It all began years ago in Chennai, where she studied
hard in school to get her grades. She remembers how
her mother would, after meal every day ask Indra and
her sister what would they like to become when they
grew up. They would come up with different ideas and their mother would reward the best idea each day. It forced Indra to think and dream for herself. It was this dream that led her to be a part of the 11th batch of IIM Kolkata. After two years of work with Johnson & Johnson and Mettur Beardsell in India, it was this fiery urge that took her to America in 1978, when she left India with barely any money to pursue a management degree from the prestigious Yale Graduate School of Management.
Starting off with Boston Consulting Group in 1980, she knew it would be harder work for her than others for two reasons – one, she was a woman and two, she wasn’t an American but an outsider. She spent six years directing international corporate strategy projects at the Boston Consulting Group. Her clients ranged from textiles and consumer goods companies to retailers and specialty chemicals producers. Six years later, she joined Motorola in 1986 as the vice-president and director of corporate strategy & planning. She moved to Asea Brown Boveri in 1990 and spent four years as vice president (corporate strategy & planning). She was part of the top management team responsible for the company’s U.S. business as well as its worldwide industrial businesses, generating about one-third of ABB’s $30 billion in global sales.