Batch 2023 - 2024

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Fireside Chat

With an extensive and impressive background in technology and a wealth of experience in digital product innovation, Mr. Ramkumar Narayanan is the VP Technology & Managing Director, VMware, India, where he spearheads strategy and growth for VMware's largest global centre outside of its headquarters in Palo Alto, USA. Throughout his career, Mr. Narayanan has demonstrated his expertise in product development, product management, and product marketing. He has held key leadership positions at renowned companies such as eBay, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, where he has been instrumental in driving digital transformation and shaping product strategies. He serves on the Executive Council of NASSCOM, a leading trade association in India and holds the prestigious position of Chairperson of NASSCOM Product Council. Additionally, he is a member of the Governing Council of DERBI Foundation, an academic incubator, and a board member of Sukino Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a prominent healthcare management company.

Mr. Narayanan has become a trusted advisor to enterprises, large and small, in the realms of digital transformation, product strategy, and product marketing. He has been at the forefront of fostering innovation, driving growth, and enabling market access for deep tech startups.

Key Learnings:

• Insights on how innovation is necessary ingredient in corporate. Heuristics and data are underpinnings in all such endeavours, so is a manager's gut feeling.
• He dived in details on fast-growing space of Cloud-based technology and challenges currently being faced by firms to manage multiple clouds efficiently, and how VMWare could provide effective solutions for multi-cloud management and applications that helps span and view all of them.
• Speaker lay emphasis on how technology would play a key role in reducing carbon footprint and we as future leader could learn from theory of ESG, and its impact.
• Speaker suggested the need for future managers to imbibe a sense of empathy to grow well in their domain, and to excel in their area of interests and always being open to learn, and upskill ourselves.

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How Consulting & Communication is changing in (contemporary global world) amidst the digital disruptions like AI, ChatGPT

Vikram Surana is a Partner with KPMG India and has over 21+ years of experience in Consulting Large Multinationals, Listed Companies, Family owned plus run Organisations, emerging growth companies in areas of transformation, growth strategy, business performance improvement, GRC management etc.

In his current role he leads the TMT Global Capability Centres (GCCs) focus for the Firm. He is also a Lead Account Partner on many of the firm’s key platinum and focus accounts. He works closely with the Board of Directors, Executive Management, and functional owners, on all their key priorities and bringing together the best of KPMG to boost their growth.

He is an experienced Advisor with a demonstrated history of being the most ‘Trusted’ and ‘Trustworthy’. With a proven track record in - Large Account Management, Business Process transformation, setting up COEs around - Enterprise Risk Management, Corporate Governance, SOX/IFC, Global Internal Audit, Compliance, process excellence etc. He has experience of working in eight Countries and managing stakeholders Globally.

He is known for his people management skills and actively works with his direct team, mentees and client stakeholders on their career progression, growth, and enrichment. Follows and drives the philosophy of 'Client for Life' through his deep routed relationships which are beyond business and onetime transactions.

He is a regular contributor and speaker on many of the key Industry forums, focused events and shares his views on emerging and topical topics impacting the Industry.'

Key Learnings:

• AI presents both threats and opportunities, and when humans collaborate with AI, they can achieve remarkable outcomes for the planet.
• It is crucial to ensure the right use cases of AI to leverage its potential positively and responsibly.
• AI is transforming the consulting industry, as exemplified by "Cure AI" reducing diagnosis and curing times for diseases like cancer and "Fluid AI" digitizing human aspects of life.
• Embracing AI is essential for consultants to stay ahead, influence positive change, and drive growth in organizations.
• Continuous learning, monitoring, and evaluation are vital to enhance AI with human intelligence and maximize its potential.
• Real-world examples such as data analytics, robotic process automation (RPA), and generative AI demonstrate their ability to reduce errors and facilitate informed decision-making.
• Challenges with AI include addressing hallucinations and improving AI's understanding of complex queries.
• Speed in decision-making is a significant advantage of AI, enabling faster and more meaningful outcomes.
• As AI evolves, human intelligence remains relevant, and finding the right balance between technological advancement and human well-being is essential.

 

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Building an ‘Agile and Nimble’ Organisation

As the Executive Vice President, HR Business Excellence and EHS for CG Power and Industrial Solutions, Aniruddha is an expert at Organizational Transformation, HR Systems, Leadership Development and M&A. He has over 29 years of rich experience in Human Resources Management, Business Transformation. He has successfully led numerous expansions, mergers & acquisitions, consolidation, integration and cultural transformation initiatives.

The guest speaker introduced to the cohort about CG Power and verticals throwing light on its successful journey and tailoring its way to a promising future in the upcoming years. The speaker dovetailed on the topic for the session “Agile and Nimble for Organizations“. Aniruddha spoke on the importance of transparency, agility, and providing a sense of direction during times of crisis. He spoke about how companies evolve and sustain over time despite disruptions. His session fostered an environment to open dialogue and active participation, allowing the cohort to learn from his experiences. Through a thought-provoking industry-based case study, he engaged and inspired aspiring consultants in our batch, equipping them with valuable insights on tackling real-life challenges in the industry. The esteemed speaker guided us on how to assess and arrive at appropriate solutions, considering the complexities surrounding workforce dilemmas.

Aniruddha enforced his emphasis on barriers to agility within organizations and emphasized the need for transformation. By addressing cultural, mindset, and structural aspects, he provided us with valuable insights on navigating change and creating an agile and adaptable environment.

The session ended with a few intriguing and thought-provoking questions from the students on agile and nimble, where in the speaker put forth his end notes on how organizations adapt and adopt to global disruptions thus incorporating agile in their functioning.

Key Learnings:

• Transparency, direction, and open communication are crucial during times of crisis.
• Organizations need to evolve, adapt, and sustain themselves amidst disruptions.
• Overcoming cultural, mindset, and structural barriers fosters agility and adaptability.
• Learning from industry case studies and strategic decision-making aid in tackling workforce challenges effectively.

 

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Employee upskilling amidst AI/ML disruption

Deepti Vij, Director of Talent Acquisition at Honeywell, delivered an engaging guest speaker session at XLRI, focusing on the topic of employee upskilling amidst AI/ML disruption. Throughout her talk, she provided valuable insights into Honeywell's approach to individual development plans (IDPs), upskilling efforts, and their commitment to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives.

Ms. Deepti emphasized the significance of IDPs in empowering individuals to take charge of their own career growth. Honeywell, as an organization, places a strong emphasis on the professional development of its employees, providing them with ample learning and development opportunities. She highlighted the importance of upskilling employees in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and both hard and soft skills. She also acknowledged the associated costs and the need for strategic budget allocation and cost management.

An intriguing aspect of Honeywell's strategy, as revealed by her, is the allocation of an impressive 60% of the company's research and development (R&D) budget to address future challenges, particularly those related to sustainability and climate issues. This substantial investment not only allows Honeywell to attract new talent but also facilitates the upskilling of existing employees. By investing in research and development, Honeywell ensures that it remains at the forefront of innovation and can effectively address pressing global challenges.

Ms. Deepti also underscored the strong organizational culture at Honeywell, exemplified by individuals celebrating anniversaries of 35+ years with the company. This long-term commitment speaks volumes about the growth opportunities and professional development that Honeywell provides to its employees.

The discussion then shifted to the challenges posed by the rapid evolution of technologies, with a particular focus on AI and ML. In response, she outlined Honeywell's systematic learning mechanism designed to equip employees with the necessary skills. This mechanism includes an internal learning platform and external certifications. Honeywell actively collaborates with academic institutions to bridge the gap between academia and industry requirements, ensuring that employees stay updated with the latest technological advancements. These collaborative efforts ensure that employees can contribute effectively to Honeywell's ongoing success.

During the session, one of the attendees expressed curiosity about Honeywell's management of ESG initiatives and associated hiring strategies. She acknowledged the significance of management skills in the ESG domain and mentioned that Honeywell is actively exploring partnerships with management institutions. She emphasized the importance of understanding inclusion, diversity, and positive discrimination, as expertise in these areas is crucial for driving ESG goals.

Effective communication emerged as another vital aspect of the discussion. Ms. Deepti provided insights into the communication strategies employed by Honeywell to convey the importance of upskilling to its employees. She emphasized the need for transparent and regular communication, early engagement, and avoiding jargon-filled language. Honeywell actively conducts focus group discussions to gauge employee perspectives and ensure effective communication that resonates with employees' aspirations. Transparent communication fosters credibility and enables employees to understand the positive impact of upskilling initiatives.

The session concluded with a student raising the topic of balancing organic and inorganic growth and its impact on employee retention. She acknowledged the importance of both types of growth and emphasized that Honeywell pursues inorganic growth when synergies are identified. She emphasized the value of career development, pulse checks with employees, and inclusive policies as key strategies employed by Honeywell to retain talent and add value to the organization.

In summary, Ms. Deepti's guest speaker session provided valuable and in-depth insights into Honeywell's approach to individual development plans, upskilling efforts, and their focus on ESG initiatives. The session highlighted the organization's commitment to providing learning and development opportunities, managing costs effectively, fostering a strong organizational culture, and staying ahead of technological advancements. Attendees found the session to be an excellent learning experience, offering practical knowledge that can be applied in their future careers.

Key Learnings:

• Individual Development Plans (IDPs) empower us to take control of our career growth.
• Honeywell's emphasis on learning and development ensures continuous skill enhancement.
• Longevity and growth opportunities at Honeywell highlight the company's commitment to employee development.
• Keeping pace with evolving technologies is essential for staying competitive in the industry.
• Honeywell's focus on ESG initiatives and collaborations creates opportunities in sustainability-related fields.
• Effective communication and talent retention strategies are crucial for organizational success.

 

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Fireside Chat

Dulles Krishnan (Call name “Dulles”), is the Managing Director and Aaditya Razdan, Enterprise Account Director for Coursera in India. They oversee the Enterprise Business Segment which help companies and campuses in skilling learners to achieve targeted learning outcomes.

Dulles has extensively worked in technology domains that support Digital Transformation, like AI/ML, Cloud Computing, IOT, Big Data, CRM, e-Commerce & Digital Marketing. He has spoken on these subjects at various customer and Industry forums in India and Asia Pacific region. Having worked in multiple countries & customers, he brings a strong global perspective, in addition to local country knowledge.

Aaditya Razdan, also has a diverse background ranging from domains across Marketing, Recruitment and heading the SAP and Alternate Channel Sales at Bennet Coleman, before heading the Enterprise Accounts for Coursera India.

They are passionate about learning and is excited by the impact education technology platforms like Coursera have in building lifelong learners needed for a future ready workforce.

Key Learnings:

• Dulles K. emphasized the importance of acquiring skills in generative AI and understanding customer needs to thrive in tomorrow's job market
• Highlighted artificial neural networks, applied machine learning, and computer vision as key areas for professionals seeking opportunities in AI and automation
• Aaditya Razdaan engaged the cohort in an insightful conversation about integration of generative AI tools into education platforms, aiming to enhance the learning experience and enable effective skill acquisition
• The chat provided invaluable insights for the cohort, emphasizing the need for continuous learning and adaptability in a rapidly changing job market

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Technology Led Transformation of the Auto Industry

Mr. Bhuwan Lodha is the Sr. Vice President-Head of Digital at Mahindra & Mahindra. The session revolved around the fascinating topic, "Technology Led Transformation of the Auto Industry," and provided deep insights into the dynamic world of disruptive technologies reshaping the automotive landscape.

