Beyond the Case
A podcast where global leaders from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM) community join in a personal capacity and share the real decisions, failures, and mental models behind building enduring companies.
This podcast is independent and not affiliated with Harvard Business School.
Beyond the Case
From Father-Son Partnership to a Tata Acquisition - Prashant Kandoi
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This conversation with Prashant Kandoi is largely about family business, entrepreneurship, succession, values, and learning through experience.
Prashant grew up watching his father build an electrical business from the ground up after leaving his job in 1983. Seeing his father work intensely made Prashant’s own path feel natural: he studied electrical engineering and joined the family business in 1992. A defining part of his development was his father’s willingness to give him responsibility, let him make mistakes, and eventually let go of control.
As the company sought faster growth, Prashant pushed to hire strong professionals, even when doing so felt expensive and risky. That experience reinforced his belief that good people are an investment rather than merely a cost. The family grew the company without outside equity, relying primarily on internal accruals and bank financing.
The eventual sale to the Tata Group was not something they had planned from the outset. What began as a customer interaction gradually developed into conversations around partnership, minority investment, majority ownership, and ultimately an exit. Prashant highlights that Tata’s assessment went beyond financial performance, they spent considerable time understanding the people, values, and ethos behind the company.
After exiting, Prashant attended Harvard Business School’s OPM program, which he describes as transformative both professionally and personally. He later returned to entrepreneurship. Rather than reinventing everything, he carried forward the values, relationships, and lessons from his first venture. One powerful validation of that approach is that a large majority of his former customers chose to work with him again.
Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation:
- Earn responsibility before seeking authority.
- Give people room to make mistakes and grow.
- Learn to let go as the next generation steps up.
- Hire for the company you want to become, not just the company you are today.
- Invest in strong people even when it feels expensive early on.
- Build a great business before thinking about an exit.
- Let values and integrity guide long-term decisions.
- Know when to separate emotion from business decisions.
- Protect personal relationships by creating boundaries around work.
- Build trust so strong that people choose to work with you again
Hey, welcome everyone to another episode of Beyond the Case. This is a podcast where global leaders from Howard Business School's OPM community join in a personal capacity to share the life principles, mental models, and decisions that go behind building enduring companies. Today's guest is Prashant Kandori. Prashant, welcome to the podcast. I believe you did uh OPM 43, correct?
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Prashant, pleasure to have you here. If you would if you would just take a moment to introduce yourself, your business as well, so the listeners know who they're listening to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so in wonderful uh chatting with you on this show and wonderful getting to know you. I mean, we messaged each other yesterday and today we are on a call, so that's how these how strong the Harvard alum connections are. So it's wonderful. And uh I am Prashant and born and brought up in Bombay and from a family business. My father had started a company in '83 in the electrical space, which I joined in '92. And then we ran this company for about 25 years before selling our stakes in this company to the Tatars. And we exited in 2011. So I had this small window before starting my second venture where we where I got to know of this OPM program as a perfect kind of an opportunity to do almost like an MBA program with people of similar background, similar age groups, and uh jumped into the opportunity. And I think it's been it's been one of the most enriching experiences as far as education within what is taught in the class and what is you know taught by the peers. So it's been quite a fantastic learning. And I think proof of that comes from what my my wife tells me is that post-OPM she has seen quite a transformation in both my professional and my personal capacity. So I think that's proof enough of what OPM's done.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Yeah, compliments from the wife always hold very highly for any married person. Prashant, you mentioned your father started the company. So could you take us back to some of your memories of what your childhood was like? Work conversations around dinner table, you know, or lunch table sometimes filled with some of his work thoughts that he'd bring back with him. Would you feel like you were a part of those conversations and brainstorming? Could you just talk to us a little bit about that environment?
