Chipshots from Pramod Bhasin 2.0

“My biggest peeve is that some golfers get terribly obsessive about the game and get upset if you or they play badly. It’s only a game, take it easy!”

There is never a dull moment when you are playing golf with the animated and energetic Pramod Bhasin.

We have known each other for many years yet playing together can often be a different ball game.

“I like to play with people who generally enjoy themselves on the golf course with a great spirit of humour, competitiveness and sport.”

But once behind his desk, he is a boss who understands the power of change and doggedly pursues it.

Bhasin likes to shatter notions and break the status quo both in business and relationships.

Bhasin likes to break the status quo both in business and relationships.

Best known for leading GE’s business process outsourcing arm Genpact and listing the company on the New York Stock Exchange, he is now engaged in search of newfangled ideas that can bring him joy for the next ten years.

“Can I do it again?” he asks rhetorically.

It’s never easy to leave big-company roles, is it?

“We underestimate how attached we get to a big fancy job. It’s so hard to let go.”
While we know the sunshine days of India’s software industry over, the future, he says, is about specialised services and not vanilla outsourcing.

“The bets ahead are about talent. It’s amazing how we have failed to recognise that. We have failed ourselves as both employers and employees in understanding the need for quality and skilled people.”

As we get on to the fairway, Pramod looks at the lie of the ball and draws an opportunity analogy: “How many people get a chance to create a new industry?”

His latest one, called The Skills Academy, promoted along with Pia Singh of the DLF family, is a bet on India’s demographics and training its people.

“One can learn from everyone at every stage. Often, your teams can trigger the leader inside you. But leadership is not just about leading.”

He pulls out his rescue club and gets a neat divot to place the ball just short of the green.

“Your big company cards don’t open doors any longer. Now what matters is whether you are able to build something of real quality,” Bhasin said.

A first-generation entrepreneur, his story is of a dramatic rise from a garage to the glass cabins of Gurgaon.

His outsourcing ideas were conceived in a parking lot in Chennai, developed in an empty basement in Gurgaon. They went on to harbour the secrets of the world’s top banks, in the process.

Most of Bhasin’s efforts have been unplanned but they ended up being very successful.

But being humble has never meant being content. Even on the golf course, he would network incessantly.

“I made contacts from whom I got business, met people who gave me insights into how to run my business better or solve a problem. I also played with my bosses and got to know them much better and helped my own career progress.”

Entrepreneurship and passion are the new cornerstones of his post-CEO life. So Bhasin is never far from new ideas.

“Leverage, borrow, steal ideas from all over the world -- everyday someone is coming up with a better idea than we can. Find it.”

I realise while we may be walking on a fairway, we were almost jogging in our minds.

That’s the effect Bhasin has on you.

Shaili Chopra is an award winning business journalist and founder of www.golfingindian.com