Mr. Lodha eloquently covered the relevance and application of various disruptive technologies in the Mahindra auto business, including the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), the Metaverse, and Digital Twin. His informative presentation showcased how Mahindra embraces innovation and technology to drive growth and enhance customer experiences.

The highlight of the session was a visionary outlook on the future of the purchasing experience in the auto industry. Mr. Lodha shed light on how digital technologies will revolutionize customer journeys, employing AI-enabled Omni Channel Product discovery and prognosis with supply chain operations to create seamless and personalized buying experiences. He also emphasized the role of digital tools in elevating the services provided by dealers, thereby enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

Key Learnings:

• Disruptive technologies like IoT, AI & ML, Metaverse, and Digital Twin are reshaping the auto industry.
• Mahindra & Mahindra is at the forefront of embracing these technologies to drive growth and innovation.
• The future of purchasing experiences will be transformed by AI-enabled Omni Channel Product discovery and supply chain operations.
• Digital tools will empower dealers to provide enhanced customer support and services.

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Emerging Technologies in Data and AI

Mr. Hari Krishnan is the Senior Director - Data Engineering and Analytics at Brillio. Attendees gained valuable insights into the transformative power of data and AI in revolutionizing businesses.

The speaker introduced the cohort to various data models and how they are relevant in the age of DI and ML. The speaker has enforced his emphasis on data science and how it can help in decision making of new age managers. The speaker spoke at length about various data nuances and how different models contribute for project management. The speaker also interacted with students and clarified doubts on data science, AI and its impact on informed decision making.

The speaker highlighted how data science and various data models can be applied to improve project planning, execution, and monitoring. Data-driven project management can lead to better resource allocation, risk assessment, and performance evaluation.

Brillio's distinctive problem-solving approach, fuelled by a comprehensive understanding of each challenge, enables them to deliver tailored solutions using an agile-based model. Embracing data modernization strategies is crucial for success, especially in the ever-changing business landscape. Data and AI hold the key to unlocking untapped business potential.

Key Learnings:

• Disruptive technologies like IoT, AI & ML, Metaverse, and Digital Twin are reshaping the auto industry.
• Mahindra & Mahindra is at the forefront of embracing these technologies to drive growth and innovation.
• The future of purchasing experiences will be transformed by AI-enabled Omni Channel Product discovery and supply chain operations.
• Digital tools will empower dealers to provide enhanced customer support and services.

 

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Digital Transformation in Digital Banking

Simarpreet Singh Chadha is a Senior Vice President with Global Transformation center, leading the Global WPB Lending Business Transformation. He has been with HSBC for close to 10 years and have done different roles in HSBC Analytics and Transformation. He has industry-wide exposure of 20+ years through management consulting/ Delivery roles in sectors like healthcare, government services and banking.

The guest speaker introduced to the cohort about HSBC and verticals throwing light on its successful journey and tailoring its way to a promising future in the upcoming years. The speaker while addressing the cohort spoke about how HSBC has built international customer enterprise and emerged as a global leader. He emphasised on importance of inclusive banking wherein people constitute the core for the business.

The speaker spoke at length about Digital Banking, Strategic Cost Management, cost efficiency and how they play key role in new age banking.

He dovetailed on emergence and maturity of fintech and its importance in sustaining partnerships cutting edge capabilities for collaborative learning. Mr Chadha also demystified the concept of credit and new age disruptions that revolutionized the banking sectors.

Through a thought- provoking industry-based case study, he engaged and inspired aspiring consultants in our batch, equipping them with valuable insights on tackling real-life challenges in the industry.

The event culminated with a Vote of Thanks by Professor Sarangi, expressing heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Simarpreet Singh Chadha for sharing his valuable insights and enriching the learning experience of the students. To mark this special occasion, a memento was presented to Mr. Chadha as a token of appreciation for his remarkable contributions to the event and the students' understanding of the banking industry.

The esteemed speaker guided us on how to assess and arrive at appropriate solutions, pertaining to product, operations, technology and digital transformation through the case.

Key Learnings:

• Ethical banking is core to business especially given the multitude of credit options available.
• Customers are epicentre to business. Banks and financial institutions should cater to the needs of people first addressing their concerns and customer friendly banking is the need of hour.
• Cost Management and Cost efficiency are integral to business and are indispensable.
• Fintech are the new age organizations that brought cutting edge technology and finance together for financial inclusion and efficiency.

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Fireside Chat

Indu Sharma is the Global Head of Talent and HR, Bain & Company. The occasion provided a platform to delve into the inspiring narrative of overcoming setbacks and emerging stronger than ever. The emphasis on resilience after failure struck a chord, leaving us motivated and determined.

A focal point of the session was the discourse on organizational culture. The guest's profound perspective on the significance of diversity, cohesion, and team spirit resonated deeply. These gems of wisdom offer invaluable guidance for any organization aspiring to thrive in today's dynamic landscape.

Immersing us in the ethos of Bain's work culture was an enlightening experience. Indu's insights into the pillars of diversity, inclusion, and sustainability shed light on the path to fostering a holistic work environment. Notably, their views on navigating a hybrid work setup and innovative talent practices left us contemplative about the evolving paradigm of work.

The session was marked by a wealth of wisdom on processes, transformation, and agility. The speaker's reflections on how Bain, as an Agile organization, adeptly managed disruptions like the Covid crisis, offered thought-provoking insights for businesses in an era of constant change.

Key Learnings:

• Resilience Triumphs: The session highlighted resilience's might post-failure, with a motivating tale of rebounding. Challenges can pave the path to victory.
• Cultural Foundation: Diversity, cohesion, and team spirit, pivotal for culture, were underscored. Inclusivity fuels enduring workplace growth.
• Change Agility: Bain's pandemic-driven adaptability emphasized. Agility and innovation, pivotal lessons in uncertainty management, took center stage.

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Navigating Complex IT Transformations

XLRI had the privilege of hosting an insightful online guest speaker session featuring Mr. RAHUL Bora, Senior Vice President of Global Delivery at Mphasis. The session delved into the realm of IT transformation, offering attendees a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities within the ever-evolving technological landscape.

The session commenced with a thorough exploration of the strategic facets of IT transformation. Mr. Bora emphasized that a successful transformation not only leads to substantial reductions in IT costs but also paves the way for greater returns on IT investments. He further highlighted the significance of digital transformation as a catalyst for innovation and differentiation, driving companies to remain competitive in a rapidly changing business environment. Cloud adoption emerged as a critical factor in enhancing value, though it was underscored that effective execution and security measures are integral to its success. The discussion also underscored the paramount importance of cybersecurity, data protection, and regulatory compliance in an interconnected world. Moreover, the need to prepare for upcoming technological advancements, including AI, IoT, the metaverse, and Web 3.0, was emphasized to ensure businesses are future-ready.

The session also shed light on shifting enterprise IT consumption patterns. Agility coupled with resilience emerged as key strategies in the face of evolving trends. The imperative of business capability-driven transformation to foster customer-centricity and adapt to customer needs was highlighted. Furthermore, the significance of addressing customer-driven disruptions and embracing hyper-personalization was discussed in detail.

Mr. Bora provided captivating insights into the role of cost management in IT transformation. He articulated that although the focus of transformation extends beyond costs, effective cost management is pivotal. Strategies for self-funding transformation were explored, emphasizing the potential to drive innovation and growth while maintaining financial stability.

The speaker shared real-world experiences that showcased the successful execution of IT transformation initiatives. These encompassed notable achievements such as data center separations, large-scale migrations, and legacy platform transitions. The audience was exposed to practical instances from the European banking landscape and the US consumer banking sector, illustrating the agility that can be achieved through strategic technology transitions.

The session also unveiled the next paradigms of innovation, shedding light on Mphasis' NEXT Labs and its research-driven approach to cloud and cognitive advancements. Mr. Bora introduced the audience to NextSTEP™, an initiative that leverages best practices to expedite platform-driven development. The importance of programmatic innovation was underlined through the Sparkle Program, fostering a culture of structured experimentation to tackle real client challenges. Collaboration with startups, showcased through the Sparkle Lab, demonstrated how it can augment

Key Learnings:

• IT transformation drives cost reduction, innovation, and future readiness.
• Agility, customer-centricity, and effective cost management are paramount in modern IT strategies.
• Real-world examples showcase the tangible impact of successful IT transformation across diverse industries.
• Innovation through research, collaboration, and talent development is critical for sustained growth.
• Navigating execution challenges necessitates meticulous planning, adaptability, and stakeholder engagement.

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Talent Management Systems- Approach & Principles

Ruchir Jhingran, Vice President HR, Personal Care Business, ITC Ltd. is a seasoned HR and Employee Relations professional and also a leader who has steered teams in various critical domains such as Talent Management and Labour Relations. His vast experience spans across Talent Acquisition, Performance Management, Compensation & Benefits, Deferred Compensation, Labour Relations, Long-Term Settlements, Learning & Development, Workforce Planning & Productivity, and Employee Engagement Measurement & Improvement, among others.

During his presentation, Mr. Jhingran delved into the critical topic of Talent Management Systems, emphasizing the strategies and principles that drive effective talent management in today's dynamic and rapidly changing business landscape. His insights were invaluable, offering a comprehensive understanding of how organizations can attract, nurture, and retain talent, which is pivotal to their success. He explained on multiple facets of HR and Talent management systems. He narrated his own personal experiences pertaining to Labour relations, nuances on Unionisation of Work Force and de-mystified myths on HR and ER.

He explained about ITC Culture, how talent management is done in the Organization, explaining the philosophy and mission of organization in maintaining the talent pool. The distinguished speaker spoke about careers at ITC and how employees are offered best compensation, perks in the company He also discussed vide ambit of career growth at ITC and the company's approach to compensation and benefits.

The event also featured a Q & A session with PGDM students, where attendees had the opportunity to engage in a candid and insightful dialogue with Mr. Jhingran. The conversation spanned various aspects of HR management and leadership, benefiting from his extensive expertise. Following the discussion, an interactive Q&A session allowed students to explore crucial topics related to HR and talent management in depth.

Key Learnings:

• Effective talent management is pivotal for organizational success.
• Employee relations require a nuanced approach, including labor relations and settlements.
• Organizational culture plays a vital role in nurturing and retaining talent.
• HR professionals are instrumental in shaping an organization's future.

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Batch 2022 - 2023

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Creating Successful Startups

Dr Dhruv Nath is an Angel Investor and a Director with Lead Angels Network. As part of this journey, he has invested in twelve start-ups, and has mentored over a hundred others.
Earlier he was a Professor at MDI, Gurgaon, and a Senior Vice President at NIIT Ltd.
He has been a consultant to the Top Management for companies such as Glaxo, Gillette, Nestle and Air India etc amongst many others. He has also been a consultant to the Prime Minister of Namibia and the Chief Minister of Delhi. He has written four books so far, the latest being Funding Your Start-up: And Other Nightmares.

