December - 2003 issue > On The Cover

By Karthik Sundaram

THE QUIET SMILE BELIES THE IRON WITHIN. When Ashoke Dutt selected Chennai in 1989 to set up a call center, processing “factory” and headquarters for Citibank’s ambitious consumer lending and credit card plans in India, people thought he was taking on some pretty heavy odds. In those days, not many professionals aspiring to join a multinational marked Chennai out as one of their list of cities to live in. Not even remotely. Yet, in a matter of months hundreds of business and engineering professionals—including many from the IIM’s—moved to this sleepy city to follow the dream. When Dutt went to Madras telephones to ask for a hundred direct telephone lines, the stupefied officials said they couldn’t afford to give more than 10 to any one customer. His vision of the future and the advantages to the city convinced the senior officials to make the 100 lines available. International telecom agencies—their eye on India’s potential—were motivated to quickly create call management platforms similar to that in the U.S. to integrate hundreds of lines in four other metros with those in Chennai, creating a state-of-the-art centralized call handling infrastructure. And India’s first multi-city 24x7x365 consumer platform handling thousands of incoming calls a day was launched.

The Chennai post office was next. The Mount Road post office (one of the city’s largest) was aghast at his request to process his first month’s credit card direct mail campaign of 4 million pieces. The sorting room wasn’t capable of handling that much in a year! The unfazed Dutt called in a couple of Post Master Generals out of retirement, leased out an apartment near the post office, hired a small army to sort out incoming and outgoing mail—the post office had in effect outsourced this operation. Of course, Citibank representatives had to be planted in the major receiving post offices around the country to make sure the large volumes of incoming mail weren’t thrown away.

The list goes on. Soon, a galvanized Chennai (then Madras) drew entrepreneurs ranging from carpenters to fabric suppliers, government agencies from electricity and water supply to law enforcement—all embracing the multinational’s bold expansion plans in the most unlikely of business location choices. The advantages of low costs and outstanding human resources talent were not lost on Dutt. “It was fascinating to watch the transformation of Madras as we executed our growth plans,” says Dutt. “In 1989, the traffic signals in most streets did not switch on before 8:30 a.m. By 1993, peak traffic started by 7 a.m. Thousands of new jobs were being created. It wasn’t long before other banks, car manufacturers and many others followed us in large numbers.”

Looking back, the goals seemed not only audacious, but unrealistic. “But in those days, we were driven by this passion to create something world class in a country where consumers were grateful if they got “okay” products and service from the banking industry. We had to get the job done.” That “job” was establishing Citibank credit cards in India, which under Dutt’s leadership grew to over 50 percent market share. “It was more than owning the market, we built the category itself in an environment where the concept of obtaining credit was quite out of the consumer’s reach,” recalls the now Executive Vice President of Discover Card in the U.S.

Ashoke Dutt grew up in Calcutta and spent a large part of his twenties in the West Bengal capital, following the traditional “safe” education in chemical engineering. “I had the least interest in coming to the U.S., and continued to work as a sales engineer at Chloride U.K.’s India offices,” says Dutt. Four years later, Dutt did come to the U.S. for a master’s degree in engineering, persuaded by the family. “But I was taken in by business dynamics and analytics, and selected subjects in industrial engineering, operations research and business management more than pure engineering,” recalls the Discover executive. Post graduation, Dutt lost no time in finding his way back home. “My circle of friends were surprised; it was rare to see somebody go back home so soon. There were careers to be made here, and I was one guy intent on getting back home.” Coincidentally, Citibank was interviewing on campus.

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