ET Awards 2017: When India Inc bosses chatted about 3G at dinner!

At the exclusive dinner lounge to celebrate the ET Awards for Corporate Excellence, conversations veered between large servings of serious talk and tidbits of chatty camaraderie.

As corporate India's A-listers settled in at their designated tables in a private lounge, it was clear the conversation would largely revolve around three 3Gs: government reforms, the goods and services tax ( GST) and… gossip.

At the high table, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley chatted with Vineet Jain, MD, Times Group, Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Enterprises, Maruti Suzuki chairman RC Bhargava, Bajaj Group chairman Rahul Bajaj and ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar. Kochhar and Flipkart's executive chairman Sachin Bansal were seated next to each other and Kochhar seemed particulary keen to understand the operations of Flipkart vs Amazon from the founder of India's top e-commerce venture, and how the US giant manages to score over its Indian competitor.

Bhargava and Jaitley exchanged views on the GST implementation, with the FM having a firm opinion that post GST, auto companies should pass the input credit gained to the consumers. The FM was also heard telling Mittal that the issue with GST partly lies with the slow implementation by IT vendors who won the contract to roll-out this massive reform.

Rail and sail

Just a few feet away, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal was deep in discussion with ITC CEO Sanjiv Puri, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd CEO Raj Jain, Maruti Suzuki CEO Kenichi Ayukawa, General Atlantic CEO Bill Ford and RPG Enterprises chairman Harsh Goenka. Talking about his department, Goyal said there was much untapped potential in the railways. When Goenka asked him to elaborate, Goyal spoke about the possibility of an elevated rail as one way of expanding the network, sidestepping the challenge of land acquisition.


(From left) RC Bhargava, Rahul Bajaj and Bhavish Aggarwal.

As the conversations warmed up, the CEOs found time to discuss personal passions. Polo enthusiast and Jindal Steel and Power chairman Naveen Jindal had an important question for Bookmyshow CEO Ashish Hemrajani about why it didn't get involved with ticketing for the sport. While Jindal spoke of polo, sailing enthusiast Hemrajani regaled the table with tales of his time at sea.

At another table, Goyal's son Dhruv bonded with Vodafone India CEO Sunil Sood as the two traded tales about Harvard Business School. Sood fondly spoke about his school days, split between Mumbai and Delhi, and being a "senior" to Shah Rukh Khan."

While business talk dominated the dinner tables, the guests discussed personal passions as well.

Cheques and balances

WPP country manager and CEO of GroupM South Asia CVL Srinivas was flanked by LIC chairman VK Sharma on the left and, on his right, Sandeep Naik, managing director of General Atlantic's India and Asia-Pacific business. Srinivas spent the first few courses getting a crash course from Sharma about what goes on at the country's biggest insurer.

Yet another minister holding forth on the government's reform programme was Jayant Sinha, who found an eager audience in Deloitte India's chairman PR Ramesh, Axis Bank CEO Shikha Sharma and Standard Chartered Bank CEO Zarin Daruwala.

Meanwhile, Idea CEO Himanshu Kapania and Naik spent a good five minutes quizzing Mahindra & Mahindra managing director Pawan Goenka across the dinner table about the health of India's rural markets. Legal eagle Cyril Shroff dropped in to congratulate the winners. Hindustan Unilever CEO Sanjiv Mehta and Boston Consulting Group Asia Pacific chairman Janmejaya Sinha were deep in a hush-hush conversation during most of the meal.

Close by, Kapania and Deloitte CEO N Venkatram discussed the grandeur of the event that was sponsored by Deloitte.

As dinner wrapped up and guests started taking their leave, plans were being made for the next meeting. When Delhi-based Mohit Burman said goodbye to his fellow city-dweller Malvinder Singh, he accompanied it with an invitation for a drink in the Capital the following week. And even after the dinner was over, the conversations carried on. BCCL's Raj Jain, Vodafone's Sood, United Spirits' Anand Kripalu, O&M's Piyush Pandey and BCG's Sinha chatted away over a round of Scotch. Clearly, among the cognoscenti present in the room, there was plenty of food for thought.