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Business Lounge LOUNGE

MAHESH MADHAVAN

The many messages in a bottle B Y K RISH R AGHAV world in a new light after peering and sunshine”. “Nothing is as sit in plush cabins right out of col- India is a complex beast. The
A deep understand­ krish.r@livemint.com through a bottle of Smirnoff. nice/as finding paradise/and sip- lege.” He owes a significant part of tax and duty structure is a byzan-
····························
ing of the spirits Sequins on a woman’s dress ping on Bacardi rum,” went the his understanding of relationships tine mess and levies are much

industry drives
Bacardi India’s CEO
to bigger things—
M ahesh Madhavan, 48, is
most iconic advertisements in
India of the 1990s.
including taking
on Old Monk manager at spirits firm Diageo
(then called IDV), the company
aired the famous “looking
through the bottle” Smirnoff
vodka advertisement. In it, a
bored wedding guest sees the
Spirited: Madhavan’s
five­year plan focuses
on two key areas—
making the business
self­sustaining and
shifting Bacardi’s
communication
strategy away from
‘traditional’ media.
the man partly respon-
s i b l e f o r two of the
come alive and crawl all over. A
boisterous and fiercely mous-
tachioed man turns into a walrus.
For a country used to alcohol
being peddled by dart-throwing
In 1994, when he was product men attributing their prowess to
Haywards 5000, this was a
refreshing revelation.
Four years later, as marketing
head of rival spirits brand Bacardi,
his team announced their entry
into India with a message of “sun
ad’s supremely catchy jingle.
Madhavan is a 17-year veteran
of the spirits industry. We meet in
the afternoon in the lobby of The
Taj Mahal Hotel on Mansingh
Road in Delhi. Dressed in a crisp
suit and looking younger than his
age, he arrives right on time.
“Shall we order some lunch first
and then talk?” he asks, and we
adjourn to the nearby Wasabi res-
taurant. Madhavan is in the mood
for food—he’s judging a cocktail
competition later in the evening,
and is required to down more
than 20 drinks one after the other.
An eminently suitable end-of-day
itinerary item for the CEO of Bac-
ardi in South Asia.
Madhavan speaks in a calm,
quiet, deadpan manner, dictating
the pace of conversation. He also
listens intensely. “I try to take
away something from every inter-
action I have,” he says.
He started his career as an
engineer. His first job in 1985
was at the Mazagon Dock Ltd in
Mumbai, where he was part of a
team that built offshore oil rigs
for Oil and Natural Gas Corp.
(ONGC). He was paid `700 a
month. “I did that for about a
year, didn’t like it. So I moved to
Tata Electric—working at Trom-
bay.” This was a trying period for
Madhavan. His father died in
November 1985 and as the eldest
son, he had to take important
decisions on behalf of the family.
“On top of this, I had to work
variable shifts—one week it was
6pm-2am, the next it was
10am-6pm.” He remembers hav-
ing to leave his house in Colaba
at 3.30 in the morning to make it
to work by 6.
“I decided to take the plunge
and go back to studying. I was the
only earning member of the fam-
ily, so this was a tough decision,”
he says. He ploughed in the family
savings and applied for an MBA at
the SP Jain Institute of Manage-
ment and Research in Mumbai.
Two years and a degree later,
he joined Wipro Consumer Care
as a management trainee. His first
boss was a “tough, hard-nosed”
area manager called Hemu Javeri.
“He took me on as a salesman,
and my beat was Kurar village
near Malad East,” he says. “Here I
was, after years of engineering
and management education, sell-
ing Santoor soap to kirana
shops.” After six months, he was
sent into interior Maharashtra,
travelling on rickety buses to stay
in decrepit hotels. “Looking back,
this was some of the best experi-
ence I could have got,” he says.
“Most business graduates today
want to be CEOs in five years and
and the value of money to his
time at Wipro.
Madhavan moved to Ulka
Advertising in 1992 in Mumbai,
where he serviced clients such
as ITC Sundrop. He describes
his time there as “great fun”. He
moved to Diageo in 1994 to
head their entire white spirit
portfolio in India, which
included brands such as
Smirnoff, Malibu and Kelly’s (a
variant of Baileys Irish Cream).
In 1997, he moved to Bacardi
as head of marketing in Gur-
gaon, having been hand-picked
by the then managing director
Jayant Kapur. He was one of the
company’s first employees in
India. “I haven’t looked back
since,” he says.
At this point, the restaurant
