The scions are taking on new challenges and leaving a mark on their family businesses
John Paul Joy
Executive Director, Joyalukkas
For John Paul Joy, inspiration was always right across the dinner table. In less than 25 years his father Joy Alukkas (No. 99) had built a $2 billion business, based in the UAE, which straddled jewellery, money exchange, air charter and malls. “My father would talk and discuss his ambition… I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him and that is what inspired me,” he says in an emailed reply to Forbes India. Even while pursuing his MBA from Manipal University, John would take every opportunity to visit retail outlets of Joyalukkas and make rounds of company offices.
The 28-year-old formally joined the family business in 2007 and is now the executive director overseeing the Middle East, Singapore and London operations of the group. He focuses on the group’s flagship jewellery business. “I’m currently working towards growing the jewellery retail chain from a 90-showroom chain to a 100-showroom chain by end of 2014. Today we have a customer base of over 10 million and my objective is to first retain this client base and then keep growing this to a much larger base.”
With father Joy Alukkas already announcing his intention to hang up his boots by 2015 and “hand over everything to my son”, John knows his task is cut out.
Rohan Murty
Executive Assistant to Chairman, Infosys
It’s entirely possible that NR Narayana Murthy (No. 37) meant every word when he said he wanted his son Rohan Murty (30) to join the chairman’s office simply because he himself would become more effective. After all, he had taken on a task that many in the industry acknowledged was difficult to pull off: Make Infosys what it used to be—a fast-growth, high-margin business. The papers made references to Steve Jobs’s second coming at Apple.
Adar Poonawalla
(This story appears in the 28 November, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)