Anand Mahindra is Forbes India's "Entrepreneur for the Year 2013"

Mumbai: Anand Mahindra, Chairman of the $16.2 billion Mahindra Group, was named Entrepreneur for the Year 2013 by Forbes India.

Among others, Chanda Kochhar, Managing Director and CEO of ICICI Bank, Francisco D’Souza, CEO of Cognizant Technology Solutions, and Rakesh Tandon, Chairman of rail e-ticketing pioneer IRCTC, were recognised for being the best CEOs in the private, multinational and public sectors respectively.

Anand Mahindra was presented the Entrepreneur for The Year award at a glittering event at The Trident in Mumbai’s Nariman Point on Wednesday by Adi Godrej, Chairman of the Godrej Group, in the presence of many doyens of India industry.

Among the attendees were N Chandrasekharan, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services, Sanjay Nayar, CEO of KKR India, Romesh Sobti, CEO of IndusInd Bank, Harsh Mariwala of Marico Industries, Dilip Piramal of VIP Industries, and many others.

Mahindra was awarded the top honour by a Forbes India jury comprising KV Kamath, non-executive chairman of ICICI Bank, Adil Zainulbhai, Chairman-India of McKinsey & Co, Akhil Gupta of Blackstone Advisors India, Zia Mody of AZB Partners, Ajit Rangnekar, Dean of the Indian School of Business, and Raghav Bahl, Founder and Editor of the Network18 Group.

Entrepreneur for the Year is the flagship award of Forbes India and Anand was chosen for the high honour for growing his group more than 10-fold in 10 years - from $1.35 billion to $16.2 billion today spanning several continents. Mahindra has also de-risked the group by making it a federated structure where the risks incurred by one company did not harm the others.

“Measured risk-taking is at the heart of entrepreneurship,” Mahindra told Forbes India. “Whenever I have been unhappy about myself in my career, it has been because I have not taken an adequate but measured risk,” he added.

Among the other awardees at the event were Chitra Ramkrishna, CEO of India’s largest stock exchange, the NSE, as Woman Leader for the Year, Tarang Jain of Varroc, as NextGen Entrepreneur for the Year, Phanindra Sama of Redbus (Startup for the Year), Ranjan Sharma of IKSL (Entrepreneur with Social Impact) and Hindustan Unilever, for Conscious Capitalist.

Brijmohan Lall Munjal, the patriarch of the Hero group which broke up with Honda a couple of years ago, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Forbes India event was unusual since there was no chief guest making long speeches. Instead the event saw three sharp debates presided over by Adil Zainulbhai, with industry captains and others arguing whether India was the best place for investment; whether the rupee should be allowed to find its own level without government intervention; and whether India Inc was Bipolar, where its highs were too high and lows too low.

The audience voted at the end of each debate.