Cholamandalam Vehicle

Triggered off by M. Anandan, head of finance, and led by P.N.V. Vasudevan, the vehicle finance business team has successfully challenged the ‘risk averse’ paradigms of the group, to create waves of quantum growth.

Vasu reversed the budgeting process by holding Dream Meetings at each branch, which looked at how the team could dream up monster budgets and then go after the budget to achieve it. By co-evolving the budgets with the team, Vasu ensured that the level of ownership was extremely high. This led his team to innovate constantly in order to meet the targets, which would not have been possible through traditional strategies.

Moving from a control-centric organization structure to a result oriented approach, Vasu unleashed tremendous energy within his people. He gave them the freedom to carry out their day-to-day activities. This resulted in his employees not only coming up with innovative strategies to achieve growth, but also quickly replicating the successful strategies across the organization.

Bottom line: Chola grew faster than any of its competitors in the NBFC segment in the vehicle finance business — from a turnover of Rs 170 crore in 1998-99 to Rs 700 crore in 2001-02). From being a small inconsequential player in the vehicle finance business in South India, Chola is today a major player nationally.