MR. CHARUL MADAN, MANAGING PARTNER, EXECUTIVE ACCESS
BATCH: 19985-1997
SHARES HIS SUCCESS SAGA WITH ARCHANA SHARMA
As we met Mr. Charul Madan, one is easily impressed by the swanky office located in the heart of the city, Saket, New Delhi, It was indeed a pleasure to get to know him as a person, going back to his student life and then taking in his future plans. His composed & charming personality leaves you awestruck. His intellectual appraoch, verbosity, focus and sophistication separate Mr. Madan from his contemporaries. He also happens to be an excellent orator and his ability to connect with people has helped him reach new heights in his corporate career. Right from his college days to the present, he was weaved his learning in the best fashion as per the latest trends in the global market. He always dreamt of being the best and this relentless pursuit of excellence has lead him to carve a niche for himself in this competitive world. After a 3 year tenure with Planman consulting in the Training & Development division, he switched to an executive search and consulting firm, Executive Access, a global boutique, established in the year 1988. Understanding the solution from the client's perspective is one of his key strength and this also happens to be a part of his company's philosophy. Mr. Madan has also been a co-founder and Director of Pro-P technology and an angel investor in “Mama's little donut”. Mama's little donuts is a store that appeals to mothers who are in search of the best quality toys for their kids. It's an attractive store located in one of the post areas of Delhi and is now building an online platform. Mr. Madan has varied interests and passions, he lives his life to the fullest, he loves to spend time with daughter, he plays squash and goes for horse-riding. He is keen on travelling and has been to a large number of countries across the globe and has picked up the culture and trends unique to the regions that he has traveled to. Apart from being a thorough professional who is dependable, quality conscious and extremely high on integrity and ethics, he is also an all-rounder who gives equal weightage to the other 'Fun' dimensions of life.
Mr. Charul Madan a alumnus of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management, belongs to the Batch of 1997 and comes across as one of those rare individuals who have a great combination of ambition and humility. In our conversation with him, Mr. Madan revealed to us his spectacular journey in the corporate world and IIPM's significant contribution to his achievements.
Mr. Madan belongs to Dehradun and arrived in Delhi to pursue his MBA at IIPM. A completely different city as compared to Dehradun, Delhi's big city environment was very new to him. However he feels it gave him immense exposure, something he would have missed out completely in the sleepy town of Dehradun. It has been close to 16 years now and he has not moved out of the city and has fallen in love with it!
Mr. Madan maintains that Delhi and IIPM gave him just the right exposure not only in terms of National issues but also International perspectives. IIPM is very close to him and he still has a strong bond with the institute and its faculties. He fondly recollects the classes conducted by Arindam Sir and reminisces most of his teachings. He also found his soul-mate at IIPM and very emphatically maintains that a lot of what he is today is because of IIPM.
He shares that those days, the classes at IIPM were held at Lodhi road campus and there were about 60 students only in his batch! Back then when the institute was just in its 20th year, the campus was not very large. Mr. Madan feels that the bond one builds with a small or a evolving institute is always strong. He initially worked for Planman Consulting and was one of the first employees. His shift to Executive Access was initiated with the help of a colleague who was an employee there. Executive Access, is one of the region's largest and most successful Executive Search firm with a big focus on financial services apart from other successful practice appears, with over 25 years experience in recruiting senior executives across the globe. They are headquartered in London with multiple office in USA, Canada and Asia.
However in the period between Planman and Executive Access, Mr. Madan also co-founded his own entrepreneurial venture. It was a joint venture with a Swiss company and primarily catered to the Railways in India.
They diversified and expanded their business with 120-150 odd customers and then sold it off. Mr. Madan shares that in spite of him having close to 5 years of corporate exposure, he began his career at EA as a research associate. He believes that this decision was spurred by his attitude that he wanted to learn the basics of this new business from it very foundation. And today after eleven promotions, he currently serves the company in the position of Managing Partner.
A managing partner, responsibility is to continuously build the equity of the firm apart from practice development. They have twenty eight partners world-wide. Even though they are global in nature they are very 'boutique' at heart. They carry a lot of nimbleness on how they provide solutions, build relationship with clients, and deal with the clients. This is the sole reason why he started off as a research associate as Executive Access is globally research focused.
As a Managing Partner of the firm, Mr. Madan is responsible for drawing overall vision of the company along side the Country MD not only from the Indian perspective but also from the global perspective. The major part of his role demands him to see that there is consistent profitable growth for the shareholders as well as the other partners. He also has to ensure that each practice area develops enough knowledge, information, and client solutions so as to remain on the top and then there is the issue of people management..' On asking about how classrooms are different from workstations he says that there is a vast difference between the two. At first, they both cannot be compared as a classroom involves theoretical study of subjects nowadays IIPM has evolved a lot in case-study based classes like Harvard and other B-Schools does. It does help a student prepare for the corporate world but workstations are something completely different as a person entering a Sales job does not even have a workstation. He feels that people should look at their role in a larger perspective of how the company operates and constantly look at avenues to contribute.
“What are the success factors of the organization? How are you contributing to those success factors and how passionately you are building that business? How driven are you and how goal oriented are you?
This is what makes the difference and matters the most,” comments. Mr. Madan draws inspiration from his former Chairman Mr. Rajan Marwah. Mr. Madan shares the fact that Mr. Marwah left for Hong Kong with just 300 dollars and built a multi million dollarfirm is a great inspiration for him. An ardent squast lover, he loves playing the game daily. On weekends he spends time with this daughter to go horse-riding. He says, though corporate grooming is largely dependent on the work environment and the role, it is critical to a professional success. Being a strong communicatior is extremely important and how you structure your conversation and how you present your cases will be dependent on your communications skills. His advice to the young professionals is that “to be passionate about your work, be driven, have a sense of goal and never wait for people to motivate”. Three Cheers from Cult to this dynamite.
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