Key Learnings:

• Analysing and Evaluating start-ups using the PERSISTENT framework
• An investor’s point of view on start-ups and the basics of angel Investing and Venture Capital investing
• Concepts of Risk and Entry Barriers to creating successful start-ups

 

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The Practical Marketer

Mr. Saurabh Bajaj is currently the Marketing Head (Dairy segment) at Britannia Industries. He is Recognized as one of the Top 50 Best Marketing & Communication Professionals by White Page International in 2020 and as a DMA Trailblazer Rising Star CMO in 2001.
He has spent over 18 years in the field of Sales & Marketing and has worked for companies such as Mondelez and Diageo before joining Britannia.
Mr. Bajaj joined Britannia in Sep’17 as the Marketing Head for the Britannia International Business, where he worked on several exciting Innovations & Activations across the Middle East and South Asia. He is currently working on an exciting mandate to scale-up Britannia’s Dairy play across India & Bhutan.

Key Learnings:

• Understanding and predicting consumer behaviour using psychographic segmentation.
• The basics of marketing right from picking the correct segment, to targeting a market and positioning the product in the market.
• Practical aspects of marketing for an FMCG business and strategies around building a moat, to better deal with competition.

 

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Case- solving Frameworks

Flavio Soriano is an experienced management consultant and a serial entrepreneur. He has worked as a management consultant both at Arthur D Little and McKinsey & Company.
Flavio has already founded five businesses, one of which is The Case Interview Academy, a successful case interview preparation coaching company that has published one of the most downloaded apps for case training. High bridge management academy one of his new businesses aimed at training people for consulting.

Key Learnings:

• The basics around consulting and the key attributes required to sustain and grow in the field of management consulting.
• A step-by-step guide to building consulting centric resumes and preparing for roles in consulting.

 

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Web 3.0- Business Impact in the Future

Mr. Shreyas Gavit is a Product Marketing Manager at Okcoin, the fastest growing crypto exchange. Previously, he worked at Stellantis driveline technical product management on the Ram and Jeep brands. He is also a community manager at Jump which is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) for marketers interested in Web3.
In his free time, he creates crypto & Web3 content on LinkedIn, helps with Formula SAE as a business judge and volunteers with Adcraft Detroit.

Key Learnings:

• The session covered the key highlights around Web 3.0, its impact, implications and key opportunities in the coming era of business.
• Basics of Web 3.0 starting with concepts around Blockchain and its applications, Concepts around Non Fungible Tokens, DeFis and DAOs.

 

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How to leverage Design Thinking for building delightful products

Malthi SS is a seasoned global product leader, Start-Up Mentor and Freelance Product Coach. She has more than 2 decades of professional experience in building global software products. Her expertise is building and scaling Enterprise and Platform products that can serve millions of customers.
She has worked with PayPal, Societe Generale, Intuit, SAP and EMC in the past leading products like Payment Platforms, QuickBooks, Turbo Tax, KYC Reviews, Documentum and SAP TDMS. Presently she serves as a Consultant Chief Product Officer at an early-stage start-up apart from mentoring start-ups at Nasscom Deep-tech club. She also coaches aspiring and practising Product Managers at Pragmatic Leaders (a Y Combinator start-up).
She is also the Co-founder of her start up FinWhiz which provides workshops on financial literacy to students and young adults.
She is also an Industry speaker with several speaker assignment and accolades. She has been rated as one of the Top 100 PMs in India by Product Folks.

Key Learnings:

• A detailed walkthrough of the elements of Design Thinking and its applications in the world of product management today.
• Discussion on the product strategies pertaining to product management for products through the product life cycle.
• Insights on building necessary skillsets to excel at product management and the latest industry trends around product management.

 

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Digital Transformation- Skills to Win

Mamta Aggarwal Rajnayak is the VP – Head of AiDa (Enterprise wide AI-ML Products & Platform) @ AI Labs American Express.
She holds 5 patents under her name and has vast prior experience in consulting and in GCCs of renowned MNCs to deliver projects that leverage latest machine learning techniques to solve business problems. Mamta has an entrepreneurial style and keeps developing new analytics offering and patenting her innovation as a habit.
She is an AI and ML mentor on various analytics forums to help upcoming DS, MLE & DE talent. She holds several research papers, patents and industry accolades in her name.

Key Learnings:

• Insights on the importance of digital transformation in businesses and detailed steps to implement digital transformation in organizations today.
• The applications of AI and ML in businesses and the effect of digital transformation on customer experiences through real life examples.

 

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Let’s Pareto It: Cracking the Consulting Case Interview

Ayush Kumar is a proud XLRI PGDM(GM) alum and is presently a management consultant at KPMG India. He brings with him diverse experience in education, healthtech, and heavy machinery, most recently handling key accounts at Schindler India. His professional interests include Product Management, Requirements Analysis and POC and End-to-end product launch.
Discovering an interest in consulting and case studies during his time at XLRI, he was the founding president of the Kautilya Consult Club and won various national-level case competitions. He also assisted Mr. Marc Cosentino in research for the upcoming edition of his bestseller Case in Point.

Key Learnings:

• A structured approach to solving cases studies.
• Insights around concepts such as the Pareto principle, MECE (Mutually exhaustive collectively exhaustive) and many more
• Pro hacks to crack consulting interviews including the approach and mindset required.

 

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The Consulting Mindset- My Learnings And Experiences

Mr. S. Dinesh is presently working as a Partner at EY
He is an alumnus of the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (PGDIM, 2008 batch) and has an extensive 11+ years of experience. He has worked with Ernst & Young in various capacities.
He has worked with financial services clients in dealing with their challenges in operations, technology, and cyber security as well as risk and compliance (incl. recent ones like FATCA / CRS) and data management, reporting, governance, etc. He has been significantly involved in client management, business development, etc..

Key Learnings:

• He advised us that the approach toward a problem is more crucial than the solution to that problem.
• He also advised us that before we approach a problem it is very crucial to distinguish a problem from its symptom & noise.
• He discussed how, in his experience, it is more practical to adopt a Bottom-Up strategy rather than a Top-down strategy throughout the operational phase of a merger.
• He imparted his knowledge on the best ways to cater to and align business needs with modern technology and digital transformation tools.

He educated us on the distinctions between the perspectives of a management consultant and a technology consultant, as well as how the two jobs work in tandem to support business growth.

 

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The Art of Management

Mr. Shiv Shivakumar is working as a Group Executive President at Aditya Birla Group for Strategy and Business.
He is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and has an extensive 40+ years of experience. He was the Chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association from 2014 to 2019 and Chairman of the Advertising Standards Council of India from 2018-19. And he is also currently on the board of XLRI Jamshedpur and IIM Udaipur.
Shiv is a believer in giving back to society. Shiv writes and regularly teaches Innovation, Leadership, Followership, Business Models, Digitization, etc., across the leading business schools in the world.
Shiv has been awarded many times– Best CEO, Best brand builder, for leadership, for Turnaround, etc. The awards most dear to him are the two distinguished Alumni awards he got from IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta. He is one of twenty people in India with outstanding alumnus awards from IIT and IIM.

Key Learnings:

• He discussed the myths and realities of writing a book. How it should help others, and how his book "The Art of Management" aids business people.
• He discussed gender diversity and how everyone in the corporate sector should have ambition and a goal to strive for. As future managers, we should appreciate equality and diversity regardless of our line of employment.
• He also emphasized the importance of self-management, particularly time management. Time management is the key to achieving professional balance and success. One should prioritize the duties and determine how much time to devote to each one. It makes life easier when you do this.
• He discussed his ideas about focusing and unfocusing and how an individual should focus on the job without becoming distracted, i.e., unfocused from other thoughts.
• He also encouraged people to consider how they may contribute to the company where they now work. For example, as members of this family, how do we contribute to XLRI?
• He spoke about how the values of VUCA have changed with time to Versatile, Uncomfortable, collaborative, and Agile.

 

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HR The Strategic Advisor

Tanvi is Chief Human Resources Officer Asia Pacific at JLL and is responsible for leading people strategy across the APAC region. She joined JLL in 2017 and brings 17+ years of rich experience from diverse industries ranging from Automobile, Healthcare, Agriculture, FMCG etc.
Tanvi with a strong team of over 400 HR professionals, partners with the Asia Pacific Leadership Council and Global HR Leadership of JLL to deliver the Firm’s growth and sustain its leadership position in the industry through progressive talent management practices.
She has worked across different facets of Human Resources which include Organizational Design & Development, Talent Management, Leadership Development, Mergers, Acquisitions & Divestitures and HR Transformation.

In her career, she has received a lot of accolades. Some of them are

• HR Leader Award 2021 by GPTW Institute, India.
• Featured in magazines like Bela South Asia Ethisphere and Business Manager magazine - Women HR Leader.
• Global Achievers Forum 2018 - The Great Yodha of Indian HR Award.

Key Learnings:

• The speaker discussed the importance of HR and the strategic advisor role. She emphasized the five critical roles of HR-The Strategic Advisor, The Data-Driven Problem Solver, The Trusted Coach, the Independent Voice, Influential Storyteller.
• HR needs to function with all different departments of the company and hence it needs to have knowledge of the various department. A person should know about the business to connect all the dots.
• Since JLL is diversified, she talked about the sector-specific talent-hiring processes, which consisted of various verticals.
• She also enlightened the trust equation and its components - credibility, reliability and intimacy divided by self-worth.
• She also spoke about how an HR strategic advisor should have an “Enterprise Mindset.”
• It was discussed how technology supported the progress of the real estate sector and how technology pushed the industry ten years ahead in the future.

She also spoke about diversity, equity and inclusion. How people are essential for an organization.

 

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How to develop a Career in the dynamic fast growth EV Industry

Dr. Michael Liu obtained his Bachelor of Economics from one of the well-known Universities in China, Wuhan University in 1990 and followed by an MBA degree from Wayne State University, Michigan, the U.S. in 1994.
Driven by his passion for economic research, he graduated from Beijing University with Ph.D. in Economics. Michael is visiting professor and researcher at Beijing Normal University and Wuhan University.
His research interests are in Macroeconomics, global economy and industry research. Besides teaching at universities, he has been lecturing to the Ministry of Commerce, and Ministry of Information & Technology of China on national policy development in certain industries, as well as to government officers at province and city levels.
Michael has been awarded by the Chinese government as one of the top 100 oversea returnees; The Figure of the years for outsourcing industry for many years by the Ministry of Information and Technology. He has been awarded as one of the best entrepreneurs by Xi’an High-tech zone. Michael is still seating on the advisory board for outsourcing at the Ministry of Commerce. Michael was been frequently spoken to and covered at Economist, Detroit News, Crain Detroit, etc.

Key Learnings:

• Started by throwing light on India and China's present economic status, the employment and industrial sector of both countries, the advent of Tesla and its impacts on the present automotive industry today.
• From speaking about Mr. Rockefeller, The king of Standard Oil and the history of oil, to the Status of the EV industry in India-a study on Indian consumers’ requirement of India’s registered vehicle volume and the opportunity India has for the EV market.
• In India, there is a two-country market segment- urban tier 1 city and countryside market in tier-3 cities.
• A complete study on the market competitor landscape in India's EV market- the 4 kinds of players-Trade Player, Big Elephant, Software Mindset Player, Global R&D- their SWOT analysis.
• That was a really enriching, informative overview of India's economic conditions, market conditions, and scope of the automotive and vehicle market for EVs in India. It was really informative to know the overview of DAO, its future aspects, the DAO factory and product lines in India. How IoT has been inculcated in the EV industry design.
• What is the market strategy of DAO and the product lines of DAO already exist in the market.

