Tata saying that we won’t fire employees during the pandemic.
My interest is going beyond compliance. We’re still scratching the surface from a compliance perspective. Even on BRSR reports, at the board level, there’s very little knowledge: what are GHG emissions, how do you measure them, waste disposal processes. Consistency of processes across units is lacking.
Climate change is real. Companies are dealing with adaptation costs. There are huge risks but also massive opportunities. If companies can relook at their strategy and make the required pivots, they can pay off.
Trade-offs are involved and not easy. Danone’s former CEO did extensive sustainability work but got fired because growth slowed. Unilever recently announced modifications to its sustainability scope after its CEO was fired. People are learning, but trade-offs exist because you need to explain to shareholders that some initiatives may not give instant results.
A great example: Ørsted in Denmark pivoted from coal to wind power in the early 2000s. They recognized coal wasn’t sustainable, told shareholders they’re shutting down perfectly good working plants to move to wind power: shareholders needed to wait for returns. It became the stock market darling. Of course, now it’s in trouble because wind power is becoming economically difficult to sustain, but those strategic pivots are very important.
The three stances: ESG as compliance, ESG as strategy, ESG as purpose. It’s really inverted: purpose should be on top, driving strategy and compliance.
Just Transition: Balancing Development and Sustainability
Deepak: In a developing country like India, how do you balance growth with sustainability? Countries talking about sustainability already did their damage centuries ago.
Giridhar: Just transition is a major issue: balancing development with sustainability. You don’t want our people to not develop. Improving GDP per capita and quality of lives is important and cannot be compromised. India therefore took slightly longer net-zero targets at the Glasgow summit.
But India faces challenges. Looking at 2047 goals – 10 trillion economy – there are big assumptions about climate neutrality. Estimates now say those are unrealistic: you should take off 25% for achievability, meaning India will never achieve them.
Secondly, there are impacts. Look at vagaries of monsoons now: agriculture being impacted, weather, heat, building structures, health issues. These are real and coming. Social costs for a country around sustainability are significant.
India has to fast-track sustainability initiatives. India’s doing well in certain areas like solar power. Rest is still some way to go. I’m a big believer in innovation – what the startup world is doing. There’s a company called Eeki Foods where I’m an investor – they do closed, climate-controlled, water-based hydroponic cultivation with great results.
India needs to do much more. Monies will have to come from governments. Mitigation and adaptation: mitigation has to come from government because it’s beyond corporations. Eventually people will end up paying for carbon costs. Carbon tax is only a matter of time. Forget GST, forget income tax – there’ll be carbon tax, maybe a carveout of something else.
Balancing just transition is critical. There’s a role for government, society, and corporations. We need much more coordinated response.
Look at urban planning today. Bombay is dug up everywhere. It may be great development, but at what cost? Pollution levels have gone up, health issues for the city. These are real challenges. Just transition means we all need to be sensitive.
Startups and Large Corporates: Collaboration Opportunities
Deepak: The startup ecosystem has taken off, but attrition rates are high. Many die due to lack of funding, mentoring, or experience. Is there a role for large corporates to work with startups?
Giridhar: Definitely. To get more agile, you should learn from anybody working in your area. Gradually corporates are getting involved. Family offices have become one of the biggest investors in startups today. If family offices get actively involved, some of that will flow back to the companies they come from.
At Indian Hotels, we tried working with innovative startups. The problem was bearing the cost. We worked with IFC Washington: they have a program called Tech Emerge, where they curate startups. They came with nine pilots and said they’d bear the cost. That made decision-making easy. Once those nine pilots happened, we discussed which were successful and how to scale up.
In pharma, for instance, the entire research process is getting broken up. With contract research organizations – CDMOs – now very big, you can break up the process. Big companies can make it cheaper, faster.
Deepak: Is there a role for large companies to absorb or integrate successful startups?
Giridhar: Absolutely. Look at Mahindra and FirstCry – they took it over. Reliance ran an incubation program called Gen Next in their Knowledge Center. Companies had pitch days, and innovative winners would find ways to integrate into Reliance companies.
You see smaller ones being absorbed by larger startups. Flipkart has built capabilities over 15-16 years—they now have leadership, bandwidth, capital, and backing to absorb smaller companies. This gives smaller entrepreneurs hope that if they build something really good, innovative, scalable, solving real problems, there’s an exit opportunity. Otherwise there’s no monetization.
One concern I have with startups in India generally is governance. That’s a big concern. I no longer do individual angel investments – I’m an LP now because that gives greater protection. Sometimes you don’t even get basic information rights.
These companies aren’t mature in communication. Recently, a Bangalore-based company’s market cap fell 40% because they couldn’t communicate properly to trade. How do you mature to that level? One area I’m seriously interested in is helping companies do the mindshift change, especially going to IPO. It’s a different world: closely-held company versus listed company requires completely different mindset. The governance maturity shift hasn’t happened yet.
