An Assignment Of entrepreneur

Mr.Atul Punj
(Chairman Of Punj Lloyd Group)

Submitted to:-
Prof. Kruti Patel

Submitted by:- Group : R

Jainik Patel (69)
Jaydeep Patel (70)
Kartik Patel (71)
Punj Lloyd P
History:-

For the large, global player that it is today, Punj Lloyd had a modest start. Atul
Punj, Chairman - Punj Lloyd was the third generation in the Punj family
business. He started the pipeline division of Punj Sons Private Limited in 1982
which was later incorporated as Punj Lloyd Engineering Private Limited in 1988.
The company was rechristened Punj Lloyd Private Limited in the following year
and subsequently became Public Limited in 1992.

From what started with pipelines, grew to constructing tanks & terminals,
refineries, power plants and civil infrastructure.

Punj Lloyd was also quick to spot opportunities in overseas markets and secured
its first overseas contract – Balongan Jakarta Product Pipeline, in Indonesia in
1992. At the time of the Indonesian crisis, Punj Lloyd stood steadfast when other
international companies retracted. Punj Lloyd soon widened its international
operations to Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh,
among others. This formed the basis for the establishment of the Group’s
regional offices in the Caspian, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), South
East Asia and South Asia.

Punj Lloyd became listed in 2006 and in the same year, Punj Lloyd made another
significant move. It acquired Sembawang Engineers & Constructors in
Singapore, one of the largest engineering and construction groups in Southeast
Asia and Simon Carves, the leaders in polymers and petrochemicals. The energy-
packed 2006 also saw the Group enter into strategic joint venture agreements
Dayim in Saudi Arabia for oil & gas and infrastructure and KAEFER of
Germany for insulation.

Growing from strength to strength, the group embarked on a branding initiative

in 2006 to focus on creating a powerful EPC brand that unites global operations
and diverse service offerings. The new logo is based on the idea of synergy -
different entities working together to create a whole that is larger than the sum of
its parts.

The Group acquired a significant stake in UK’s Technodyne International in

2008, making it a complete end-to-end service provider from design to
construction in cryogenic LNG tanks. It has also made inroads into the
happening Defence industry with a tie up with Singapore Technologies Kinetics
to manufacture defence equipment for the Indian Army.
From its evolution from a pipeline company to a renowned EPC player to today
an over US$ 2.4 billion diversified player, also in Defence, Aviation, Upstream
and Marine, Punj Lloyd’s history is dotted with interesting and heartening
anecdotes of its rich experiences gained in different geographies, of people who
stood tall to bring it so far, of complexities of its various diverse projects and the
challenges of time.

Mr Atul Punj is the Chairman of Punj Lloyd, a diversified conglomerate providing

engineering and construction services in Oil & Gas, Petrochemicals and
Infrastructure, with interests in upstream and defence sectors. Headquartered in
India, Punj Lloyd is a US$ 2.5 billion organisation with operations spread across
the Middle East, the Caspian, Asia Pacific, Africa, South Asia, China and Europe.
Mr Punj’s focused approach and foresight has seen the company grow
phenomenally, with the last 3 years witnessing a quadruple growth.

Mr Punj’s global vision for the Group led him to cross boundaries and establish
international offices in 16 countries and gain project experience worldwide. The
15000 strong multicultural workforce underlines his focused approach to harness
diversity within the organisation. As many as 32 nationalities form an integral part
of the workforce at the company’s various project sites. This rich amalgamation of
diverse skill sets and cultures has resulted in a powerful intellectual work
environment, encouraging dynamic ideas and innovative thinking.