 

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International Operations in Banking; Overview and Use of Technology

Sudish Panicker is Managing Director and Head of BNY Mellon India, a strategic growth center across Pune and Chennai, delivering a wide range of services for the company’s investment management and investment servicing businesses to global clients across 35 countries and over 100 markets.
Based out of Pune, Sudish drives and implements BNY Mellon’s Global strategy at the firm’s India Global Delivery Centre focuses on enhancing Client Experience, driving Innovation, delivering Operational excellence, managing Risk and scaling Talent.
Prior to assuming the role of Head, BNY Mellon India, Sudish led delivery and location strategy for groups within Asset Servicing and Investment management. He joined the company’s India center in July 2009 at Pune and played a key role in scaling and maturing the capability to deliver end-to-end functions to clients and businesses. Sudish is a qualified Chartered and Cost Accountant and a certified Six Sigma black belt with key competencies in Accounting, Global Capability Centre management, financial services management, commercial banking, client management, service delivery, transitions & solutions and re-engineering. He is a member of Economic Times India Leadership Council, Institute of Directors, India Management Association, and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and a renowned speaker in multiple industry forums.

Key Learnings:

• He spoke about the rally in the Indian stock market, and how it has the potential to become a $5 trillion economy. Indian stock market has the potential to 5th largest market in the world and it can surpass the UK market.
• He also spoke about the growth journey of NSE, today more than 2000 companies are registered and there are more than 7 Cr. Active Demat accounts today.
• He also spoke about the global capability centre, its impact on the investment banking. How emerging technologies have given opportunity to start capability centre in different sectors such as research houses, innovation etc.
• He also spoke on how worldwide GCC (Global Capability Centre) gave employment to more than five and half million people.
• The speaker also spoke about the emerging technologies in FinTech Industry and how it gave boom to the banking sector.
• The batch interacted with the speaker about the new opportunities in international operations in investing banking.

 

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The world of work is evolving- Trends in Employee Experience & Future of Work

Radhika is the Managing Director and Partner at Kincentric and is based in Mumbai, India. She has over 20+ years of consulting and is seen as the Trusted Advisor to C Suite leaders. She is a leadership and transformation champion and sought after by organizations to support them in their talent and culture and leadership transformation journeys. Prior to Kincentric, Radhika was heading Aon India Leadership Solutions. She was also part of the team that set up Hewitt Associates in India.

Varun is a part of the HR and Talent advisory team of Kincentric and leads the engagement delivery in the North India market. He is an experienced HR consultant and brings with him more than 9 years of consulting experience working across domains such as Organization design, employee engagement, HR transformation, and organizational effectiveness. He is a certified Change Management practitioner from ROSCI and a certified Organization design professional from IIM Bangalore

Key Learnings:

• The speakers discussed work culture in Kincentric.
• They also discussed the mission and goals of the consulting firm.
• The speakers spoke about how Kincentric become globally a pure talent management consulting firm.
• They also emphasized how technology has reformed the complete funnel of the talent management and HR process.
  The use of AI and ML in different stages of the process.
• The firm works on enhancing the talent management experience of the people and their clients.
• They also mentioned about Kincentric that the firm helps the clients to understand prioritizing and optimizing the organizational build process of the clients.
• They also talked about the structure in the firm they follow open door policy instead of hierarchical structure.

 

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Mind of the Strategist

Mr. Arup Majumdar is the CEO of his own firm Trariti Consulting Group, prior to which he has worked with multiple organisations like Executive Director in Bonphul Air Products, General Manager of Daikin Airconditioning Pvt Ltd. Director Corporate Business Development and Sales, Embarco, Vice President-Marketing Strategy and VRF compressors at Danfoss, and also in Emerson Climate Technologies and EY .

Arup Majumdar has over two decades and more in corporate life, working in large MNCs with some wonderful people, while living in several countries, which has given him the ability to appreciate cultural diversity, to build winning teams spread across multiple time zones, understand emotional drivers, and norms of doing business globally. Navigating through two major crises – the Asian financial collapse and SARS in Hong Kong, it gave him the opportunity to face disruption, and constructively carve success stories where none seemed possible. He is a visiting faculty at Shiv Nadar University and teaches a course "Strategy & Management Consulting".

Key Learnings:

• Mr. Arup Majumdar enlightened the students of the batch by giving tips on how to read intensively and update themselves. According to him the core of any organisation lies in marketing and innovation. He spoke about his own firm Trariti Consulting Group, about what and how of the strategy and about his spectrum of experience in management consulting.
• Trariti Consulting Group focuses on business strategy, sales excellence, leadership, business development, business transformation, disruptive innovation and coaching students to prepare them enter into the world of management consulting.
• He spoke about strategic business planning, ease to do business, what are the tactical moves that managers should take, what are the pricing strategy that executives in leadership roles should follow and how to classify terrain by citing examples of Chanakya-how to deal with unhealthy people, Strategic planning at waging wars and its resemblance to business.
• He emphasised upon the top five qualities in the management consulting-high ambition for success, content skills, people skills, learning capabilities and resource management.
• He highlighted upon the five points for management consulting by professor Ram Charan of Harvard business School- Listen and note down the key points of information, consider the source, prime the pump, slow down and keep yourself honest.
• He also discussed on disruptive innovation and disruptive pricing and its relevance in present day market. He shared some of the secrets on how to be successful in both career and life and maintain a balance between both.

 

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Ops Analytics: The Next Big Thing

Vijay is Director of Client Capabilities at McKinsey & Company where he co-leads Quantum Black CCN team globally. He is based out of Gurugram. His primary responsibilities include capability building, driving innovations, strategy setting and performance management. Vijay has extensive client experience in Analytics and Service Ops domains specifically on customer care and customer experience related topics. He holds Master’s degree in Computer Science & Technology from JNU, New Delhi and a Master’s degree in Computer Applications from Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla. He was a computer science faculty for three years in an engineering college

Key Learnings:

• The speakers discussed the latest trends in the industry.
• The speaker spoke about improving gender diversity in last few years in field of consulting.
• He spoke about ESG – Environment, Social and Governance. How Air quality index is getting deteriorated day by day globally.
• Nowadays everyone is concerned about ESG as environment is core for any value chain, so we all should work towards it.
• The firms are now shifting the trend to customer centric value addition. What value they can add to the product to be differentiated and achieve maximum customer satisfaction.
• He spoke the risks with data protection and privacy is a big thing now.
• The speaker also said that with emerging technology it’s very important to protect the data of the customers.
• He also spoke about the developments in technology to provide better connectivity, and how metaverse is contributing to it.

 

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Reinventing Talent Strategies for Future Workforce

Ritika has over 12 years of consulting experience with a focus on strategy execution, performance management, performance improvement, program management and business and market research. She has extensive experience in working with CXOs, promoters and senior leaders in designing and implementing projects around workforce transformation, organization development, performance and reward management and enterprise strategy. She also has experience as the chief of staff to CEO at Grant Thornton and has worked with the leadership team to redefine the firm vision, strategy and organization structure, as well as gained hands-on experience in designing the firm’s performance management architecture linked to the organization goals in that capacity. Ritika also leads the Partner rewards and performance management process at the Firm. Ritika was also involved in market research as part of her role with the global delivery team at Grant Thornton where she led a team of researchers with a consulting background. She has led client management for the vertical and been a part of various ground-breaking projects. Prior to her role with Grant Thornton, she worked with EY where she played a pivotal role in setting up a new team within the EY global delivery center focused on cross-sector market research.

Key Learnings:

• The employee life cycle from Hire to Retire.
• She discussed the latest trends in the Human Resource field and its key highlights.
• The difference between traditional HR and strategic HR processes.
• Latest highlights on talent acquisition, talent management, reward, maintenance and retirement process of an employee.
• She also spoke about the adaption of new age technology in the HR function in the post-Covid-19 world.

 

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Accelerating Careers

Benedict Hennebo is Sr. Director- Marketing and Strategy, Gilbarco Veeder Root Asia Middle East & Africa. She has 20 years of sales and marketing experience in B2B multinational companies in the consulting, finance, building automation, aviation, logistics and ICT sectors. Moreover, she is multilingual (FR, EN, IT, NL, (AR)) and has been exposed during her career to very diverse cultural contexts both in mature and high-growth markets with complex regulatory environments. She is known for her drive and customer focus approach to business issues. Her Specialties include: Strategic Planning, Global Offering Development & Sales transformation leadership Marketing, Communications & Government Relations across EMEA, IoT, AI/ML, ICT, Finance, Aviation & Logistics market research & industry insight, Business Development and Key Account Management. She is an MBA Holder & Media Trained.

Key Learnings:

• The speaker shared her experience about, how having a diverse experience has helped her to view a business problem from various angles.
• To have a never settle attitude & focus on continuous learning. To get out of our comfort zone & not be afraid of taking risks.
• The speaker emphasized the need for managers to be self-aware of their strengths & weaknesses because no one knows everything.
• The Speaker also spoke about teamwork & the need to find people in your team who complement your skillsets. Team dynamics is where the magic happens.
• She also enlightened us to focus on prioritizing our work & how sometimes strategy is about what we decide not to do to reach our objectives.
• The speakers also shared with us the key functions at Gilbarco Veeder Root ranging from Global Functions, R&D, Sales & Marketing, Services, Projects & Operations.

 

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Leading in the time of Disruption

Pooja B Luthra is a seasoned leadership expert with an invigorating career of over two decades. Her career has transcended geographical boundaries where she has had the opportunity to drive key people strategy in organizations worldwide.

An organizational psychologist from Chicago, IL, Pooja uses principles of behavioural economics to tailor and deliver leadership solutions starting from access to the right leadership talent to right fitment, alignment and goal-building, leadership talent development across cultures, employee and stakeholder engagement, and organic growth consulting.

Over the last two decades, Pooja has held key roles involving work with CXOs in North America, MENA and APAC helping them build organizations with a strong talent foundation and deploy a holistic talent strategy amidst environmental disruptions.

She has consulted over 100 organizations worldwide in creating and sustaining a strength based, engagement focused and performance-oriented culture. Being a member of publicly listed organizations and a strategic human resource advisor in both, she has bought active talent conversations to the board room.

Her insights and experience have helped these organizations pre-empt and plan for their talent strategy in line with the business strategy.

A thought leader in her field of work, she regularly addresses corporate forums and is a published author for Gallup, Economic Times, People Matters etc.

She founded Humane InsightsTM with a vision to bring global learning closer home. Humane InsightsTM is focused on transforming home-grown organizations into talent magnets with one underlying principle: Being Humane!

Pooja hopes to share her and her networks global experience in helping organizations drive a talent strategy that is ahead of the disruptions that threaten us economically, socially and technologically. She has been appointed as Group CHRO of the Trident Group in JAN’22, leading a team of more than 200. Her focus is to transform the way the organization drives and rewards performance and drive a talent strategy based on the principles of Earn, Learn and Grow.

