BackAarti Mehra | Banker making a difference
Mehra represents a new brand of Indian business leaders who have decided to step up to serve the community in Singapore
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Singapore: When Aarti Mehra came to Singapore in 1995 with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ Bank), she, like many of her Indian peers, could hardly have thought she would end up staying in the city-state for two decades. For one thing, Singapore wasn’t perceived as a serious rival to other global financial centres of the time, like London, New York and Tokyo.
Singapore was considered a distant runner-up to those exciting financial and cultural meccas, a place to gather some Asia credentials and move on to more exciting places to work hard—and play harder.
The dominant image of Singapore was “still an affluent but sterile city that was a great shopping place for everything from polyester sarees to Swiss chocolates but where people could not chew gum, got caned, and spoke some English", says Mehra, 46, a highly regarded banker in the island state.
To say this mindset has somewhat shifted since then would be an understatement. The transformation of Singapore has been mind-boggling and “even its most ardent critics today cannot help but admit that it has been one of the most remarkable coming-of-age stories in Asia", says Mehra, who recently emerged as a community leader in her new role as executive director of the high-powered Indian Business Roundtable (IBR).
People like Mehra have stayed long enough to witness and, in some ways, help enable this transformation with their persistence and passion.
Mehra represents a new brand of enlightened Indian business leaders in this city-state who have decided to step up to serve the community. While she is pleased with with her professional journey to date—having worked in senior roles at Deutsche Bank AG and ANZ Bank and till recently as head of structured commodity financing at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd—she feels it is fulfilling “to do something different and give back".
“For so long, I used to find myself explaining and selling Singapore to my peers globally who simply did not understand its essential value proposition, as the shallow stereotype was so ingrained in their minds," she says.
“Further, for the older, and more elite generation in India, it was a society that was simply a collection of people from other cultures…with a hot and humid climate."
Even till 2005, almost a decade after Mehra decided to make Singapore home, she found herself constantly answering the question: “When will you leave?"
“There is money, sure, but no culture here," people would say to her casually, much to her surprise and annoyance. Mehra clearly felt differently.
Even as a full-time banker then, she spearheaded one of the most successful cultural and literary societies in Singapore called the India Club, set up in 2003.
“Its aim was to showcase contemporary India—as against the notion of India as a land of great antiquity—to the audience in Singapore," she says.
Mehra adds: “In the last 10 years, we have made an effort to show the vibrant and diverse talent of India to foster a greater understanding and appreciation of India. We have featured an Indian Nobel laureate, Dr. Amartya Sen, and Ramon Magsaysay award winner, Dr Kiran Bedi, (former) leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha L.K.Advani; entrepreneurs such as Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (chairwoman of Biocon Ltd), Sabeer Bhatia (founder of Hotmail), Sanjeev Bhikchandani (founder of Naukri.com), Piyush Gupta (CEO of DBS Bank Ltd); 20 authors and writers including Gurcharan Das, M.J. Akbar, Amitav Ghosh, Manju Kapur, David Davidar and Anita Desai; Vijay Amritraj (tennis celebrity), Abhinav Bindra (Olympics gold medallist in shooting), and Sharmila Tagore (veteran actress)."
Reflecting this new brand of cultural cosmopolitanism, Mehra believes Singapore has firmly cemented its reputation as a world-class city, and one that has become a magnet for global financial talent.
“It is amazing how many of my peers now have moved to Singapore from New York, London, Paris: in two waves—one after the Asian crisis of 1997 and the other after the massive lay-offs there following the post-Lehman shock in 2008. This scenario would have been unthinkable when I first arrived, but in many ways I am not surprised as the fundamentals were always strong here and it was only a matter of time before people realized what this city has to offer," says Mehra.
However, she is quick to point out that this new reputation has come with its own set of challenges.