It is Atul Punj’s entrepreneurial skills and foresight that resulted in the acquisition
of SembCorp E&C, Singapore, now called Sembawang, and Simon Carves, UK in
2006. Through a combination of strategic acquisitions and joint ventures with
partners in Germany, UK, Saudi Arabia, and India, he led the Group to enhance its
scale and competitive position to acquire a leadership position in the industry with
an impressive list of international and national clients. Be it the investment in
Pipavav Shipyard to open multiple opportunities for the Group in defence and
offshore fabrication or becoming the first company to sign a nuclear deal post 123
agreement with Thorium Power to best capitalise on the emerging nuclear
renaissance, Mr Punj has been instrumental in consolidating Group’s diverse
businesses.

It is his altruistic initiatives that have resulted in setting up of the Institute of

Physical Infrastructure at the new Indian School of Business (ISB) campus at
Mohali, the craftsmen training institutes for training and the implementation of the
Life Enrichment Project for worker welfare at the Punj Lloyd sites.
Mr Punj was awarded the Ernst & Young 'Entrepreneur of the Year 2007' in
the Infrastructure & Construction category. The award noted Mr Punj's clear
vision, foresight and focused approach to establish the Punj Lloyd Group as the
leader in the industry. CNBC TV 18 has recently conferred the ‘First Generation
Entrepreneur of the Year’ award to Mr Punj. The Company was also declared
the ‘Best Infrastructure Company’ at the NDTV Profit Leadership Awards
2008.

Born in 1957, Atul Punj is based in New Delhi and is actively involved with many
trade bodies. He is a Member of the Construction Federation of India, Construction
Industry Development Council and the National Council of Confederation of
Indian Industry. Atul Punj is a Director of Jacob Ballas, Global Health and
Chairman of Samena Capital.

Atul Punj enjoys swimming and skiing. A voracious reader, he enjoys non-fiction.
Building his own legacy
There is a saying that family wealth does not last more than three generations. This
was anathema to Atul Punj. His grandfather, Kanahya Lal Punj, had built up
thriving business selling construction materials in the earlier half of the 1900s. But
by the 1990s, when the business was divided up among Kanahya Lal's many
descendents, all that Atul Punj inherited was a small construction company that
was deep in debt.

The construction company did have a top line of about Rs 3 crore (less than S$1
million at today's rates) but it also had a debt of Rs 5 crore. 'I was broke, I had no
money. The first two years after I had taken over were nightmarish times,' he
remembers.

The company Mr Punj had inherited eventually became Punj Lloyd, now India's
second biggest construction company, estimated to be worth around US$2 billion

Atul Punj's success story - he is now in the league of India's Top-20 richest men -
diverges from that of most scions of the privileged. There was no financial support
to fall back on, for starters. And while his company did bear the family name, he
decided early on that he would be independent.

Still, the legacy of coming from a well-known family was hard to shake off. 'To
come from a three-generation business family and to have to start as a first
generation entrepreneur was much worse because of the baggage of the family
name and history,' says the 50-year-old Mr Punj.

Perhaps even more of a handicap to his business was that it was difficult to change
the public perception that he was rich, making business loans hard to get. 'People
thought I was wealthy because of my family, but I really had nothing,' he adds
Interview of Atul Punj:-

Here is a verbatim transcript of Mitali Mukherjee’s exclusive interview with

Atul Punj on CNBC-TV18's show Wealth Creators. Also watch the
accompanying video.

Q: You won an entrepreneur award last year. There was an an interesting

description about you — a Rs 2 crore business, a Rs 5 crore of liability when
you got in a family settlement. Was it as melodramatic as that?

A: It was worse because it was at a time when VP Singh’s government was in

power and as you know the economic conditions in India were appalling. We had
the pleasure to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). So here was a third-
generation entrepreneur with a name that people presumed had wealth but was
actually bankrupt. So it was as dramatic if not lot more.

Q: Was there some family opposition for you getting into the business, for
getting into construction as a space?

A: My traditional family business was industrial insulation and air-conditioning

and lot of people in the mechanical construction area were clients of the insulation
side of the family business. So it was not really looked on favourably by a large
part of the family because they felt that I was going to be competing with their
clients.

Q: Normally, you should do it aside from the youth?