Key Learnings:

• Ms. Pooja spoke of how a first generation entrepreneurial company with promoters starting it at 0 level reached a 10000 Crore business today across geographies, focusing on aggressive but sound expansive plans, mergers and acquisitions, innovation, research and development on sustainability lines.
• She enlightened on deep details, the learnings that can be taken away in the face of disruptions of the world. In her talk, she described the statistics of employees who were looking for newer jobs and leaving during the recession period, how the employee expectations are shifting and on how to retain employees in an industry during dwindling markets.
• One of the key takeaway's from Ms. Luthra's discussion was focusing and developing the habit of working on one’s strengths and weaknesses, on differentiating between satisfaction of traditional times to development of future.
• She threw light on the changing workplace scenarios- workplace flexibility, contingent and gig economy which is here to stay, mobile technology in work and life of matrix workers and how remote working continues to increase.
• She discussed the cycle of performances which includes goals, efficiencies, priorities, balanced scorecard, research, development statistics and their monitoring.
• As she spoke on the next management discipline which included people processes efficiency resources and customers, she threw light on the neo-classical economics, process improvement and behavioural economics stages.
• Citing difference between rational and emotional mindsets, she discussed on what drives one's decisions and behaviour. She emphasised on trying and gathering facts around the decisions that has been taken by oneself on basis of gut feel and intuition.

 

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Leadership for the New Generation

Dr. Vishwanath Joshi leads Human Resources at Hexaware Technologies as Chief People Officer. Vishwanath is a Postgraduate in Human Resource Management from Pune University and has a PhD. in Management and Organization Development from Academy HRD. During the course of his career spanning more than 20 years, he has worked with top global IT consulting organizations and some of the biggest and most recognized names in business, in generalist and specialist roles. His professional career has been a unique combination of corporate roles, consulting, academics and research. In his last role at Great Place to Work Institute, he was involved in designing and delivering organizational culture-building and employee engagement interventions for medium to large organizations, across different sectors. True to his academic pursuits, Vishwanath has published and presented several papers in the areas of Innovation, Customer Centricity, Strategic Leadership, Career Management, and Creating High-Performance Organizations in national and international journals. On the personal front, Vishwanath enjoys traveling and cooking, apart from spending time with his family.

Vishwanath Joshi spoke about his journey in Hexaware. He also addressed several questions posed by the audience. He began discussing leadership qualities. The speaker highlighted that today people are the key to the success of any organization. The organization is all about people. As a leader, we should engage with the aspirations of people and the culture of the organization. The common element between every successful organization is people and culture. He discussed what traits we should have to become a leader. The speaker showed examples of how leaders can gift work to the people working with them. Some key points of successful leadership are - How do you make interactions unique? How do you become more generous? Can you become more involved? Can you make it fit the context? How do you do it together? The speaker threw some light on the key essence of leadership. Key essence of being a leader – leadership is not about title, leader as a career coach, leaders as cheerleaders, leaders as caregivers, leaders as performance managers. The speaker discussed points in detail that how leaders today should beyond their title to engage with people and earn their trust, ensure that people take responsibility for their careers, motivate them in different ways to help them improve their performance, and appreciate the efforts made by the people for the organization and their peers. The session ended with a few questions from the audience on the quality traits of leadership. Dr. Joshi put forth his end notes on how we can imbibe these traits and become better leaders.

Key Learnings:

• People are the key to the success of any organization.
• Key points to become a successful leader.
• What is the key essence of being a leader?

 

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Breaking into Product Management

Chandra Sekhar Sarmah is a Product Leader with 18 years of experience building, scaling, and managing products for Fortune 500 companies. As Senior Director of Product Management at ADP, he is responsible for heading a portfolio of upmarket products and building an empowered and self-sufficient Product Team. Before ADP, he worked with multiple companies like NCR, Adobe, Avaya, and LSI, where he managed B2B Hardware and Software Products. He holds a B. Tech from NIT Silchar and MBA from ISB Hyderabad.

ANANYA NAGAR is a Product Manager with a decade-long experience in Product Development, Product Management, and Project Management across Automobile, Financial Services, Banking and Human Capital Management. He has led multi-million-dollar Digital Transformation initiatives in Human Capital Management during his tenure at ADP. Previously, he worked as the Chief of Staff to CHRO at TIAA, managing the Business for HR operations and HR Technology Transformation. He has also worked as a Platform Leader at Bajaj Auto, managing a flagship motorcycle brand portfolio. Ananya holds a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from NIT Allahabad and is MBA with Dean's Merit List from XLRI Jamshedpur.

Key Learnings:

• Inculcating the story telling ability and finding the world as a stage where we can sell our product by winning customers through our stories.
• We need to understand and empathize with the real pain of customers i.e. all about the humanizing effect and the key learning to having an obsession with quality. Learning from our present experience on the campus- Preparing for tomorrow's leadership roles, investing in bonding with people, and creating relationships.
• Long with this, prioritizing and time management- what and how to do what needs our time is crucial.
• Lastly Curtain Call- wherein we got motivated by your experience at ADP that how we need to be curious and bold at the same time to put forth our queries, which would help us in addressing problem-solving, curiosity, and making the right decisions. This would help us in the journey of product management role.
• We were able to identify the Superpowers that a product manager must focus on- curiosity, empathy, problem-solving, communicating effectively, stakeholder management, decision-making, prioritization, leadership and storytelling skills. The 5 main pillars of ADP.
• The journey from identifying problems of our customers to solving them through the pathway of turning an idea into life, creating impact, driving business value, taking ownership and championing through leadership by eyeing for details, covered different key aspects that a product manager must take care of.
• The discussion on the responsibilities of a Product Manager-revived our classroom learnings from the marketing management.
• The walk through the different stages of preparation as - building a resume, preparing for interviews and the interview presentation, what great enlightenment.
• Finally, we came to know in detail the market segmentation of ADP, how a typical day in the life of a product manager at ADP is, the career progression in the company.

  

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The not so different journey of an Entrepreneur

Sushant Gupta is the Founder and Chairman of S G Analytics, a Global Insights and Analytics firm he founded in 2007.

A serial entrepreneur, Sushant has founded four companies across Europe and India, SG Analytics (SGA) being his most successful business venture with operations across the USA, Canada, The UK, Switzerland, and India. Sushant attributes his greatest entrepreneurial lessons to his failures which have empowered him with the objectivity and foresight that enables him to stay grounded and close to reality.

Over time, Sushant’s worldview has shifted focus from aggressive business outcomes to desiring to build a resilient organization that integrates capitalism with corporate responsibility and impact. Sushant is now passionate to build SG Analytics into a truly inclusive, responsible, and innovative company – a humane, people-focused, world-class organization which is a source of ease, joy and grace for its people, clients, and society.

Sushant is resolved to take SG Analytics public in the next three years; to transform it into a regenerative business that ensures value for all its stakeholders including institutional and retail investors.

Being passionate about entrepreneurship, sustainability, and women empowerment, Sushant is also an active supporter of Isha Foundation and Sampark NGO. He has also been an early investor in Aavishkaar (World’s first rural venture capital fund group to augment inclusive economic development).

Sushant received his B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and later a management degree from INSEAD. He has recently been awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the services business category by Entrepreneur Magazine.

Key Learnings:

• Every journey has its pros and cons, identifying what is important and prioritizing them is needed in an entrepreneurial journey.
• No instant coffee – something that all of us should believe and follow be it at work or in life

 

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Harnessing the Power of Culture to fuel Enterprise growth in the evolving World of Work

Bhavna Batra is a passionate learner and transformation enabler. An alumnus of MDI, Gurgaon and Loreto College, Kolkata, she has worn multiple hats over the years with roles in Global HR (currently as Executive Director – People and Global People Programs Leader with S&P Global and previously as Vice President – HR with Genpact) and Consulting (as Managing Director – Management Consulting with PwC, Business Head with SHL, and in multiple roles with Grow Talent/Right Management). Be it mergers and acquisitions, preparation and listing of firms or enabling organizations to rampup and grow, Bhavna has worked with organizations across the globe in diverse sectors and stages of growth.

Her leadership philosophy is anchored on Charles Darwin’s famous words - “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one most adaptable to change.” This belief coupled with Bhavna’s passion for travel, cuisine and photography help her view possibilities differently and blend approaches to evolve and flow with dynamic business realities. She is passionate about giving back and spends time with multiple B-Schools and Universities as a guest speaker and visiting faculty member.

Key Learnings:

• She threw some light on topic “World of Work”
• She discussed the difference in culture of work pre and post pandemic
• The difference in working model post pandemic like companies thinking about WFH and hybrid culture, are such models sustainable and can the businesses continue with such mindset.
• She also spoke about the difference in perspective of people on jobs. From purpose of job shifted to security from job.
• The top demanding roles and functions currently in the world and in which direction we should think to upskill ourselves.
• She also spoke on how culture plays an important role in the success of any organizations

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Leader as a Coach (More on Leadership Team)

Mr. Mahesh Medhekar is a versatile leader with deep experience in Human Resource Management, Leadership Development, Cultural Transformation, Change Management, and Digital Transformation in HR. He possesses nearly 25 years of overall experience in the field of Human Resources. Since April 2007, Mahesh has headed the Human Resources function of Mercedes-Benz Research & Development India Private Limited (MBRDI).
In the past few years, he has managed the full HR spectrum and established a diversified organization in terms of talent acquisition and development. With a focus on 'customer commitment' and 'digitization,' he has revolutionised the HR department, making MBRDI the largest R&D unit of Daimler AG outside of Germany.
As a part of International Training Program, Mr. Mahesh has worked as a core team member for ‘Future HR Asia’ project in Daimler AG, Stuttgart, Germany for a period of one year.

Key Learnings:

• He enlightened us on the three major aspects What is coaching, why coaching & how is coaching done.
• He also shared with us the importance of taking a pause during communication
• He discussed how coaching is different from consulting, counselling, mentoring & therapy & how coaching involves more of asking & guiding the person.
• He imparted his knowledge on how important it is for managers to have emotional intelligence so that they could create the best climate for business performance.
• He educated us on the Six styles of leadership i.e Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Commanding, Pacesetting & Visionary.
• He also brushed upon the topic of Systematic Coaching & how we can deliver value beyond the individual.

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Personal Branding

Industry Expert Connect Series Session with Ms. Somya Sahu (Associate Director-PMO Lead, GEP Worldwide)
A passionate and highly motivated fast-growing leader with 12+ years of rich global experience in business management, program management, internal strategy and operations in high growth environment.
A self-starter with demonstrated ownership and entrepreneurial mentality; leading by example and successfully operating in ambiguity.
She specializes in translating business objectives into specific business goals along with identifying new opportunities in digitization and process consulting. She also loves to deconstruct complex business problems to simple achievable solutions, influencing across functions and levels and building strong relationships achieving business favourable outcomes especially in fast-paced environments.
She has been a thought leader, Strategic counsel across intercompany networks, Trusted mentor and keynote speaker for young professionals and diversity candidates including at multiple IIMs, MDI, etc. Her other passions include Mentoring, Coaching, Wholistic Fitness, and Reading. She has delivered 20+ keynote speeches, and executive presentations at multiple forums such as IIM Jammu, MDI M, NITIE, NMIMS, IIIT Delhi, ANI, PMI, WiMLDS, etc.

Key Learnings:

• The insights into the importance of Personal Branding in a person’s career to grow and create one’s sponsor about the decisions made for them when the person is not in the room – for promotions, job changes, profile changes.
• The dive into creating a personal branding as a USP, how a young professional can pick up personal branding from his behavioural competencies and KRAs, new nuance of extrospection with a model of JOHARI window and stakeholder mapping - the segmentation of audience, how to get your presence felt, how networking and mentoring takes your game to next level and the cues to act on with fathom depths of intuitiveness, has surely left the strong and diverse batch of PGDM (GM) mesmerised and curious.
• She emphasised on components of Personal Branding: Tangible Brand elements, Credibility, Strengths and Weaknesses, Skills, Core Values and purpose.
• She enlightened the cohort on why does one need a brand, as it increases one’s influence o have significantly greater personal and professional impact.
• Then came how to do personal branding through internal discovery, externalisation, defining the audience, finding mentor, making your presence felt, and being an opportunist.
• She threw light on working on one’s pie, creating networking opportunities, getting certifications and upskills by reading up.
• Her esteemed presentation left the aspiring future managers curious to ponder on how to transform their persona and improving their own branding.

