Made In India

Author: BVR Mohan Reddy

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Reviewed By: Professor

Arup Dasgupta

India will soon get the know-how to build GE aircraft engine in Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. This is a significant deal involving several high technology intellectual property rights, whose protection and safety will be of prime concern. However, this will not be something new.

Infotech Enterprises, now Cyient, a company promoted by Shri B V R Mohan Reddy entered into collaboration with Pratt & Whitney around early 2000s for software services, solutions and engineering services for their aircraft engine products.

Over the 23 years, Cyient has delivered similar services to many big companies, managing the contentious issues of intellectual property rights quite well.

This is just a quick view of one of the critical issues elaborated in the book by B V R Mohan Reddy, the founder-chairman of Cyient, who is a pioneer of engineering design outsourcing services in India.

Dr. Reddy was conferred with Padma Shri in 2017 for his distinguished contribution to trade and industry.

The book traces his story from a typical Indian middle-class beginnings to heading a billion dollar corporation.

His early background would be quite familiar to lots of Indians –emphasis on education, premier engineering degree, a decent job, settled family life etc. But his entrepreneurial ambition took him from the well-trodden path to take the road less taken.

This is the story that the book recounts in amazing detail and clarity, with a deep analysis of each step he has taken.

Just like every kid who aspires to be a bus driver, Dr. Reddy’s childhood dream was to be a road roller engineer, perhaps highlighting his precocious fascination with heavy machinery and engineering.

After completing his studies, he took up a job but with a view to work in each branch of industry, from manufacturing to sales to grasp a complete view that is needed by an entrepreneur.

He worked on Refrigeration, EDP, and Sales. Taking time off from work, he pursued MS in Industrial Operations and Management from the University of Michigan, where he sits on the leadership advisory board today.

Inspired by the legendary Raj Reddy, the first Asian to win the coveted Turing Prize, touted to be the ‘Computer Science Nobel’ and a pioneer of AI and robotics research, he headed a new joint sector company, OMC Computers.

This opened up the digital world of CAD, CAM and CAE, giving a direction to his entrepreneurial dreams.

Starting from his home dining room based CAD digitization for GM’s Electromotive division, Infotech Enterprises moved towards map digitization. There were many hiccups from a broken dining table to digitizing maps without understanding map projections.