ment more efficient. His first task since joining Viom in

March 2011 has been to put its house in order along with the top management team, by bringing in internal efficien-cies, cost reductions, and revamping systems and processes with technol-ogy. Over the last 15 months, he has team-led major improvements in billing, resolved pending issues with customers and vendors, master data validation, collections, and realigned accounting policies, among others. Viom also raised aggregate debt of Rs 43 billion on competitive terms under his leadership, despite the challeng-ing environment. As Chairman of the Finance Committee of TAIPA, a tower industry association, he is also working on resolving complicated tax issues for the industry.

He has frequently implemented IT transformation in companies he has worked in, ever since he first learnt the computer and freed his finance function from the problematic manual typewriter. This was way back when he was with Gujarat Insecticides (1981-87), and encouraged the office peon to do product costing on the computer after learning it. While at Steelco Gu-jarat, he led the team in developing a tailor-made IT system in 1994-95, which was fully integrated, not only for processing transactions, but map-ping the entire production process.

His dream is to do a hat trick of IPOs, having earlier been a part of two successful IPOs, one for Zydus Ca-dila in 2000, and the other for Steelco Gujarat in 1992. Viom has plans to list on the stock exchanges but given the size of its IPO, it is waiting for the right time to enter the stock markets. When this happens, Mr Maniar will supervise it.

With Zydus Cadila since 1996, he led its many M&A activities in India and internationally, with many in-novative structures; and contributed in many strategic alliances and JVs. He introduced new ideas in flexible debt structuring, and risk mitigation. He helped to ensure that its average cost of funds remained less than 6 per cent and many times negative. He

handled all loan documentation on his own, and many proved challenging for banks. He pioneered the concept of brand (trademark) securitisation in India, with ICICI, and when it caught on, other banks began to approach him to help them prepare the legal documents for brand securitisation. After Cadila acquired Nutralite-maker Carnation Nutra-analogue Foods (re-named as Zydus Wellness) in 2006, he restructured Zydus Cadila’s consumer healthcare product business to un-lock value. Post-restructuring, its market capitalisation shot up to Rs 668 crore, from Rs 56 crore. Bankers recognise him as an M&A wizard due to his skills in transaction structuring, valuation strategy, business integration, and his legal mind. He also developed its forex risk management policy, which protected it in 2008-09, when other companies suffered derivative losses. His decisions led to many firsts for Zy-dus Cadila, such as creating a pharma SEZ, and setting up units at Baddi (HP), and Sikkim to avail tax benefits.

When at Steelco Gujarat he ob-tained the finance ministry’s approval to open a bank account in Japan to put the NRI (Comcraft) promoter’s contribution in foreign currency. This saved Steelco from heavy losses, on currency devaluation. He is regarded as a pioneer manager for both Steelco Gujarat and Gujarat Pesticides, having helped to set up these units.

In his three decades in engineering and steel, pharma, agro-chemicals, and now telecom infrastructure, he has raised over USD 4 billion. ‘Work is worship’, he learnt from his father, and reminisces of the days when he and his brother sat on either side of him at home doing their school work. His daughter works with SREI Insurance, after spending seven years with ICICI Lombard, in Ahmedabad. His son is studying engineering in Mumbai. He is thankful for his family’s support. On work he has travelled widely and on family holidays, covered large parts of India. He rues the paucity of time for exercising, but is hoping to resume his swimming soon. He believes that the speed of the leader is the speed of the team, and has fashioned his mentoring style accordingly.

India’s second-largest shared

passive telecom i n f r a s t r u c t u r e company Viom Networks sees the current challeng-ing economic envi-ronment as the per-fect opportunity to

make fundamental changes internally, and prepare for the next phase of growth. The domestic telecom tower industry is also waiting for the regu-latory cloud to recede, especially fol-lowing the Supreme Court’s decision to revoke all 2G licences.

A JV between Tata Teleservices, a Tata Group enterprise and Quippo Telecom, a SREI Group enterprise, Viom today boasts of a network of over 40,000 towers and with 96000 tenants, it leads the industry in its tenancy ratio of 2.4x per tower, way higher than the industry average of 1.7x per tower.

Like its peers Viom has strong revenues and EBIDTA, but a poor bottomline, due to high depreciation and interest costs. Viom has a negative bottomline, but CFO Shirish Maniar is confident that it will turn the corner by 2012-13. “We will turn profitable by the next financial year 2012-13, because of the initiatives that we have adopted internally,” he says. The ma-jor initiatives he has introduced and led are, ‘Project OM’ - ‘Outperforming Market’ in every sphere of Viom’s ac-tivity, by understanding and address-ing the Cost of Inefficiencies (COIE). Using this innovative concept, about 50 action ideas that promise a saving of Rs 300 crore, are being chased. “These savings alone will lift the com-pany’s fortunes, and we are on track to achieve it by 2013-end,” he says.

Emphasising important ‘Cs’ is another concept he has introduced and led. The ‘Cs’ stand for customer; contract management for higher cus-tomer satisfaction; compliance and communication essential for contract management; cost management; and collection; and these will have ad-equate controls to make ‘C’ manage-

Towering Achievements

PeoPLe

46 cFoConnECT august 2012