 

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Web 3 and its impact in real world

Mr. Shazad Fatmi is the CEO of SettleMint India and has spent most of his career in the banking sector with over 15 years of experience in Credit & Risk Management, having worked at global financial services institutions across Asia, Europe, and America, including SBI, BNP Paribas, and Sberbank India.
Shahzad has a solid track record in process and policy formation and providing strategic direction for managing all risks. In 2019, Shahzad decided to take a risk in setting up SettleMint India. Shahzad is an alumnus of Stern School of Business, NYU, and Vlerick Business School.

Key Learnings:

• The speaker started the session by discussing What is blockchain?
• Features of Blockchain
• Roadmap for implementation of the blockchain
• Challenges involved while implementing blockchain and how to overcome them.
• He also discussed when to use blockchain and when we should not.
• He also shared some use cases of the application of blockchain.

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Fireside Chat

Amitav Mukherjee is the Head- Corporate Human Resource Officer at ITC Ltd. Prior to this role, Mukherjee was serving as the VP-HR at ITC’s food division. Mukherjee comes with an experience of over 25 years and has spent a significant part of his career with ITC. He joined ITC in 1995 as assistant manager-HR and over a period of more than two decades, he kept climbing the ladder of success taking responsibilities as human resource manager, vice president-HR and now as corporate HR-head in the organisation. Mukherjee’s whirlwind journey with ITC began with a strong desire to gain experience in industrial relations. In trying to meet the challenges at ITC, including gathering knowledge of manufacturing and working with various top leaders, he managed to gain experience in labour management as well as collective bargaining. It took Mukherjee merely five years to begin leading the HR function at the Company’s Bangalore factory. He also lead a team of sales and marketing personnel and managed the distribution portfolio for the Company. His long-time desire to go overseas and attain a master’s degree was also fulfilled by the Company, which supported him financially in this endeavour. After completing a master’s in human resources from Cornell University, Mukherjee began leading the HR function at ITC’s food division in 2006. An alumnus of XLRI, Mukherjee also worked as an intern with Citibank India. He graduated in economics from Loyola College and completed his schooling from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.

Key Learnings:

• How ITC has changed its business since 1910
• People at ITC constantly believe in innovation, improvisation and pioneering – this helped them to enter in different business and diversify.
• Amitav spoke about the different brands under the umbrella of ITC for e.g. Ashirwad Atta.
• The speaker spoke about the hotel business of ITC.
• He also discussed about the 3 horizons of the strategy for ITC.
• He also spoke about how they diversify the portfolio, recycle and replenish

 

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Fireside Chat

Ira Gupta leads the HR function for Microsoft India which has an employee footprint that spans research, engineering product development, sales and marketing, industry solutions delivery and customer experience & support, spread across 9 cities across the country. In this role, her priorities include aligning the organization's people strategy with business objectives, building a transformational and diverse organization, talent development and implementing effective HR systems and polices for 20000+ employees at Microsoft India.

Prior to Microsoft, Ira was part of the India leadership team at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, where, for over 16 years, she worked in various leadership roles across HR, Sales and Marketing, Communications and CSR. She also set up shared services across businesses. Ira is an Independent Director on a number of company boards.

Education:
Ira holds an Masters in Business Administration with a specialization in Personnel Management & Industrial Relations from XLRI Jamshedpur. She graduated from Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi, India.

Key Learnings:

• The use of technology in the HR function
• She also spoke about how she dealt with the challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic
• The speaker also spoke about finding the right fit product, knowing your customer, and creating the right product
• She also discussed the changes in the trend in today’s business world. HR today is growing to the CEO level.
• The speaker also spoke about the work culture at Microsoft and how it supports the firm in creating a competitive advantage
• She also spoke about the evolution of HR roles in the coming years and what will be the key skills in the coming future.

 

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Ericsson Inside Out

Priyanka Anand is Vice President and Head HR, Southeast Asia, Oceania & India at Ericsson since January 2018. An accomplished HR professional with a career spanning 20+ years, she brings a wealth of knowledge and experience. Priyanka is a transformative leader with astute business acumen and strategic mindset. Turning talent management into an instrument to drive business transformation and strategy has been her key focus area alongside developing able leaders & transforming organizational culture. In her current role, Priyanka leads a team of 60+ resources across more than 10 countries, driving HR strategy across the geography with around 25000 employees. She collaborates with Business Leaders in developing and implementing benchmark Human Resources practices that inspire employees to achieve outstanding business results.

Prior to her current role, Priyanka was the Vice President and Head of HR at Ericsson Global Services, where she was pivotal in the growth of the organization from its inception to creating an employee base of 15000+. She holds a management degree in Human Resources and is passionate about ‘driving change’ and ‘building strong leaders & talent portfolio’.

Key Learnings:

• The speaker started by speaking about the culture in Ericsson.
• She spoke about the innovative culture in Ericsson.
• She spoke about the employees in Ericsson the diversity and demographics.
• The speaker also spoke about the global presence and capabilities of Ericsson
• The speaker discussed the 6G network of innovation in Ericsson.
• Priyanka also spoke about how Ericsson’s telecom infrastructure has developed of usage of the 5G network globally.
• In the end, she interacted with the batch and answered few of the questions from the batch.

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Things To Do for 10X Scaling

Ms, Dipti Tandon is someone who is enthusiastic when it comes to everything related to digital. An IIM Ahmedabad Alumni, a Startup veteran, a Matchmaker since 1999!!

She is the founder of Jeevansathi.com. She has built a successful matrimony portal in her first attempt at matchmaking.

In 2005, she set up Magicbricks (for the Times Group), matching property owners and seekers. It soon became India's No. 1 property portal.

Now, she is working in building CoffeeMug.ai, a matchmaking business for professional needs.

CoffeeMug is an AI Superconnector matching startups with venture capitalists, connecting professionals for leadership hiring and expert advice.

Key Learnings:

• The need for a platform for mid to senior professionals to establish network and connections across the industry led to the rise of CoffeMug.ai. It works on connecting people only where the connection makes sense with the help of Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and other upsurging technologies.
• She discussed about her experiences and her journey of transitioning from being an employee at a job to being an entrepreneur when she started her matchmaking offering through Jeevansathi.com.
• She emphasised on the fact that she had gained from her experiences that making any business from 1x to 10x size is the biggest challenge. Scaling it up incrementally and applying repeatability to evolve and grow from 10x to 100x is comparatively an easier task.
• For any business, the key motto should be an idea to solve an existing problem. The size of the problem needs to be anticipated and the idea should be differentiating enough from the existing ones and should have the X-factor to resolve the problem in its unique way which is defined from quality, time and cost perspectives. The next important task is to analyse and identify the prospective target market. That can be achieved by sensing whether the offering to solve is large enough. This becomes achievable with the help of a scalable, repeatable solution/offering.
• It is always challenging to identify what not to do. She explained that learning comes from analysing the mistakes of competitors and by learning what mistake needs to be avoided.
• She also discussed on the various degrees of action in any business: No Action, Retreat, Business As Usual. And the two key actions needed out of any entrepreneur are Massive Action, which people think one cannot do and Imperfect Action which demands use of technology, talent and capital.
• She presented differences between, and challenges faced from Shaadi.com and JeevanSaathi.com. She compared Housing.com and 99acres.com strategies with those of MagicBricks.com.
• Lastly, she spoke of emergence of the most needed CoffeeMug.ai in the existing competing world of LinkedIn for networking.

 

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The Poverty of Political Economy

Meghnad Jagdishchandra Desai, Baron Desai (born 10 July 1940) is an India- born naturalized British economist and former Labour politician. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award in the Republic of India, in 2008. He is a Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics. He was born in Vadodara, Gujarat, India. He secured a bachelor's degree in economics from Ramnarain Ruia College, affiliated with the University of Mumbai. Then he pursued a master's degree in economics from the Department of Economics (now called the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy) of the University of Mumbai, after which he won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania in August 1960. He completed his Ph.D. in economics at Pennsylvania in 1963. We welcome Lord Meghnad Desai and are excited to have an interactive session with the batch.

Key Learnings:

• The speaker talked about his book “The Poverty of Political Economy” & answers the question on how have changes in the international order affected the making of economies
• The book also talks about how do we reinvent the way that economic policies are formed in the face of Covid 19?
• To speaker also shares how the current economy has become more people-centric but it is not so different from traditional economics.
• He also talks about the challenges that he faced while writing this book.

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Work Culture in ESG Metrics

Shrikant Ramakrishnan is the Director of Clematis Group. Professional Bandwidth:
Food Security Research, Brand Management, Revenue Optimisation, Real-Estate - Private Equity & Group Marketing, Hospitality Operations &Management, Sustainability Solutions & International Business Development.

Industry Specialization:
Advertising, Airlines, Hospitality, Real-Estate & Sustainability.

Core Competence: Business Strategy - Ideation & Implementation. Revenue Optimisation - Real Estate & Hospitality Industries. Sustainable Solutions & Global Business Development. Social & Environmental Impact Optimisation Education Portfolio - Integrating Food Solutions into School & Graduate Curriculums.

Key Learnings:

• The speakers discussed work culture in ESG metrics.
• He also spoke about sustainability and how it is related to the basic needs of food, clothing and house
• The speaker also spoke about how consumer behaviour drives the market for a sustainable product.
• Mr Ramakrishnan also talked about changing government policies and improving the economy and how is it helping India to be in a better position in sustainability.
• He also spoke about how we under underutilizing the products and not up to their full life cycle.
• He also said that the government, consumers and manufacturers all need to come together to make ESG work.

 

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Journey from Campus to Leadership Roles

Technology leader with 21 years of experience spanning the entire spectrum of IT from being a Programmer to being an IT Strategy consultant for Fortune 500 organizations to being CTO of major Retail/QSR firms.
Areas which interest me are: Building IT Strategy & Program Managing the Initiatives therein, optimizing the Enterprise Architecture & subsequently the IT Application portfolio.
I have been handling leadership roles since the last 7 years and the journey has been exciting so far with its own share of ups and downs. The highs include putting together CRM platforms, building omni-channel journeys and transforming Point-Of-Sales solutions.

Key Learnings:

• Mr. Mitra emphasized the importance of prioritizing tasks based on their importance and urgency.
• He suggested setting clear goals and objectives for each task or project to stay focused.
• Mr. Mitra highlighted the effectiveness of breaking down larger tasks into smaller, more manageable ones.
• He recommended creating a schedule or to-do list to stay organized and track progress.
• Mr. Mitra emphasized the need to avoid multitasking and instead focus on one task at a time.
• Mr. Mitra emphasized maintaining a strong sense of professionalism and integrity in all work.
• He spoke about the importance of being punctual and meeting deadlines to demonstrate reliability.
• Mr. Mitra stressed taking responsibility for actions and delivering on commitments.
• He highlighted effective communication and collaboration with colleagues and stakeholders.

