India's Prolific CEO Guru: KV Kamath

Kalpana further adds, "He was a very unconventional kind of mentor in that sense. He never sat us down to tell us what he thought of our work. Instead, he threw new challenges. That was his way of acknowledging the contribution you made."

V Vaidyanathan, Managing Director of Future Capital Holdings considers Kamath as being easy to get to his mentees, but within time limits. The meetings with him were always brief with no room for lingering.

Kamath feels that in all these 15 years, till he retired as CEO, he has spent around 30 percent of his time in guiding people at ICICI. Mentoring or guiding at the bank was never taken as a human resource (HR) department initiative; rather it was widely discussed at the Board level with the executive directors set with specific responsibility for mentoring individuals.

Spotting talent has turned out as a second nature of Kamath and it has been two decades since he is practicing it. He said, “Even now, I can spot exceptional people at any level. I can't mentor them myself, but I do draw them to the attention with leaders who can.”

Kamath's first big assignment after retiring from ICICI is the chairmanship of Infosys, where the earlier chairman considers himself as Chief Mentor. Kamath said, “At Infosys, Narayan Murthy is a unique person. He built the organization brick by brick and taught others the importance of mentoring. But the context has changed. Infosys has now become a leadership factory for the IT industry."