BusinessWeek Stars of Asia

Few weeks ago BusinessWeek came up with a list called the Stars of Asia and quite a few Indians also made it to the list. The list was divided into the following categories : –

Agenda Setters (mainly Politicians)
Managers (CEO’s)
Financiers (Bankers)
Innovators (Science and Technology)

Surprisingly none of the Indian IT Companies have made it to the list. The Indians who have made it to this list are high achievers in their respective domains. The people who made it: -

Mani Shankar Aiyar (under the Agenda Setter’s Category)

Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways (under the Managers category)

K V Kamath of ICICI Bank (under the Financers category)

R Mashelkar of CSIR (under the Innovators category).

One more person (from India) has made it to this list but he is not an Indian. Joseph Sigelman, Co-CEO of Office Tiger (a BPO firm having an office in Chennai) has been working in Chennai for the last 5 years. It is quite difficult to believe that he has been living in a hotel room for the entire part of the last 5 years. Lot of expats stay around Neelankarai. Office Tiger has been only of the early entrants into the BPO sector.

Sigelman headed to Madras, the city with the largest concentration of tech talent after Bangalore. Thanks to their emphasis on quality and hard work -- Sigelman puts in 18-hour days -- OfficeTiger quickly rose to the top. Another plus: The company's meritocracy contrasts with the hierarchical social strictures in conservative Madras.