Table talk. The AM Naik way of leading and giving

If you thought that after working for 58 years at Larsen & Toubro, Anil Manibhai Naik would walk quietly away into the sunset then you would be wrong. Naik, at 81, is padding up for his next innings as a mentor to the next level of leaders at L&T, and also continuing his work as a philanthropist by building schools and hospitals for the underprivileged.

“I am currently mentoring different groups at L&T. For example, there are 40 people under my mentorship in the age group of 35-42. They will be ready to take up leadership roles by 2032. So, although I am moving out, I will continue to be an advisor to L&T with a focus on creating future leaders,” Naik tells us at the start of a two-hour-long conversation at his bungalow in Pali Hills in Mumbai.

Heart of gold

Dressed in a simple white T-shirt and dark grey trousers, Naik looks young for his age and talks of living a simple life. “Even to a board meeting, I go in a T-shirt. Right from my grandfather to my father, we have been givers. That is why I have been able to give back to my village through two of my trusts. When dealing with the poor, if you don’t dress simply they hesitate to approach you. Even at L&T, whatever I have done was not to create personal wealth but to create value for our employees and stakeholders,” Naik says as he sips a Coca-Cola while offering us South Indian filter coffee.

We are meeting him just a few days ahead of his last annual general meeting. But there is no sadness in stepping down as the leader of L&T, a role he has performed since 1999. “I am quite happy. The company is doing well under SN Subrahmanyan (SNS). For nine years, I have mentored him. So, it is not difficult now to step away because I had planned for it much ahead,” says Naik whose legendary tactics saved L&T from potential take-over bids in the 1980s and early 2000s. This and the fact that the seeds of nearly 90 per cent of L&T’s growth businesses were sowed by Naik has given him a hero-like status not just within the industry but also with political leaders. He shares details about his meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and industrialists including Mukesh Ambani but requests us to keep the conversation off-the-record.

We reluctantly agree but we ask him to tell us something about him that people in general do not know. “I have never used a credit card or any of the digital platforms like UPI,” he says nonchalantly. “Another thing you might find shocking is that I have never seen my salary slip”

Origin story

Naik was born in Navsari, Gujarat, in pre-independent India. His father was a school teacher who led his life based on the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. After completing his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Birla Vishvakarma Mahavidyalaya Engineering College in Vallabh Vidyanagar in Gujarat, Naik moved to Mumbai with little knowledge of English. In 1965 he joined L&T as a junior engineer from where he had a rapid rise.

“My father and my grandfather were was my role models But the one who recruited me, an Englishman, Mr Baker, and the one who succeeded him, Mr Pherwani, encouraged me immensely. So, I am thankful to those two. From thereon, I am a self-made man,” he says.

Future direction

As the conversation moves from his personality to the business, one can see Naik’s eyes light up with excitement. He tells us, like the CEO, that L&T is on track to hit ₹2.7-lakh crore revenue by 2026. “We closed last year at ₹1.83-lakh crore. We are close to signing a $2 billion hydrogen project deal. This year we expect to close at ₹2.10 crore. We will hit the target well on time,” he says with a confident smile. But does he have the confidence in his successor to have the same zeal as he had? Naik, who used to work 15 hours a day without taking any leaves for 21 years, says he has mentored SNS and other managers to think like entrepreneur-leaders.

“Today, we have many tools and technologies that one doesn’t have to slog as I did. One can do a little less now and achieve the same result,” he says. Naik rues that his obsession with work gave him little time for his family. Now, he wants to make sure that the current employees of L&T do not have the same regret. “We are moving our workforce in a manner where they can be near their families even as they work at project sites,” he says.

As the conversation winds down he says, “I’d like to be remembered as a person who transformed L&T from being on the edge of taken over, with a continuous fear from 1987 to 2003, to have ring-fenced L&T from future threats of takeover.”