A: I wanted to be different. It was tiring to be the fifteenth family member also

involved in the same thing all over again and I really felt that there was lot more
one could do than producing — what I call insulation and wrapping around the
pipes that somebody else has build.

So it was really the need to do something different. If you looked at insulation

(industry’s) growth potential, it always had capped. There was no way that we
could have got anywhere close to our numbers if we had just been in the insulation
business. So it was the desire to be different, the desire to prove one’s self on one’s
own and the desire to move up the technical complexity of projects.
Q: You were 22. I am curious to know where all that drive came in at that
point and what are the other options you had: I want to be a sportsman, I
want to be an architect, or I want to go and live abroad and do nothing?

A: I had been a sportsman but I had hurt my back early on, so it was ruled out. I
spent my 19th birthday in hospital getting my disc removed, so that closed out
most of the sports except the swimming opportunity. About going abroad, I would
have been the eighth member of my generation. My father had sent seven before
me overseas. When my turn came, the one who had gone before me had got
married to an American. So he asked me to marry before going. I told him I am
just an 18-year-old and he said I don’t have a problem with that. So I obviously
ended up staying in India. I was very keen to prove myself at business early on.

Q: What are the younger years like for someone from a business family? Do
you have to study at a certain place and get a certain grade and always and
only think about becoming an entrepreneur?

A: I wasn’t a model student by any stretch of imagination. Three months before

higher secondary exams, my father thought that I would get a first division. Two
months later, he downgraded (his expectations) to second and a month before, he
revised it to third division. He was surprised when I actually ended up with 70%,
which was considered to be good at that time with two distinctions.

So that got me to Shri Ram College. College years were quite disappointing. In
many ways, they waste the years with the quality of education that one got in Delhi
University. They could have put (those years) too much better use.

So during the growing years, there was a lot of pressure as all my cousins before
me in the joint family were the bright ones who ended up in the US or who did
exceedingly well. So comparisons were inevitable.

Q: Is it about proving a point as well?

A: Also

Q: To whom?

A: I think mostly to you. The pride of achievement that one has with one’s own
achievements cannot be replicated by what pride somebody else could have in your
achievements. So a large part was about proving oneself.
Q: Where do you think you are in that?

A: I think the journey has just started in terms of what we have been doing for the
last two or two-and-a-half years since our IPO (Initial Public Offering). We just
have been taking our positions, putting the building blocks in place which now are
pretty much there. So I think the story is just beginning.

Q: Was the stock market a seminal event for you in that regard?

A: It was and I think we were fortunate in terms of the timing. It was fortunate in
terms of the kind of financial strength that it gave us to be able to achieve the
growth rates that we have. It was important in terms of instituting the corporate-
governance issues; the entire ethics package was critical, which becomes easier to
explain to your own people when you have outside stakeholders. You can look at
them in the eye and say: this is not my company anymore; this is other people’s
money. And one has a responsibility to make sure that that is handled properly.

So there are some things that your own people who have been with you and have
been critical to your success forward tend to take lightly when it’s a wholly-owned
company. But it becomes important when you have a large number of independent
directors who think not just necessarily the way you want them to think. These are
all steps that go towards creating a landmark event that hopefully is doing well for
everybody that did come in.

Q: (Leading stock market trader) Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is a stakeholder in

your company. He was telling me how one of the most emotional moments for
you was the Simon Carves’ acquisition and you told him: my grandfather
used to tell me about this business and I got it. Tell us about that.

A: We acquired Sembawang Engineers and Constructors and Simon Carves was a

wholly-owned subsidiary of Sembawang. The irony was when I mentioned earlier
on that there was a lot of resistance to my getting into this business from the family
members, the company’s name that was often mentioned in that opposition was
Simon Carves. If you do this kind of activity, major clients like Simon Carves will
stop giving us insulation contracts, they said. I did mention it to the whole team at
Simon Carves when I addressed them after we took it over.
Q: Was that emotional for you?

