Mr. Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao, Founder and Group Chairman, GMR Group, participated as a key note speaker in the 6th Asian Invitational Conference on Family Business organized by the Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at the Indian School of Business. Being organized from 3rd to 5th February, the conference aims to sensitize and build capabilities in family businesses across Asia.

Leaders from family businesses and experts have shared their experiences and valuable advice on different themes focusing on family business during the conference. This conclave has also provided a platform to reflect and share ideas as well as experiences among delegates. Mr. GM Rao spoke on ‘sustaining family business – family governance and philanthropy’ with focus on family business and continuity.

While addressing the conference, Mr. GM Rao, Group Chairman, GMR Group, said, “For the success of any family business, the founder chairman has to develop skills based on demand of the role. If he does that then he will be the lifeline, otherwise he will become the bottleneck. My philosophy has always been to ‘run family like a business, and business like a family’. I believe that it is every human being’s responsibility to give back to the society – it should be ‘Individual Social Responsibility’.

GMR Group has been a pioneer in social work and has Parampara Family Business Institute (PFBI), which is the GMR Social Initiative with objective of benefiting the Family Businesses in India through creating awareness, education, development and adoption, to enable them to sustain, grow and perpetuate their family businesses through generations.

Mr. GM Rao is the founder chairman of GMR Group, the Infrastructural developer. He ventured into business starting with a single jute mill in 1978. He entered 28 businesses as a serial entrepreneur and exited most of them with the opportunities thrown up by the opening up of the Indian economy in the early 1990s. Eventually, his single-minded focus on the core infrastructure sector resulted in GMR Group emerging as a well-diversified and professionally managed infrastructure developer with focus on Airports, Energy, Transportation and Urban Infrastructure including SEZs.

Mr. Rao made the pioneering effort in formulating a Family Constitution and formalised it into a legal document. A set of seven core Values & Beliefs was arrived at, to define the GMR Group’s distinct organization culture. This was further strengthened by a Code of Conduct for all employees, emphasizing on ethical and professional behaviour.

Mr. Rao set up GMR Varalakshmi Foundation to cater to social causes. Today, the Foundation is active in 27 locations in India and 2 in Nepal. Its 4 areas of activity are education, healthcare, livelihood and community development. He made an endowment of the entire portion of his personal wealth to GMR Varalakshmi Foundation in March 2011.

He was conferred with the honorary Doctor of Laws by York University, Toronto, Canada in 2011, the honorary Doctor of Letters by the Andhra University, India in 2010 and honorary Doctor of Letters by the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad in 2005. He has served on the Central Board of Directors of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from 2011 to 2015.

About GMR Infrastructure Limited (GIL)

GMR Group is a leading global infrastructure conglomerate with interests in Airport, Energy, Transportation and Urban Infrastructure. The group has fifteen power generation projects of which ten are operational and five are under development and construction stages. Besides, it has eight operating road assets and a double rail track line between Mughalsarai-New Bhaupur (Kanpur) of Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor is under development.

GMR Group developed and operates India’s busiest and currently World’s No1 Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi and Greenfield Rajiv Gandhi international airport at Hyderabad. It has also bagged right to develop and operate of Goa’s Greenfield Mopa airport. GMR Infrastructure in partnership with Megawide Construction Corporation is developing Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) in Philippines. The Group is also developing two Special Investment Regions at Krishnagiri and Kakinada and India’s largest Smart Airport City near Hyderabad International Airport.

GMR Group, through its Corporate Social Responsibility arm, GMR Varalakshmi Foundation, carries out community-based development initiatives at 27 different locations in India and 2 in Nepal in the areas of education; health, hygiene and sanitation; empowerment and livelihoods; and community development.

For further information about GMR Group, visit
http://www.gmrgroup.in/index.html

For Further details, please contact:

Anindita Sinha
Head - Corporate Communications, GHIAL
E mail: Anindita.Sinha@gmrgroup.in

Yuvraj Mehta
Group Head & VP - Corporate Communications
E mail: yuvraj.mehta@gmrgroup.in