manager takes advantage of a
split-second silence in our con-
versation to insist we order food. I
ask for a Ramen lunch set. Mad-
havan is fine with anything that is
not “sushi or sashimi”. I ask him
why. “I’ve had a lot (maybe too
much) of Japanese cuisine—it
was one of my favourites.” During
his seven-year stint at Bacardi in
Thailand, his residence was next
to a Japanese community. “Food
is never a problem for me, really.
Anything other than a burger is
fine.” This distaste for one of glo-
balization’s biggest imports is a
consequence of his son (who is
now 18) insisting on eating at
McDonald’s at every opportunity
when he was young. “It’s one food
I can never enjoy. It’s not nourish-
ing,” Madhavan says.
The shift to Thailand occurred
in 2001 because of an “itch I get
every three years”, he says. “Once
you’ve done a particular job and
finished what you set out to
accomplish, you get this thing of
‘what shall I do next?’” After
bothering the boss for something
“new and challenging”, he was
asked if he wanted to go to Thai-
land. He said “no problem”. He
and his family packed their bags
and moved, and Madhavan
found himself the only Indian
among 70 employees, all thinking
“who is this Indian who comes
here and tells us how to run our
business in a market that we
understand better?
“It took me two years to get
their respect. First, I had to
unlearn all the Delhi aggression
that was coming out, including
thumping on tables during
meetings,” he says.
Madhavan returned as the CEO
of Bacardi India in 2007, and is
now the president and CEO for
South Asia operations, based out
of Gurgaon.
higher than other South Asian
countries. “Sixty per cent of the
market in India is whisky,” he
says. “There are pockets of
brandy, like Tamil Nadu, and
pockets of dark rum, like Kerala
and West Bengal.”
Madhavan’s five-year plan
focuses on work in two key
areas—the first is making the
business self-sustaining by build-
ing both local and imported
brands. “We’re growing fast and
we’d like to keep that momentum
going,” he says. Bacardi is promo-
ting Eristoff, its local vodka brand,
heavily and is launching Bacardi
Black, a dark rum, to take on the
dominant Old Monk and Celebra-
tions brands. The company is also
building a line-up of imported
brands, from Asti sparkling wine
(“it’s nice and sweet and bubbly”)
to Otard Cognac (“there’s not
much pull for cognac in India yet,
but it’s a fine drink”).
The second is to shift Bacardi’s
communication strategy away
from “traditional” media. Part of
this is continuing their associa-
tion with electronic music and
nightlife parties.
Just last week, Eristoff spon-
sored the Invasion Music Festival
that saw electronica giants The
Prodigy play to audiences of over
6,000 people in Delhi and Banga-
lore. In December, Bacardi was
the lead sponsor for the NH7
Weekender music festival in
Pune, where close to 5,000 people
listened to concerts and con-
sumed copious quantities of Bac-
ardi alcohol over three days.
The company has launched an
online music store called Mix-
Bacardi, and efforts are under
way to increase the number of
Facebook fans to 100,000. “The
future of communication is
online and interactive. There’s
only so much a TV ad can do
these days,” he says.
As we settle the bill and des-
sert arrives, I ask him his drink
of choice.
“Vodka and tonic. I like Eristoff
vodka—it has a nice bite to it. I
also like Bacardi Mojitos. What
about you?”
I spout my usual propaganda
about the virtues of Sikkim
dark rum.
Madhavan hasn’t heard of it.
“Is it a bit like the Khukri rum you
get in Nepal?” he asks.
“Better,” I reply with mis-
placed confidence.
“Interesting,” he says. “I will try
this out.”
I nod in agreement. I may
have just given Madhavan his
significant “takeaway” from
this interaction.

IN PARENTHESIS
Madhavan likes activities that give him time to reflect—on work,
life and the possible future. “Most of the stuff I do tends to be
very individual,” he admits. Fishing was a favourite time­killer,
something he misses doing in India. “In Thailand, I fished a lot. I
love the quiet calm of the wait contrasted with the excitement of
a fish biting,” he says. Gardening is another. He grew orchids in
Thailand, and has shifted to seasonal flowers in his current place in
Gurgaon. “I was just at a nursery near the Qutub Minar the other
day,” he says, “picking up flowering seeds for the winter.”
Madhavan has also been an avid aquarium keeper. “I went to a fish
store in Delhi thinking I’ll restart the hobby here,” he says glumly.
“But this city has very bad fish.”
JAYACHANDRAN/MINT