A: No, it was a feeling of pride. I do not think it was emotional as much as it was a
feeling of pride that we are now bigger than a lot of our so-called clients in the
insulation era. That was a moment of pride of achievement.

Q: If you have to do it all over again from the age of 22, what would you strike
off in the whole learning?

A: I strike off the internet play completely. It was not a business that was destined
to be ours. It was not a business that we understood, we were babies as far as the
financial markets were concerned. We got affected with greed, the whole story of
eyeballs, space dues, subscriber numbers, so we did not understand it will be really
had to do business being there. But as I said, it was an important learning for us. It
taught us a lot about how private-equity deals (work); what the due diligence
requirements are; so there was a learning in it. I would not put it down to complete
zero but that is a piece I would rather forget.

Q: There is a list of 12 Indian people who have joined the global wealth club
in 2008 and you are part of it. Is individual wealth important as well for you?s

A: Beyond a point, wealth is not relevant anymore because your lives cannot
improve beyond a point. As a friend of mine always said that the only money we
have is what we can spend, the rest is just a number. So after a point it really
becomes more a sense of achievement, a measure by which you can see your own
progress. It is definitely not about the wealth.

Q: Are you a spendthrift?

A: No, I will not call myself a spendthrift, (but) I am not a miser at the same time. I
enjoy the good life but I would not call myself as a spendthrift.

Q: You were telling me that you are into sports and in fact you were into
boxing and swimming and this time around the Olympics, we had a couple of
them to report. What do you feel about sports as a space? Do you think there
is enough encouragement to that or do you think that individual corporates or
wealth creators should actually look at becoming part of society or giving
back to society?

A: No. It is a common theme these days to look at things like corporate social
responsibility (CSR), inclusive growth etc, which is very important. But you have
to look at all this in the backdrop of the fact that till about four-five years ago,
serious wealth was not created in India. It is really the last four-five years that we
have started creating serious wealth. Also, now you are starting to see serious CSR
efforts of companies and corporates that are starting out. But if you really look at
the amount of CSR that was done pre-independence, and then post-independence
till about five-six years ago, it was minimal. So you will start seeing much more of
that happening as time goes on. Sports will get its attention as well.

Q: If you had to, where would you put it?

A: I would choose some sport, which I think India would have a lot of potential in.
We are already spending a fair amount on educating a 1000 children right now in
one of the most backward parts in UP. These are children who have not traveled —
my father looks after this, he has created this whole foundation and it is quite a
heartwarming feeling to see children who have not travelled beyond a six- or
seven-kilometre radius from their villages coming to schools speaking perfect
English, and being 100% computer-literate (thanks to the efforts of the
foundation). That I think is his great achievement. As a company, we support him
fully and I would like to see more of that happen as well.

Q: Do you sometimes feel you were the boy with a silver spoon?

A: No. I do not think I was a boy with a silver spoon. I remember clearly the fact at
the time when I went to college and I asked my father for some pocket money and
he took out his wallet and he took out a crisp Re 1 note, my face failed. He said:
Oh, it is not enough? Take another one. So Rs 2 is what he offered me.

Then I got a long lecture on how much in his time, for one ana (six paisa) you
could buy this, and with two anas, you could buy that. So I was not definitely born
with a silver spoon.

Q: I ask a lot of entrepreneurs who have done a lot of globetrotting, how it is

different to do business here and whether it is more restrictive. Do you feel
that?

A: Yes. India is not very business-friendly and I think our problem is that the
governance or the openness of the government has happened at the senior levels.
There is increasingly a definite alignment between the corporate world and
business. But it is at the lower levels where you tend to start feeling bogged down.
For example, our offices are located in a particular sector in Gurgaon. To drive to it
is like driving through a village road, there is no infrastructure, and there is no
drainage. When you drive down to office with your clients discussing large
projects for India and overseas, they cannot help but wonder when they see one
foot of (logged) water all the way to the office. It is that kind of governance that
really needs to be improved.

