How to build businesses for profits and social impact
The Diary of a CEO, Steven Bartlett writes that the first law of business and life is “filling five buckets"—knowledge, skill, network, resources and reputation. For Rudra Chatterjee, each bucket is full to the brim. The 47-year-old chairperson of Obeetee Carpets and managing director of Luxmi Tea holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a Masters in design history from Oxford University; his network comprises advisors and friends like Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee and current Bangladesh PM Mohammed Yunus; and both his companies have received numerous awards.
Growing up, Chatterjee studied at St. Xavier’s school in Kolkata and spent his vacations at the Shyamaguri tea estate with his grandfather, Paresh Chandra Chatterjee, a freedom fighter who started the tea business in 1912. His early memories are of spending time in homes of tea workers sipping black tea brewed with a pinch of salt and served with puffed rice.
It forged a sense of community—that he calls emotion—to run a business. I have an interest in everybody's business, not just my family’s. I love all facets of running a firm, from finance to marketing and operations.
I applied for an internship at the management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton after Columbia Business School, and it taught me to open the hood and look at businesses. I enjoy looking at the numbers all the time and like to be multi-dimensional. The end game is to build businesses with impact, profits and imagination.
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