Most business conversations are about growth: how to capture it, how to sustain it and what the government needs to provide to enable it. Far less attention goes into determining what makes an organisation durable enough to survive when growth stalls, when capital dries up, or when the regulatory environment turns hostile. The Indian business biography genre has largely avoided this territory, preferring the trajectory of success to tales of near-collapse. Such narratives, though, come with a cost. Specifically, they leave CXO with no real framework for thinking about institutional resilience.

In this session, Manish Sabharwal will draw on his recently co-authored book, Made in India: The Story of Desh Bandhu Gupta, Lupin and Indian Pharma. Lupin survived a decade-long financial crisis that should, by any rational account, have ended the company. The book reveals what it takes to build an institution that not only lasts, but thrives. Mr Sabharwal will use the Lupin case alongside his own experience building TeamLease to examine how institutions develop the capacity to absorb severe stress without losing their identity. He will also examine how business’s relationship with the Indian state — as regulator, customer and obstacle — shapes its durability, as well as the people decisions that leaders make in ordinary times and how they determine resilience in extraordinary ones.