“IT WOULD BE GOOD TO BE IN A VUCA WORLD”

Sitting at the top spot of the Mahindra Group, Anish Shah, Managing Director & CEO, Mahindra & Mahindra took over the role when the company was braving some very tough times. Shah, however, is a man with a plan, and this has been more than evident in every step the company has taken ever since he transitioned to the role in April 2021. In this conversation with Anurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld Group, Shah speaks about the challenges that leaders face today, the need to plan for anything, and also details some of his early experiences and the things that will take priority in his mandate ahead.

Mahindra was undergoing a tough time and the world was submerged in an international crisis and this is the time when you were transitioning into what would lead to your current position as Mahindra’s MD & CEO. Some of these would have been unprecedented challenges — how did you navigate these at the time?

Let me begin from 18 months ago. The transition was announced in December 2019, but the first step took place in April when I took over as the Deputy MD and CFO. If you look back at that time, our stock price had dropped 70 per cent since August 2018. The pandemic had begun and the nationwide lockdown was imposed. We were seeing significant losses with all our international subsidiaries; in two years prior, we had been clocking losses of Rs 3,500 crore every year with the international subsidiaries. Many new challenges were surfacing daily. You add to that a new team coming in place, without the ability to come together in person, and there is a set of circumstances that would be demanding for anyone.

This was the case with me as well. What helped a lot, however, were the roles I had been through in the past. Sometimes when you face difficult streaks, you will feel frustrated and it can be overwhelming but those are the things that help build a career. If I had not been through several difficult roles in the past, it would be very difficult to get past this.