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Batch 2021 - 2022

Economic Reforms

Dr. Krishnamurthy Venkata Subramanian is an Indian economist and the current Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) to the Government of India. Dr. Subramanian is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur, IIM Calcutta, and Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. He completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of Luigi Zingales and Raghuram Rajan and has worked with expert committees for SEBI and RBI and various global corporations, including JP Morgan, ICICI Bank, Tata Consultancy Services. Dr. Subramanian has earlier worked as an executive assistant to the chairperson of the Fixed Income Money Markets and Derivatives Association of India. He is an expert in banking and economic policy and was a member of the PJ Nayak Committee constituted by the RBI to review the governance of boards of banks in India.

Key highlights/takeaways from the session:

• India must focus on economic development by three pillars - (a) Macro focus on growth and use the resources for micro focus of welfare program; (b) Enable privatization to create wealth; (c) Increase focus on virtuous cycle (Private investments leads to increased public consumption as their disposable incomes rise)
• Capital spending is critical. The Government spends Rs 100 in capital/capex spending, which turns to Rs 250 for the same year and then to Rs 450 over the next few years due to the multiplier effect; Thus, the Indian Government is focusing on capex spends rather than on revenue spends
• India is making a V shape recovery, and this decade will be the decade of India. The Government is ready to provide help to every section with the assistance of digital technology

 

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Inspired Decision Making: A Narrative Journey

Mr Arun Maira is an author, former Chairman (India) BCG, former member Planning Commission, and Chairman, HelpAge International. Mr Maira has had an illustrious career as a management consultant, a hands-on leader, a consultant to leaders, and a thought leader on subjects of leadership and institutional transformation, in the private, public and social sectors. He has been at the apex of decision making for the most prestigious global organizations and shared his thoughts, ideas, and a piece of his illustrious career.

Key Learnings

Never earn your laurel and rest & rust on your laurel - Never be complacent and rest on your accomplishments and achievements & rust on them eventually.

 

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World Class Leadership – Insights from coaching world class leaders

Manoj Vasudevan is an internationally renowned Next Level Leadership Readiness Expert who helps executives and entrepreneurs to breakthrough to the next level of their career, business and life. He is the 2017 World Champion of Public Speaking, CEO of Thought Expressions and chief mentor at Next Level Unlimited.

Manoj holds an MBA from Imperial College London with 25 years of leadership experience in strategy, management and technology with many major MNC clients in Asia, Australia, USA and Europe. Manoj is the author of the international bestsellers including Mastering Leadership The Mousetrap Way and How To Become The World Champion of Public Speaking – The definitive step-by-step guide.

Key Learnings:

• Taking initiative without directive; one has untapped leadership potential; taking ownership of the problem and getting it fixed and not take it as a problem but as an opportunity.
• Competence is important but confidence is paramount.
• Great leaders create great leaders and not blind followers; people don't enjoy macro-management, they enjoy autonomy, infuse the idea and not just communicate the idea. Objective is to not impress but to inspire.

 

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Disruption and Resilience: A Growth Mindset

Dr. Rupinder Kaur is a leadership coach, an inclusion proponent, and a military veteran. An avid researcher, she believes in evidence-based practice and has coached more than 150 senior leaders across 2 BIG 4 consulting firms.Her domain expertise is building, aligning, integrating & sustaining leadership development initiatives at scale. She has deep expertise in building a learning culture, through stakeholder buy-in, designing and managing systemic change initiatives, using the power of coaching to lead behavioural change in young leaders. Basis on her tryst with failure and resilience, she shared a couple of thoughts with the batch:

• Disrupt yourself to reinvent a new You
• The Four F formula: Fail fast and Fail Forward
• Learned Helplessness to Realistic Optimism
• Finding Meaning as a Way of Developing Resilience
• Ritualized Improvisation for a Growth Mindset

 

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Creating Your Personal Brand Via LinkedIn

XLRI PGDM (GM) batch of 2021-22 hosted Mr. Priyank Ahuja, Product Manager and Consultant (ex-ISB and NUS) for a session on Personal Branding Via LinkedIn. In a jampacked session, Mr. Priyank covered the basic fundamentals of creating the right kind of profile, focusing on how to emphasize one's strengths while also making the profile appealing, and then went into detail on how to correctly network with other senior professionals. He also answered a series of wide-ranging questions on how to write LinkedIn-appropriate content, and the correct and strategic use of hashtags.

Key Learnings

Maintaining a coherence in individual branding, focusing only on relevant topics, making your profile attractive for anyone who visits.

 

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Differentiate yourself as an Executive MBA candidate

Capt. Pranav is an Ex-Indian Army Officer with commendable experience in managing the entire gamut of Leadership & Human Resource Management, Talent Management, Talent Development, Change Management and Operations Management. He is currently heading the HR department at Renault India.An alumnus of IIM Lucknow, he has over 15 + years of extended experience in Human Resource Management & Development and hands-on experience in Project Management. He addressed the PGDM (GM) batch by giving case studies about Real-life Leadership Challenges from the HR perspective. He shared his thoughts about the 'Leadership Endurance' in tough Situations. Also, he addressed the batch about the leadership quality - Resilience - "Bouncing back" is what we need to do when we face disappointment, defeat, and failure, but instead of wallowing or letting things keep us down, we get back up and continue on with our lives was the key learning during the session.

 

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Managing Change

Dr Busrai has over four decades of HR experience covering all aspects of HR including IR, Recruitment, Training, Remuneration, Policy, Operations, Divestment, cross-cultural workforce and HR Shared Services. He has held senior positions in both operational and strategic HR at organizations including Unilever PLC India and Kenya, Motorola Asia Pacific, Shell Malaysia and IBM India. Dr. Busrai is the founder of 'Aquil Busrai Consulting' which offers Executive Coaching, HR Strategy, Leadership Development and Training. Dr Busrai spoke about the importance of scenario planning and gave a sneak peek into what is going to happen next in terms of Jobs, Processes, Ethics. During the session, he also touched upon how business is going to change moving forward in the VUCA world.

 

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How to Network Through LinkedIn

XLRI PGDM (GM) batch of 2021-22 hosted Mr. Sampark Sachdeva (Winner of LinkedIn Spotlight 2019, TedX speaker) for a session on how to network through LinkedIn. Mr. Sachdeva took the students through a detailed masterclass on content creation. He answered student questions on how to properly create their own brand through content, how to reach out to senior-level industry leaders, and how to position themselves to gain traction on the platform, leveraging it to find the right opportunities.

Key Learnings

• Developing content and networking with industry leaders the correct way.

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Career Path in Consulting

Mr Anshuman Jaiswal, Principal, Digital Transformation at Kearney is an esteemed Alumnus of the XLRI PGDM(GM) batch of 2010. He has over 16 years of industry and consulting experience serving clients globally. He has advised and served client executive leaders on a broad range of technology topics including IT and Digital Strategy, Operating Model & Organization Design and Cost and Operations Transformation. He is also passionate about learning technological disruption, teamwork, global outlook, people and culture. He had an interaction with the PGDM (GM) students through a session on "Career Path in Consulting". The session had numerous insights and enriching thoughts such as "Treat your career as a marathon and not like sprints". It was a great learning experience for the audience.

 

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A Right Mentor Can Change Your Career

Mr Saurabh Nigam, Vice President, Human Capital at Omidyar Network India. He is a Post Graduate Diploma holder in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations (PM&IR) from XLRI. He is also the only Indian who holds the SPHR, GPHR, and HRMP certifications from SHRM, USA simultaneously, and in the first 10 globally. Mr. Saurabh has been recognized as one of the Top 25 Future HR Leaders of the Country by People Matters & DDI International and is a regular speaker on Compensation & Benefits, Talent Management, and Managing Gen Y. He had an interaction with PGDM (GM) students on the topic “A Right Mentor Can Change Your Career”. He shared his thoughts on every successful mentorship being built upon a strong mentor-mentee relationship. Also, embarking on your career is tough, and being mentored can help you achieve your professional goals and objectives in ways you wouldn’t have otherwise expected. He also shared that as a leader, one essential role is to coach your mentees to do their best. This way, you’ll help them make better decisions, solve the problems holding them back, learn new skills, and otherwise advance their careers.

 

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Design your destiny

Mr Himanshu Saxena is one of the world's leading executive coaches and educators. He is a retired military officer, corporate executive and entrepreneur. Mr Himanshu is the Founder and CEO of Centre of Strategic Minds. COSM is a Thought Leadership Pursuit, designed to groom Strategic Minds who can deliver bold business impact through Big Picture Thinking and relentless execution. He shared his insights on "Design your destiny". Some of the key learnings are: How to activate our own potential, how to maximise it for greater success, how to minimise blind spots, and improve individual and group capacities for problem solving, communication, and conflict management.

 

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My Journey Through Sports Anchoring

Ms Ridhima dons multiple hats as a Sports Presenter, Live Broadcaster, Anchor, Public Speaker, Emcee and Corporate Trainer. In her anchoring career, she has been a part of several premium events like the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, ICC Women's T20 Cricket World Cup 2020, The NBA, Asian Games 2018- Jakarta, Common Wealth Games 2018 and a host of events with Sony Pictures Networks India. During the session with PGDM (GM) students she shared her experience about Broadcasting industry.

Key learnings:

Sometimes the Career chooses you and it takes hard work and a whole lot of preparation to excel in the chosen field.

Passion is the difference between having a job or having a career and it's beautiful when passion comes together with career. The 3 C's that built career are Choices, Chances and Changes - Choice to take a Chance to see the Change!

 

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Starting Up Post B-School: A Success Story

Dr Dhaval Shah is an XLRI alumnus and the Co-Founder of Pharmeasy - India's leading and one of the largest healthcare delivery platforms. Pharmeasy is one of India’s most celebrated unicorns and recently acquired Medlife. Dr Dhaval is an Ex-Mckinsey consultant and shared his insights on his start-up journey, his learnings, and the making of a unicorn.

Key Learnings

Key to any start-up’s success is its team. Having that closely knitted team with whom you do not just work with but have fun building everything along the way is extremely underrated. If you can’t have a hearty laugh when you are all messed up - makes the mess even messier.

Going full-stack and having an end-to-end visibility on supply chain can make all the difference to a healthcare delivery start-up’s success.

 

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Introduction to Case Solving

Mr Pavan Sathiraju is a serial entrepreneur specializing in management consulting and business case solving. Mr Sathiraju is an ex-Mckinsey Consultant and an alumnus of INSEAD and NIT. He is also a co-founder of Cases Over Coffee - A peer-to-peer professional learning (and case solving) network. He shared his valuable insights on how to approach and structure thoughts while solving business cases and guesstimates in interviews.

Key Learnings

Understand basic frameworks, how to build your own custom frameworks, structure your thoughts, clarify the objective of the case, and develop creative thinking.

Build your business fundamentals by reading case studies, business articles. This will help in picking important developments in the business world.

 

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Transformational Leadership

Mr. Jaspal Bajwa is the founder and executive coach at Sunya Circle - Authentic Leadership Associates. He dons the hat of a coach and consultant for Transformational Leadership and Organizational vitality. He has delivered innumerable coaching sessions across 20+ countries with a Net Promoter Score of 95. He has had a remarkable global corporate career for three decades with big brands like Nestle, Bausch &Lomb, Marico, Dr. Reddy's holding the positions of CXOs across different geographies. He is an associate of Marshall Goldsmith coaching global network & the Fons Trompenaars network for Cultural Intelligence (CQ). He holds a PCC accreditation from ICF and a CVPCC from Centre for Coaching Mastery, USA.