“The newly arrived, largely professional and affluent Indian community in this city-state has come under some criticism for not integrating better with the local community while enjoying all the benefits the country offers," she notes. “Coupled with the recent race riots in Little India that highlight the issues of blue-collar migrants, the issue of immigration and integration has become a sensitive and much debated subject in Singapore. The Indian community needs to get more engaged and participate in some critical issues facing our community."
She adds: “There are over 12,000 Indian families that exist here on less than S$1,000 per month. Very few people know this fact. We need to collectively take responsibility and do something about it."
Mehra is currently working hard to find creative and long-term solutions to some of these issues in her new avatar as the executive director of IBR, closely associated with the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA), chaired by Tharman Shanmugaratnam, deputy prime minister and minister of finance, and Indranee Rajah, senior minister of state for law and education.
“One of the big IBR projects is to raise a quarter-of-a-million dollars to help raise the achievement of Singaporean-Indian kids in mathematics which currently falls below the national average. It will be addressed by an e-learning tool called ‘Hey, Math’ made available to more than 3,000 pupils enrolled in SINDA’s tuition programme. Fittingly, ‘Hey, Math’ was developed by a Chennai-based company and has been rolled out successfully in more than 50 countries," notes Mehra.
Mehra, who is an alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and completed an MBA at the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, has extensive experience of originating and connecting businesses from South Asia with South-East Asia. She is using this expertise to “do good" in her own modest way.
Reflecting on her journey, the banker says that while becoming a diplomat was “a-path-not-taken" when she decided that banking was to be her professional oeuvre, the role she plays today is not too far from that in trying to forge an understanding between the old and new Indian communities in Singapore.
Edited excerpts:
Indian business leaders seem to be making a mark increasingly in Singapore both in their fields and outside of it? What do you attribute this to?
Leadership in any field is about creating win-win situations with diverse constituencies: your clients, your colleagues, your regulators and, very importantly, with the society you live in. Perhaps, the time has come for this new breed of Indian business leaders and they are taking this role quite seriously. IBR, for example, has quite a few senior Indian business leaders who are taking the time from their very busy schedules to contribute to the issues facing the community. This includes Piyush Gupta, Gautam Banerjee, Sat Pal Khattar, Gopinath Pillai, Girija Pande, Harish Manwani and many others.
They represent a breed that values and wants to promote meritocracy and service—because that is what has helped them to succeed personally.
What is the mandate of the Indian Business Roundtable (IBR) and why is it important?
IBR is the first formal body through which the newly arrived senior Indian business leaders and professionals based in Singapore are brought together, so that they could contribute to the wider community through their expertise, networks and advice. This platform is an additional vehicle to integrate Indian business leaders and professionals into mainstream Singaporean life.
It allows for raising awareness of Singaporean Indian issues which SINDA is involved with, among senior Indian business leaders and in generating a dialogue between them and the Singapore establishment.
What challenges do you see the new breed of Indian business leaders face while working in Singapore?
One challenge they face especially when working in Western or Asian multinationals is that the Indian business leader is a relative newcomer to the street. It will take time for some to get used to that. The other is that the Indian business leader often does not work for his/her “home-country" company like a Frenchman working for a French firm does or a Japanese working for a Japanese firm does. That makes his position unique and makes him even more wedded to meritocracy.
Do you foresee a continuing culture of welcoming Indian immigrants to Singapore or is it set to become a somewhat more closed society to foreign workers from the subcontinent?
Your question is emblematic of a changed sensibility in Singapore. This is a natural reaction to the sharply increased proportion of new immigrants from other Asian countries that bring their own set of issues of assimilation, sharing physical space on an island as well as opportunities perceived to be taken away from the locals. This has led to some of the dampening in enthusiasm for welcoming immigration in the same numbers as before. Still, I believe Singapore cannot turn away completely from welcoming new immigrants to its shores because that goes against the very grain of this vibrant cosmopolitan nation. However, the challenge of retaining an exceptional level of good governance through balancing immigrant influx while continuing to grow and be competitive remains, and this is no small task. So, perhaps the intake of both Indian and other immigrants will become more nuanced.
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