Businesses Should Take Risk With Their People

In an exclusive conversation with PRAMOD BHASIN, the Founder of Genpact, we ask him about building Genpact from scratch, the power of conviction, achieving competitive advantage and HR’s role in architecting a culture of risk-taking.

- Vikas Arora

It was his vision that established an industry in India. Pramod Bhasin founded Genpact (formerly known as GE Capital International Services, GECIS) in 1997 and is considered the founder and pioneer of the Business Process Management industry in India – an industry that employs over a million people directly & indirectly. What started as an idea to handle GE’s back office processes, has now become a USD 2.46 billion revenue-making company. He served as Genpact’s President till 2011 and is currently the non-executive Vice Chairman of the company.

In this candid interaction, he talks about the vulnerabilities of running a business, venturing into an uncharted territory, perils of building a infrastructure, handling fast-paced growth, the belief in ideas and capabilities, and the role HR plays in creating a culture of meritocracy and risk-taking.

You started Genpact in 1997 in India, at a time when handling business processes remotely wasn’t even heard of. What gave you the belief that it was a good idea?

You need to have the power of conviction in a good idea. Most good ideas which are forward looking do not look like obvious solutions and always come with a big set of constraints. If they were obvious solutions, they wouldn’t be such good ideas because a hundred other people would have executed those ideas. By the very definition, a new idea is something which requires a new solution. I think it is less about knowing whether it will work or not and more about the conviction to try something new and not worry about failure.

Did I ever think Genpact would grow to the scale it has today? Absolutely not! But if we hadn’t tried, we wouldn’t have been where we are today. That’s how we started this journey.

You practically ventured into a completely unchartered territory. Tell us about it. What were the challenges you faced and how did you trounce them?