Economic Models and Public Markets
Deepak: Beyond governance, there’s the economic model. Though people now talk about profits, is it truly ingrained?
Giridhar: Today, startups can list even if unprofitable. But once you list on NSE or BSE main board, the biggest criteria is profits the market will judge you on. No longer vanity revenue numbers or eyeballs. You needed those investors to back you to scale, but once in the market, you’re evaluated like any other company. You can’t say “I’m a tech startup, my metrics are different.” You made a conscious choice to list here.
If the economic model doesn’t match the hype and brand built, valuations plummet, and they plummet more for these guys compared to say a Tata Group because there’s no process, trust, integrity, reputation built over time. Results don’t yo-yo as much.
One thing private equity companies are realizing: you need leadership mentoring beyond building product, product-market fit, and driving revenue. You need certain maturity.
Deepak: I’m a bit old school. If you read books by greatest investors, there’s no literature saying a company can be built or scaled in 5 years. Everyone wants to become a unicorn in shortest possible time. But how many companies can actually make it? It’s okay for those unicorns to hustle, but for 99% of companies, you can’t simply replicate. Great companies have taken decades, not 5-10 years.
Giridhar: Building a company is bloody tough. As long as that’s not ingrained and everyone doesn’t accept that reality, it’ll always be tough – more bloodbaths. Some may list, then figure out their valuation isn’t what they thought 6 months later.
I’m a believer in old-fashioned values: growth, profitability, cash flows. You still value companies on free cash flows. Unless you’re in the startup world but clearly once publicly listed, there’s no other metric. They look at revenues, visibility, quality of earnings.
Rapid Fire
Deepak: Let’s do some rapid-fire questions. Best book you’ve read recently?
Giridhar: Bhagavad Gita. Someone said: where do you read books? No—why do you read? Reading is for transformation, not necessarily information. If you believe that, Bhagavad Gita makes you think.
Deepak: One word describing your leadership style?
Giridhar: Understated.
Deepak: If you weren’t a finance and business leader, what would you be doing?
Giridhar: If I hadn’t done my MBA—which was more an accident, we just wrote CAT and got into Ahmedabad—I would have been a chartered accountant practicing in Chennai. I was all set to join my uncle’s practice.
Deepak: Startup you’re most excited about?
Giridhar: I’ve joined the board of a company—I’m really excited because it’s India for the world. They’re building technology as global leaders.
Deepak: Go-to productivity hack?
Giridhar: When I get into meetings, I put all thoughts on the table. I like open discussions where we agree on something to be done. Very efficient.
Deepak: Country you loved working in most?
Giridhar: For place to live, London was clearly very good.
Deepak: Most influential mentor?
Giridhar: He’d probably be surprised, but in the last 7 years, Chandra has been. Not in the traditional mentor way but through all our engagements and interactions during the massive transformation at Indian Hotels.
Deepak: Favorite way to unwind?
Giridhar: Music.
Deepak: If you were 20 years old today, one piece of advice to yourself?
Giridhar: Be more risk-taking. I’ve been in large organizations. While I’ve learned about startups through investing, I’ve never really worked in one, so I don’t know what hustle mindset means operationally.
Deepak: Guilty pleasure?
Giridhar: I’ve been pretty disciplined. No sugar. Generally careful. Bit of honey in the morning, dates and things like that.
Deepak: If you could swap jobs with any leader for a day?
Giridhar: Two people. Caroline Litchfield at Merck—she’s now global CFO. Amazing lady: empathetic, precise, great communicator, operating from the heart. I always respected her and keep in touch. The other – swapping with Chandra for a day. These two have been big influencers in the last 10 years.
Final Thoughts
Deepak: Any final words before we conclude?
Giridhar: You’ve been an entrepreneur for 17 years. Not easy to build an organization.
The only word I’d say: the world is becoming a world of opportunity. It’s important to take risks, but to take advantage of opportunities and take risks, we need breadth. I’d encourage youngsters to develop breadth. Our education system unfortunately doesn’t provide liberal breadth.
Try out different things and build breadth. I’m glad my career was multi-industry, multi-geography, multi-roles: business development, CEO, CFO. The net result: breadth is something I’m seriously evangelizing.
One book I’ll recommend: Range by David Epstein. He’s done a fantastic job. India needs that liberal education – Ashoka and others are coming up but still far away. Try out different things at a younger age. If you have to take risks, take them initially. Make mistakes, learn.
Bizdom is a podcast series hosted by Deepak Narayanan that explores leadership principles, organizational transformation, and career development through conversations with accomplished business professionals across India. Episodes are available on the Bizdom YouTube channel and on our Expert Voices page.