Summer is creeping back to Mumbai and the sun beats down on me as I walk into the Cook’s Building, a stone’s throw from Flora Fountain. The Thomas Cook India office is housed in this neoclassical heritage building, one of the many that form an arcaded promenade down DN Road. Thomas Cook has been in India for more than 125 years, many of those headquartered in Cook’s Building.
The air conditioning inside is an immediate relief. I walk through the shiny foyer, past several customer service desks, and go up in an old-fashioned elevator to Madhavan Menon’s office on the third floor.
As I wait in the conference room for our lunchtime rendezvous, I gaze upon a large series of vintage Thomas Cook posters on the wall. The company traces its origins back to 1841, when Thomas Cook himself arranged to take 570 passengers from Leicester to Loughborough, around 18km away, for an anti-alcohol rally.
Since then, the company has expanded, through several acquisitions and mergers, into the Thomas Cook Group—one of the world’s largest travel companies with more than £9 billion (around Rs70,800 crore) in revenue and 22,000 employees.
Menon walks into the room with a firm step and no-nonsense demeanour, absolutely not the sort of man to trifle with at the workplace. And trifler, he is not. Under Menon’s stewardship, Thomas Cook India has made a number of significant acquisitions, seen boardroom shuffles and, more importantly, significant growth in revenue and profit.
Crisis control: Menon has always been in the middle of changing business scenarios.
Menon is sharply dressed in a spotless white shirt, a narrow green tie with diagonal yellow stripes. The only sign of bling in the ensemble is the unmistakable black Montblanc pen in his pocket. His steel-grey hair is meticulously parted and, salt and pepper moustache neatly trimmed.
“I am from Kerala, like you, but I’ve always been a Mumbai boy,” Menon starts as I ask him to tell me the Madhavan Menon story. After schooling at The Cathedral and John Connon School in the city, Menon went to the US for an education in business and finance. First, with a bachelors degree in business, followed by an MBA in international business and finance. “Back then, a good job in banking was what everyone wanted. It was secure and there was great opportunity in India as well. So, I figured I couldn’t fail with a career choice in finance,” Menon says.
He returned to India and joined what was then Grindlays Bank, in the currency trading room, handling foreign exchange. It was a fortuitous assignment. Menon would continue to dabble in foreign exchange operations for many years and eventually enter Thomas Cook, heading the forex business as an additional and executive director in May 2000.
I ask him why he decided to return to India after his MBA.