Handling Business With Clinical Precision

Dr Sumitha Nandan, the newly-appointed Executive Director of Manappuram Finance, brings to the table oodles of energy and a fresh worldview

- Sujit Chandra Kumar

Dr Sumitha Nandan’s earliest memories about her growing-up years in Valapad revolve around her grandfather, the late Mr V.C. Padmanabhan. Says Dr Sumitha, the newly-appointed Executive Director of Manappuram Finance, which has its headquarters in Valapad: “I was his favourite grandchild, perhaps because I was the eldest. Whenever I took a fancy for something, I would run to him rather than my dad.”

The most poignant and painful of all the memories surrounds the passing away of her granddad who founded the Manappuram group of companies. “It was all so sudden. None of us among kids could figure out what was happening. We saw the ambulance arrive and all our favourite people in mourning. Then, I had to take leave from school for the ceremonies,” she reminisces.

The year was 1986 and Sumitha was then in the third standard. It was the same year when her dad Mr V.P. Nandakumar took over his father’s single-room business at Valapad. The rest, as they say, is corporate history. Says Dr Sumitha: “Manappuram has always been dad’s first child. He eats, drinks and breathes Manappuram.”

In those days, life was a lot different in the sleepy hamlet tucked away in Thrissur, she observes. “On Sundays, we would go to the beach and have a running race for which dad would join too. We would then run from one part of the beach to another where a stream joins the ocean. On our way back on late evenings, we would meet all the members of our extended family. Dad is very emotionally connected to his extended family and our neighbours and so he would make us interact with all of them.”