What drives Suman Mishra, a woman leading the charge in male bastion

Mishra, the first professional CEO in an industry that's largely been a male bastion, talks to Shally Seth Mohile about things that drive her

Not many women with Ivy League credentials and with the experience of having worked with two of the top four global consultancies and a large pharmaceutical company would like to be in an auto-rickshaw driver’s seat. But Suman Mishra, who has always been fascinated by the manufacturing and industrial sector, is different. It’s easy to see why she does what she does once you meet her.

Mishra and I are meeting over breakfast at the Westin’s buffet restaurant, Seasonal Taste, in suburban Mumbai on a rainy but pleasant morning.  She dashes in dot at 9:30 and spots me quickly at the sofa on the right. Dressed in a sharp black business suit paired with a light blue shirt, her tall athletic frame is unmissable. After a warm handshake and a quick exchange of pleasantries, she swiftly picks up the plate from the table and suggests we first get whatever we want before settling down to chat.

“I am not a foodie at all,” she announces as we head towards the elaborate buffet. Her first plate is almost half full with an assortment of muskmelon, dragon fruit and papaya. The second, a smaller one, has a croissant and a banana. I also choose fruit, but add dhokla and idlis to the mix.  

A computer engineer from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and an MBA from the Stephen M Ross School of Business, Michigan University, she’s only a year old in her role as CEO, but she’s not new to M&M. Over the last seven years that she has been with the tractor-to-technology group, she has had stints in various critical functions: from strategy and capital allocation (group office) to business transformation, customer insights and analytics (auto business).

After seven years at McKinsey in various roles, first in Chicago and then in Gurugram, Mishra found herself “shortlisting” Mahindra as the Indian company she would like to work for. Subsequently, with the help of some senior colleagues at McKinsey, she connected with Anand Mahindra (chairman, Mahindra Group). She exchanged some emails with him but didn’t get around to meeting anyone in the group.

In the meantime, she got an offer from Cipla and ended up joining as head-corporate management project. As luck would have it, after two-and half years at Cipla, where she was well settled and gratified with the way her career was shaping up, she got a call from a head hunting firm for a role in Mahindra Group’s strategy office. Mishra decided to simply “explore” it, but landed a job at the firm.

“I met Anish (Anish Shah, current MD & CEO, Mahindra Group, who was then heading its strategy office), Dr Goenka (Pawan Goenka, then the MD) and everybody. I had zero intention of leaving Cipla,” she says in her affable, easygoing manner. “But when I met the leadership team and heard Anish’s plans, what this team would do in transformation, it all sounded very exciting to me.”

She orders an “as large as possible” Americano and a cheese platter, which has bel paese, parmesan and brunost, among other kinds of cheese. “My breakfast is mostly this – fruit and coffee. I love fruit. This is extra for me,” she says pointing to the smaller plate.

Under­ Mishra’s leadership, Mahindra has seen the volume in the LMM segment advance at a brisk pace. Though on a small base, the growth in the e-auto volumes stands out.

M&M sold 30,079 three-wheelers in FY22, up from 20,525 in FY21. Within this, e-autos have seen a three-fold jump to 16,862. The Mumbai-based firm has been selling the internal combustion engine (ICE)-powered three-wheelers for over two decades and is one of the early movers in the e-three-wheeler space.

Attractive subsidies by the central and state governments have been fuelling the growth of EVs deployed in the last-mile mobility segment, which Mahindra leads with 87 per cent market share.

If not for the pandemic and the supply chain glitches, the volumes would have grown further, says Mishra. Amid shuttered schools, colleges and commercial establishments, the three-wheeler passenger carrier business was badly hit.

The fall in cargo three-wheelers (both ICE and electric) was relatively less, thanks to the e-commerce boom. Industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam) expects the segment to reach pre-pandemic levels by the end of this fiscal, she says.

Mishra, 42, lives out of a suitcase a week to 10 days every month. “Going to the field and meeting my customers is like oxygen for me.” Feeling the pulse of customers for whom the e-auto-rickshaw is a source of livelihood and being empathetic to their needs lends a practical perspective to the business. It helps her in keeping her “head right”.

Meeting the channel partners is critical; they’re the one who take the financial risk, she says. Electric is a new technology, she adds, and these visits not only give confidence to the stakeholders but also help the company get feedback.

Did she ever get awkward or curious looks during such field trips in her early days? “It’s just people from a different stratum of life,” she says. “I don’t feel fancy or glamorous being a woman CEO. This is no fancy stuff; this is brass tacks.”

Over the past months she has got used to dealing with customers who can be very expressive. “Some of the women e-Alpha drivers, whose lives have transformed with these EVs, sometimes come and hug me and refuse to let go,” says the Rourkela-born Mishra. (e-Alpha is M&M’s lead-acid powered e-auto-rickshaw brand.)

She imbibed this quality of connecting and empathising with people early in life. As a teenager, she would often accompany her mother, a headmistress at a Rourkela-based college who was very passionate about literacy, to the slums in the evenings. The mother-daughter duo would teach the adult slum-dwellers how to sign their names.

Her mother, who now teaches yoga and has been doing so for 40 years, remains her role model. Yoga is also how Mishra kick-starts a packed day. For the past six years, she has been practising ashtanga vinyasa yoga four to five days a week. In a LinkedIn post, she calls it a “deeply meditative experience”. Once a week, she also goes for a session of Iyengar Yoga to a studio in the suburbs.

Reading science fiction and being with her seven-year-old daughter are other ways in which she unwinds. Is she able to spend enough time with her?

“I may not be spending as much time as I would like to, but do I have any guilt trips? No,” she says. “That’s a trap lots of women get into when they are chasing their professional goals.”

Mishra calls herself a very happy mother because she is a very happy professional. “It’s pleasant, enjoyable and there is no guilt associated with it,” she says. “After all, my mother did it, too, all with very little resources at her disposal.”

If her mother has been a role model for self-discipline and personal growth, her father, who worked at the Rourkela Steel Plant, has been an idol as her equitable life partner. “He helps my mother in every aspect, whether it’s cooking, doing other household chores or when it was about raising kids.” As does her husband, whom she met at Michigan University and who works for a solar energy company. “Our friends call us ‘renewable couple’,” she says with a laugh.  

Mishra’s last 12 months as CEO are full of anecdotes about how M&M's e-autos have transformed lives for the better: from reducing driver fatigue and helping them earn more to lowering running costs.

“This is quite a fulfilling role for me at the moment,” she says. “When you find an intersection of purpose and a job, and you have a tailwind in the market, you become very happy in your personal pursuits (laughs).”

Our tête-à-tête ends a few minutes before Mishra’s hard stop: 10:30. She dashes out of the room after a warm handshake, disappearing in much the same way as she’d appeared.