Q: You do not set benchmarks but I am sure you have goals that you have set
out for. For a lot of people in the market it’s like Punj Lloyd is the mini
Larsen & Toubro. Is there a maximum L&T dream that you have going?

A: I would not agree with the term mini. In areas that we compete with L&T
except for the offshore and the EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction)
space, we are larger than them in many ways.

But L&T is a company to be admired without a doubt. They have achieved a lot
over a period of years. I joke on this comparison if made and say: We have been
going only for the last six years and they have been doing it for about 70 years so
give us a little time.

Q: You still want to be an entrepreneur 10 years from now or do you want to

be retired on a beach?

A: I cannot sit on a beach for more than two days at the moment. I get fidgety and I
suspect the same thing will probably be true 10 years from now. I would like to be
an entrepreneur. I would like to do new things. (It) doesn’t have to be in the space
of business but could be in any other areas. CSR is one area, there could be other
initiatives; crafts is another area that I am quite excited about.

Q: You keep coming back to the internet rebuff though are you very hard on
yourself about the mistakes you make?

A: I am pretty hard on myself.

Q: At some point in time, was your father taken aback by way Punj Lloyd got
to?

A: You will have to ask him that question.

Q: I am sure you sense that?

A: I remember one time when I was borrowing a lot of money to enter the
corporate market to pay salaries and (was managing to) just survive, he asked me:
Do you know what you are doing?

I said all I can tell you is if I am going down I will fall off the edge and make a
racket so people will remember. I refused the slide off the edge into anonymity so
there is a different approach.

Q: Any cliff-like situation that you foresee right now that as there is a lot of
bad blood that’s going for a couple of sectors. Even in the stock market,
people are concerned about infrastructure, lending rates whether there is
going to be a growth being stymied. Do you see that happening?

A: My strategy for the group has been that we do not risk ourselves on any one
country or any one region so we are equally spread between South-East Asia,
India, Central India, the West Asia and North Africa. What we see is typically is:
one region is up, the other region is down or if oil prices are up particularly high, it
translates to a boom in the West Asia but India is under stress. The South-East
Asian countries could have less of an impact. Central Asia rises along with
the West Asia as is North Africa.

So our strategy has been to spread ourselves in a manner that we are not dependent
on any one country. So as I said, India represents 21% of a backlog today. If there
is an impact here it impacts 20%. Therefore, if there is 10% impact in terms of
cost, funds, commodities etc and it impacts 2% of the overall story. So we are
nicely hedged. As I said earlier, our building blocks are all in place now in all these
markets — with our relationships, our partnerships are owned subsidiaries in
different countries now and the party is just beginning.

Q: Aside from the Internet, tell me one industry I would never find Atul Punj
part of?

A: I think I have an open mind now.

Q: You are becoming a little more brave with it.

A: I think I would not risk the group on any one business anymore. At the time, I
had risked the entire existing financial structure on one investment, which in itself
was a mistake. At this stage, I would definitely look at every area with an open
mind but I would not try to take a decision that would at any point of time
compromise the financial integrity of the group going forward. There are too many
people’s lives dependent on us now. We cannot do that.

Rapid-fire questions

Q: The biggest day in the life?

A: Today.

Q: If not construction, what would it be?

A: Something crazy.

Q: Michael Phelps.

A: Hero for sure.

Q: Two bad habits you want to quit?

A: Smoking and I cannot think of the second one.

Q: Being on Page 3, ridiculous or interesting?

A: It works for some people.

Q: Does it work for you?

A: No.

Q: Sembawang, Simon Carves, more or pause?

A: Technodyne and more.

Q: Where are we most likely to find Atul Punj on a weekend?

A: Home.

Q: The car you would give your right arm and you have to give the honest
answer?

A: I think a good nice Ferrari or a Mercedes SLR.

Exhibit 1: Punj Corporate Structure
Growth Chart of group of company: