Piramal rejigs Shriram Group brass

CHENNAI: It’s a shakeout at the top at the Chennai-headquartered Shriram group, with several people either elevated or replaced, paving the way for new leaders to take charge at India’s largest asset-backed lender. All these are being done at the behest of billionaire investor Ajay Piramal, who is also its chairman.
In 2013, Piramal purchased a 10% stake in Shriram Transport Finance, India’s largest truck financier, and a year later he bought 10% in Shriram City Union, one of the largest consumer finance companies.This was followed by a 20% stake purchase in Shriram Capital in 2014, the holding company of the Shriram Group, and was appointed as the chairman in 2015.
About 56% of the holding company is owned by the Shriram Employees Trust for the benefit of the group’s senior employees and the rest by South African financial services giant Sanlam. Piramal, who has invested nearly Rs 4,500 crore in the group, has also appointed McKinsey to undertake a study and suggest new growth avenues for the group.
A key appointment — that of Ramky Subramanian as MD & CEO of Shriram Capital — has just been completed. Subramanian was at senior positions at Standard Chartered, Citigroup and HDFC Bank. D V Ravi, who was the MD at the holding company, will continue in that designation besides taking additional role at Take Solutions, a tech company in the group.
“We are taking several measures to ensure that we unlock this potential and do things that are in the best interest of the businesses and all its stakeholders — customers, employees and shareholders,” Piramal said in reply to a questionnaire.
Umesh Revankar, who was the MD at Shriram Transport, has been replaced by J S Gujral. Changes are underway at Shriram City Union Finance too. There is a growing feeling that the group has missed new generation business opportunities in the financial services space. “The group did well under a different set of circumstances. It continues to grow, but the issue is the direction. We see little or no new initiatives within the group coming up,” an analyst tracking the group said.
Piramal said, “As all of the initiatives for growth take shape, we are also increasing orientation of employees towards performance because that is the right thing to do as trustees to our stakeholders. As a consequence, there are some changes under way at Shriram as one would make in the normal course of any business. This implies placing the right people for the right roles given their capabilities and strengths, recognizing and rewarding the good performers based on objective criteria, and bringing in external talent in areas where we have capability gaps in Shriram.”
Piramal has already appointed global consultants McKinsey to undertake a review of the various financial services businesses in the group including SME lending, consumer finance, and truck finance. “We have hired McKinsey on some of the initiatives largely in SCUF for SME and cross selling,” Piramal added.