About the Speaker

- Debshankar Banerjee, PGP1

For Arnavaz (Anu) Aga, taking over as chairperson of engineering major Thermax in 1996 has been a baptism by fire. She had big shoes to fill, those of her husband Rohinton Aga, who set up Thermax as a small boiler company in the eighties and built it into a leader in engineering solutions in energy and environment. She took over at a difficult time, just as an economic slowdown was beginning to set in. This meant taking tough decisions like exiting non-core business and laying off employees – initiatives that are now beginning to pay off. She later gave up her executive position to a professional management and became Non-Executive Chairperson. In five short years, she has turned Thermax around completely.

A little known fact is that the group was previously called Wanson Engineering and was actually founded by Ms. Aga’s father. It was only after her marriage to Rohinton Aga that the group was renamed Thermax.

She is also one of the three women in India’s top 20 Billionaire Club – the other women sharing the honours are HSBC Chairperson Naina Lal Kidwai and herbal 'czarina' Shahnaz Husain.

Anu Aga was on campus on 10th September, 2003 for a talk organized by the Colloquia Cell of IIM Calcutta, under the "Women Achievers Series".

Colloquia “Women Achievers Series” - Anu Aga
- Jayanti Dutta, PGP-1

September 10 saw the launch of the "Women Achievers Series": a series of talks by the eminent ladies of the nation, at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. An initiative of the Colloquia Cell - the oldest student body of IIM Calcutta, the series was conceptualized to highlight the achievements of women of India who have succeeded in the face of adversity and difficulty with courage and determination, and is the first of its kind to be held at any Indian B-school.

Our speaker for the first session of the series was Ms. Anu Aga, chairperson of the Thermax group of Companies. Ms. Aga shared with the students various experiences of her life and talked about the choices that she had had to make. She spoke of how money is equated with security, a fallacy she had to cope with when she acknowledged the need within herself to find her own identity. This led her to a journey that brought her to the corporate world, first as a consultant and then, when she was forced by her husband, Mr. Rohinton Aga's unexpected demise, to fill in his shoes as the Chairperson of Thermax in 1996.

Coupled with the economic slowdown that was just beginning to set in at the time, Ms Aga had her own battles to fight as she encountered a company that was beginning to show signs of inefficiency and desperately needed an overhaul. Then followed a massive restructuring drive, based on the recommendations of the Boston Consulting Group, following which Thermax is now a market leader with 11 overseas offices. Alliances range from Kawasaki in Japan to Honeywell in the USA and its biggest and most recent achievement is a tie up with General Electric to supply chillers for its group company GE Distributed Power Systems.

Ms. Aga concluded with her observations on Indian women and how an attitudinal change is the prerequisite for substantial improvement in their plight. Interestingly, she brought to focus how women themselves need to reduce their perceived dependence on the opposite gender for what are labeled as "a man's job".

Liberation and feminism are not contextual: they need to be applicable with equal weightage on all fronts.
This she illustrated with examples from her own experiences as a daughter, a wife and a mother.

The maiden session was inaugurated by Mr. Victor Banerjee, an actor who has made his mark in both Indian and world cinema, noted for his performance in films like "Ghare Baire", "A Passage to India" and many more. In his opening speech, Mr. Banerjee spoke about what success truly means and why it is imperative that each individual strives to be successful in a way that benefits him as well as the common good. This was highlighted by the role played by community service in making a person truly successful; drawing parallels from his own life and mentioning the student initiatives at IIMC - INCA (Initiative for Community Action) and Parivaar. He then discussed the relevance of success as it applied to women, talking about social conditioning and narrow mindsets which are largely responsible for what still is inadequate participation by women in various spheres of activity.

The session concluded with an interactive session between the students and the speakers, thereby ending what was the first of many such stimulating interactions at Joka.