The inheritance of loss: Entrepreneur and philanthropist Anu Aga’s enduring legacy
For years, Aga juggled her personal loss and fiduciary responsibility to investors by wont of emotional resilience and sharp business acumen.
Röhan Abraham
In 1996, barely months after traveling abroad to visit her newborn grandchild, Arnavaz ‘Anu’ Aga boarded an intercontinental flight from London’s Heathrow airport oblivious the fact that she was returning home to a death in the family. Her husband, Rohinton Aga, had decided to drive down to Mumbai to receive her, but could not complete the journey. He succumbed to a heart attack, leaving behind one of the biggest engineering firms in the country. But Anu Aga did not have time to mourn.
Within two days, she took over the mantle of leadership from her recently deceased husband at the insistence of top executives of the Pune-based Thermax, a company founded in 1966 by her father A S Bhathena. Aga was someone who had always shun the limelight, choosing instead to partake in the simpler joys of family life.
A trained social worker with a self-acknowledged penchant for conversation, she had to learn the ropes of the trade quite fast. Times were bad. The boiler business was undergoing a churn after the liberalization reforms of 1993. A transition from liquid fuel to coal was underway. The competition seemed to be ahead of the curve. She stepped into her husband’s shoes with a lament and a resolution. Aga was thrown into the deep end.
After serving on the board of Thermax for over two decades, Anu Aga retired on August 8, 2018 at the age of 76. Her tenure at the helm coincided with a period of significant growth for the company. Thermax came back from the brink to consolidate its position as a market leader in its segment, even acquiring a handful of foreign firms to gain a strategic toehold in overseas markets. Aga had stepped down as chairperson in 2004, handing over the reins to her daughter Meher Pudumjee.
The resurgence of the company has been phenomenal. When Aga took over, share prices had plummeted to Rs 36 from a high of Rs 400. Investors were distraught. Thermax is currently within touching distance of clocking $1 billion in revenue. For years, Aga juggled her personal loss and fiduciary responsibility to investors by wont of emotional resilience and sharp business acumen. She hands over the baton to her daughter after successfully orchestrating a turnaround in Thermax’s fortunes.
Aga was born into an upper middle-class Parsi family at a time when the country’s entrepreneurial class was emerging from the shadow of Nehruvian socialism. However, philanthropy and public service is also in her blood. She performed well in both school and college, volunteering to help the underprivileged through the Social Service League of Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College.
A stint at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences followed, with Aga enrolling for a postgraduate degree with a specialization in psychiatric and medical social work. She does not have a formal training in management, but her experience in working with the underprivileged may have prepared her to conduct her business with empathy, and surmount the hurdles that were to spring up later in life.
Rohinton Aga, a junior colleague of Anu’s father at Wanson India, soon entered the life of the Bhathenas.
The affable Rohinton, a Cambridge-educated technocrat, was good friends with her brother, and also a confidante of the senior Bhathena. The couple married in 1965.
His erstwhile colleague and then father-in-law’s company, was later renamed to Thermax in 1980. Meher was born thereafter, but the couple’s second daughter did not survive infancy. She was claimed by an ailment that went undetected. Anu did not mourn, at least publicly. She did away with rituals altogether.
A son, Kurush Aga, was born in 1972. However, he was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition. Anu refused to be forlorn. Kurush was born with a hole in his heart.
Life went on for the Agas. The company had grown in scale, earning a reputation for being an environmentally conscious engineering firm. When Kurush turned 10, Rohinton had a massive heart attack. Things went from bad to worse. While undergoing bypass surgery, he had a paralytic stroke that would lay him low for the next two years.
In addition to tending to Rohinton during his period of convalescence, Anu took it upon herself to take up a more active role in the family business. She joined the human resources team, with a view of monitoring the company in her husband’s absence.
Rohinton recovered towards the end of 1984, taking over the reins of Thermax during a time of great political volatility in the country. His second coming was fortuitous for the Pune-based company. The business was thriving. Thermax went public in 1995. In the meantime, Anu had worked her way up the ladder to head the company’s HR team.
A year after going public, Thermax chairman Rohinton Aga passed away, bequeathing a robust business whose fortunes had taken a downturn in the face of adverse market factors. It was a bittersweet period for the family. Rohinton died a grandfather.
The shadow of death was long in passing. A little over a year hence, Kurush Aga died in a car accident at the age of 25. Anu was not afforded the time to pick herself up from this latest tragedy. Pressure from investors was mounting.
By dint of hard work and some tough decisions, Anu engineered a comeback. She went against popular opinion to hire Boston Consulting Group to steady the ship, rather than wait for the economy to stabilize. The firm divested stake in non-core businesses, venturing instead to unfamiliar territory with products like bottled water. Thermax’s engineering department soon stabilized as orders picked up. The company had also invested substantially on innovation and research to steal a march over rivals with its energy-efficient offerings.
Shareholders have reaped the benefits. From a price of Rs 36 per stock in 1996, Thermax’s value has risen manifold. Its scrip breached the Rs 1,200 mark in February 2018, and is presently trading at around the Rs 1,050 mark.
Anu was also instrumental in grooming Meher to eventually succeed her. Meher and her husband Pheroze were sent to London to revive an underperforming plant in the UK. But the management decided to cut its losses, and the couple returned home to take up junior roles in the company founded by Meher’s grandfather. They were later absorbed into the upper echelons of Thermax’s leadership pyramid.
A chemical engineer by training, Meher Pudumjee was elevated to the post of chairperson in 2004, with the mandate of consolidating on the progress made under her mother, Anu’s leadership. Her husband, Pheroze has served as a non-executive director on the board of Thermax since 2001.
After stepping down as chairperson in 2004, Anu Aga continued to serve on the board as a non-executive director. Bereft of managerial responsibility, she was granted a second lease of life, having both the time, and the resources to give back to the community.
She got involved with the working of the Akansha Foundation, an NGO which provides free education to underprivileged children. Since its inception in 1991, it grew from an organization of student volunteers to a professional concern with over 700 staff, with thousands of students under its wing.
Anu engaged herself in the administration of Akansha Foundation. The NGO began operations in Pune in collaboration with the Thermax Social Initiatives Foundation. When Thermax did up their head office, the NGO was accommodated in the premises. She sat on the board of Akansha Foundation, and also Teach for India, both celebrated initiatives known for their contribution to education. At Teach for India, she was part of the team that formulated a curriculum for teachers.
The results are telling. Both organizations have achieved great success over the years. Under their tutelage, many students from underprivileged backgrounds have won scholarships to foreign universities. Her contributions did not go unnoticed. Anu Aga was honoured with a Padma Shri in 2010.
Thermax’s code of conduct, which sets great store on adopting environment-friendly technology, and also uprightness in dealing with clients and governments, has the hallmarks of her personality.
At the age of 76, Anu Aga is stepping down from a company whose fortunes have ben inextricably linked with the quiet industry, tragedy, and resilience that has shaped her personal history. But she is not withdrawing. She remains committed to her work in the social sector. Catharsis was slow, but enduring.