SPEAKER_01Sure. Yeah. So dad started the business in 83. I now he's a self-made person and used to do a job prior to that. So when he started businesses for virtually with you know whatever life savings he had till that point in time. And uh it was a smallish kind of a business. And I used to see him putting 80, 20 hours a day. And my it was in the electrical space. So, you know, it required really no kind of mentoring as to what I wanted to do. It was pretty clear in my mind that dad's an engineer, I'll be an engineer and elect electrical engineer, and just try and work with him to grow the business. So that's where I completed my engineering in in 92 from VJTI and we started working together. And I think that kind of hand holding that I got from my dad through these first 10, 15 years of my work was something which I don't know how how, you know, I think you have to experience it to really to to live that journey. So that hand holding, uh that allowing you to make mistakes, and then somebody who's willing to let go was, I think, the way the grooming happened over conversations and over work. But what we clearly did draw a line was when we get out of office and reach home, we will not talk about work. So I think that's where we drew the line.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned he was willing to let go. Could you maybe speak a little more about that? Because often in Indian family businesses, you know, the founder uh being the parent, you know, stays in charge and it's very difficult for them to take a back seat and maybe uh experiment with new ideas, take risky decisions. How was that experience for you working with your father?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think I hear that a lot. And I would say it got sent to me when dad let me into the business and could about six, seven years into the business, we decided that we wanted to set on a faster growth journey. So I told him we'll have to get in a bunch of people to help us do that. He said, go ahead, I'll use my contacts, let's interview them together. And we started building a very solid base of getting in good people to join us. At that point in time, it looked like a very risky proposition in the early 90s to get people at pretty high scales. But, you know, we realized as soon as we got them in that they got in enormous value. So I think that's something that he allowed, which other people, other, you know, the founders may find it difficult to do. So I think that's something that stayed with me. And uh, even as we build our business today, we get in a lot of people are a little heavy on our base, but I think we like to do business that way, like to get a good night's sleep, even though it may be a little heavier cost. But that's the way I think businesses are built over a period of time. So yeah, I think I've been fortunate to have somebody who's let go. In fact, when we sold our business in 2008 and these guys had approached us to buy out a business that he built, he started rather, when I asked him, Are you feeling this to be an appropriate decision? He said, Absolutely. Whatever you think is the appropriate thing to do, go ahead and do it. Otherwise, you know, for a founder to let go something that he's built over 25 years could be a pr pretty emotional decision.
SPEAKER_00I had, you know, his complete backing there too. Did you guys raise any money for the business? In the 80s, I think funding was quite challenging besides bank financing, from what I hear. There were limited avenues. So how did the financing structure for the company come about?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was intermi a cruise and uh and the banks. So we did not have any XME financing at that time.
SPEAKER_00Completely bootstrapped. Pretty bootstrapped, yes. Wow. Incredible. And then uh do you feel your father, now that you know this in retrospect, you know, or built to last and built to scale, because of HBS, of course, I learned it there. But do you feel this was in some way clear to your father and you in terms of what what avenue you all had chosen or what discipline you all were building the business with? Or was it just, you know, hey, one fine day the Tatars or someone comes with an offer and what do we do now?
SPEAKER_01So we'd never built a business to sell a business. In fact, they came to us to they came to our office as a customer trying to interview us for one of their projects. And uh then the conversation geared towards what about then the conversation, you know, we are from there to what about looking to work together as partners. And then it started building. So into, you know, a conversation to buy a minority stake to a majority stake. So it was a pretty gradual journey. Took about a year of conversation with me, with you know, senior people and some amount of convincing to make us do that. So that was never really in our mind. I mean, I did not even know that it was possible to sell our business at the same time.
SPEAKER_00Shant, having sold a business and then having started out again, um, and it seems you're doing very well in our current business as well. So congratulations on that. But are there any any principles that you had the second time around where you knew, you know, maybe what not to do or how to go about taking decisions better?
SPEAKER_01Yes. So there are a few sectors that we decided not to work for. I think those are some things that we have decided not to do. And in terms of the values and principles, you see, if the Tata's before they acquired us, as I said, it took them a year. It was not per se the business that they were evaluating, it was per se evaluating what kind of people are. And when they wanted the same kind of ethos, the same kind of thinking, principles, etc. And it was like for them a reflection of what they do in their company. So we've just stayed on with the same values and principles which we which we started our business initially. And I think that's worked well for us. Business is uh sort of similar to what we did in the past and more. So what is similar after the non-compete got over, we were able to do something similar. So about 80 to 90 percent of my customers in the past are my customers today, proof enough of you know what we've that we've served them well for them to be able to give us an opportunity again.
SPEAKER_00Very, very cool. Rashan, thank you again. Um, appreciate your time a lot. And this is a very, very, very pleasant conversation. So I appreciate you making time such late in the day and uh making yourself available.
