Roy gets wider wings

Gerkins for growth

When Nandan Nilekeni, the clearly cerebral CEO of Infosys choses to deliver solutions for national growth, everybody listens. Even if it’s the likes of Mukesh Ambani, Kiran Majumdar Shaw and Subir Raha. Tycoons like these now know that spending quality time on solving national conundrums is a critical part of every top-CEO’s task-list. And given that the discussion group represented a significant top-end chunk of India’s tycoon sweepstakes, the Nilekeni solution to solving poverty and growth dynamics was a scorcher.

Chosing gerkins as a kind of explanary target for a new India of the future is not just a passing passion for the Infosys honcho. He believes that strategically-chosen agricultural products, grown organically, plucked manually, processed domestically and then exported globally could unshakle India’s dormant agricultural superpower status.

Whether Nilekeni was himself going to make the leap-frog for Infosys from infotech to corporate farming is unclear.

But even if he does inspire it, he will only be going where Sunil Mittal of Bharti has already dared to go already. Mittal’s flegling venture into agro-products is yet to make its mark. But it’s no longer considered fool-hardy or pretentious to throw such options around.

But what was clearly the subject of urgent speculation, based on the Gerkins-for-growth googly by Nilekeni was whether India’s giant corporations are now set to harness the new wave of global demand for home grown agricultural produce.

On that the tycoons, set on solving, India’s eternal riddle of what comes first-growth or equity were unshakable. Growth was first, but smart money was now being placed, on how equity ensuring solutions could be implemented side-by-side.

Since the gang of four tycoons also had the ears of the likes of Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Omar Abdullah and Jitin Prasad as those at the receiving end of the gerkins idea, it may see the light of day sooner than later. When that happens, remember you read it here first!

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