He has done his post-graduation in MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, batch of 1976.

A profound practitioner of the art and science of Life and Leadership, he lives by his mantra 'learn, unlearn, relearn, and at the end serve.'

Key Learnings:

• The Journey of transformation leadership starts from within.
• While success is important, what is more important is getting happiness out of success.
• Co-creating brand experience is of utmost importance.
• The 3 KY's which are very important are:
  • Know Yourself
  • Know your Business
  • Know your customer

 

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The Future of Indian Automotive Industry - Current challenges & emerging trends for growth

Mr. Venkatram Mamillapalle is the Country CEO and Managing Director of Renault India Private Limited (RIPL).

Mr. Venkatram comes with over 30 years of automotive experience and spearheads Renault's operations in India and SAARC countries. Before holding this role, he was the head of Renault-Nissan AVTOVAZ in Russia. Additionally, he held several leading positions with various Indian and global OEM's including Eicher Tractors, Delphi Automotive Systems, Tata Motors, Lombardini India, and General Motors (Korea). He is an expert in Supply chain management, quality, manufacturing, and logistics. He has been part of the Executive Committees, Boards, and International Boards of the companies in the past.

Key Takeaways from the session:

• Transformation of automotive technologies over the decades - Pure Mechanical to Computerised form.
• Factors that may impact EV market - Battery cost, charging infrastructure, availability of Lithium, and challenges in recycling batteries.
• Autonomous vehicle is a future possibility, coupled with the challenges associated with cybersecurity.
• Ownership of personal vehicles may become extinct. Retail of the future is Ridesharing & Subscription models.
• The need for modern and sufficient infrastructure to improve the supply chain's efficiency and support automotive industries.

 

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Renewable Energy- The future

Colonel Rohit Dev is a dynamic leader who moved on from the Indian armed forces after an illustrious and exemplary career.

In his military career, he has been at the top of his profession, held all prestigious appointments, and had detailed insight into the Operational Logistics and Supply Chain Management of a strategic field organization in the Northern Command.

He is a graduate of the National Defense Academy and holds an MSc in Operational Arts and Strategic thinking.

He is currently the COO of Punjab Renewable Energy systems private limited.

A very eminent speaker, and we would see him at debates happening around geopolitical issues, nation-building, and the bioenergy sector on various news channels.

Colonel Rohit Dev spoke of the need and possibilities in the biomass energy sector. He also answered students' questions on the various aspects and challenges in this sector while giving his insights into how other countries are utilizing this sector and where India stands.

 

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Super Conscious Leadership - From conformity to clarity

Acharya Prashant is an emerging champion of socio-spiritual awakening in the world today. An alumnus of IIT-Delhi and IIM-Ahmedabad, and a former Civil Services officer, He is an acclaimed Vedanta Philosopher. Apart from that, he wears various hats: a veganism promoter, an environmental activist, a science activist, a campaigner against superstition, and a champion of essential human freedom.

The 10,000+ videos and articles uploaded by him on the Internet, freely available to all, make the world's single most extensive online repository of spiritual content, of which more than 5 million minutes are watched daily. He has been regular speaker at IITs, IIMs, many other prestigious institutions, as well as platforms like TED.

Key learnings:

• Spirituality and religion are not to be confused with each other. Spirituality is more concerned with how free a person is from within. More freedom one has internally, more spiritual one is.
• Conscious, practical approach towards real world problems is the only way to sustainable living.

 

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Building your professional brand with LinkedIn

Ms. Shikha Nautiyal is a market development and product development professional with tremendous sales experience. Her career story is about driving innovation and helping companies evolve rapidly by leveraging technology. She has worked as a Senior Strategy Manager at Mahindra Rise and is currently the Account Director at LinkedIn.

Key takeaways:

• How businesses and executives can build their brand leveraging LinkedIn platform.
• How we can unleash the power of LinkedIn to build winning teams, engage our customers, develop our people, and connect with the wider network to drive results.
• We need to learn to inspire, interact, influence people so that we grow together as a big network of professionals.

 

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Current Trends in HR Transformation and Strategy

Swaroop is an HR Professional and an Associate Certified Coach from International Coaching Federation. He has approximately 10 years of work experience in the space of Strategic HR, Talent Management, Total Rewards, HR Analytics, and IT.

Currently, Swaroop is working on Global HR Transformation at Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management and automation with operations in more than 100 countries.

He is an alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur and further studied Leadership & Business Strategy from INSEAD.

The session was enriching, and the audience got insights into the transformations happening across the industry and how one should be with time in the VUCA world. The students were made aware of organizations, structures, and Jargons in different sectors. And also the skills in demand across industries. The examples used to convey the message made it easier to relate and understand.

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POST COVID world and possible strategies for IT/ITES

Mr Apurva Chamaria is the SVP and the Chief of Staff to the CEO & MD of Tech Mahindra. He leads the growth initiatives around Cloud, AI, and Wave 4 businesses. He earlier donned the role of Chief Revenue Officer at RateGain, a leading SaaS company serving 12000+ customers globally. He was also the Global Head of Corporate Marketing for HCL Technologies. Before HCL, he was the youngest country manager at Ranbaxy Laboratories (now Sun Pharmaceuticals), leading the business in Australia & NZ. In 2016, he was awarded the "Marketer of the Year" award by World Leadership Forum, "Digital Marketer of the Year" by IAMAI, and "B2B Marketer of the Year" by Paul Writer. Mr Chamaria got Recognized by The Economic Times as amongst the top 10 angel investors in India in 2018. He's a columnist for the Pitch and Digital Market Asia magazines. His published books include 'You are the key – unlocking doors through Social Selling' and 'Master Growth Hacking.'

Key Learnings:

• Technology is rapidly reshaping the world, and the future belongs to the AI revolution.
• The only way machines and humans can work together is by humans being humane and empathetic managers.
• Unlearning and relearning will be the success defining factors for future managers and leaders.


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Importance of personal branding

Ms Soma Pandey is a dynamic HR leader with solid global experience and a strategic partner in multinational companies across BPO, ITES, HR Services, and FMCG sectors.

She has a corporate career spanning 25 years that began with a firm grounding in employee-industrial relations in ITC Ltd and later advanced to anchoring and leading CEO transition, organization transformation, M&A assimilation, divestment, and change management in varied contexts. Most recently, as a CHRO of Firstsource, she has a track record of building competent, motivated, and successful HR teams.

Soma Pandey is also a hands-on coach with a bias for action and results, bringing innovative yet straightforward and pragmatic solutions to complex business challenges.

Key Learnings:

• The importance of personal branding and the method to build one by understanding the key factors below,
  Authenticity - Being oneself
  Awareness - Know about one's perceptions
  Articulation - Define one's brand value
  Amplification - Sell one's brand
• Everyone is a brand oneself. One must endeavour to "know" and try to project one's quality and skills to the world so that others can make use of it.

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Fostering Diversity Inclusion at the Workplace

Sonica Aron is the Founder and Managing Partner of Marching Sheep, an HR advisory firm specializing in Strategic HR advisory, Diversity and inclusion interventions, employee health and wellness and capability building. An XLRI post graduate, Sonica has worked with companies like Pepsico, Vodafone, Roche Diagnostics and ICI paints. She started her career with a sound understanding of business where she went route-riding with Pepsico and was part of the team that launched Pepsi 200 ml at Rs 5. She was the first lady HR Manager stationed at a factory in Upcountry UP and there the seeds to her diversity practice were born. Sonica is passionate about HR, empowering people and all things in between. A mother of two, she decided to set up Marching Sheep in 2013 with a vision of making a difference to peoples' lives and careers, and driving respect and equality for all.

Key Learnings:

• The need for diversity and inclusion measures to include even men as they also are at a receiving end of stereotypes.
• About the RPWD act, expansion from 7 to 21 disabilities
• Diversity is a fact and we need to work past our biases and assumptions.
•  Building awareness of issues will empower leadership to empathize and equip their employees with the right support and right environments.

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Enterprise Innovation and Agility with Cloud Computing

Aditee is currently working as the Director-IVS Solutions and Strategic Partnerships at Microsoft. She is a Technical Sales Leader with expertise in Digital technologies, Cloud Native and large-scale application architectures, to fuel the next phase of growth for Enterprise Businesses. Led transformative engagements for enterprise customers across verticals. She has built Strategic Partnerships with ISVs, Start-ups and commercial partners to help them grow a healthy cloud business. She has led technical evangelism to build niche skills in Students, Developers and Women in Tech. She has multi-Geography experience across US, Australia, UK & India. Digital Influencer and Technical Speaker for Cloud and Digital Technologies.

Key Learnings from the session:

1) The way of working has changed completely:

• Respond -Navigating the Now
• Restart - Planning the comeback
• Reimagine - Shaping the new normal

2) Innovation Building Blocks Include:

• Modern Collaboration
• Cloud Native Architectures
• AI Powered - UX, Logic, and Everything
• Seamless Integration
• Fully Managed Data
• Seamless Operations
• Security as the foundation

 

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Supply Chain: A competitive advantage

Mr. Rahul Awasthi is currently the Executive Vice President at Dabur India Limited. He is an experienced supply chain professional with a demonstrated track record in the FMCG industry in the manufacturing, technology, innovation, and supply planning domain.

He has done multiple Strategic and execution roles in top companies. He possesses deep manufacturing, outsourcing, supply and distribution planning, S&P, manufacturing excellence, innovation, sustainability, and quality expertise.

Mr. Awasthi spoke about the challenges and opportunities in today's volatile and uncertain times. He emphasized that the supply chain is seen not as a support function but a true enabler for growth.

Good supply chains help organizations to survive in turbulent times and thrive when there are tailwinds.

He also talked about how the supply chain has shifted from being seen as the back office function it once was to a strategic driver of business growth with time. He further explained the increasing complexity of supply chains and how supply chain managers must use a combination of tools, techniques, and approaches to understand the need, control cost challenges, and meet everyday and long-term challenges.

 

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Corporate Innovation and Building Digital Ventures

Pritam Dutta has over 13 years of International experience in Driving Digital Transformation across FMCG & Manufacturing space across currently based out of Bangalore Currently working as Head of Digital Transformation @ Anheuser Busch Inbev (Budweiser inc) He has driven huge competitive advantage across companies by leveraging Digital Disruption. Since 2018, Pritam has helped shape the Global Data Strategy at Unilever which have led to creation of competitive advantage and a new business with over 200-Million-euro business. In 2017, Pritam was part of the $1 billion-dollar Unilever acquisition of Dollar Shave Club a (complete Digital Business model) which achieved over 40% YOY growth in first year of operations & is currently one of the fastest growing subscription-based Business Models. In 2017, Pritam when based in Manila lead the Asia Digital Transformation Forum driving Innovative cross Industry partnership across the Digital ecosystem In 2016 Pritam's programme on transforming Employee Experience using Artificial Intelligence was selected by Deloitte Berkins & Wall Street Journal as one of the Global Best Practices of driving Digital Transformation.

Key Take Aways :

• The importance of having people who have failed on your team. Failure tells us, people have worked towards ambitious goals and come up against challenges.
• The need to work with start-ups as partners
• Interested in financial inclusion but cautious of side effects of any measures. Ex: - Farm loan waivers make lenders wary of lending to farmers.

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Flipkart's Culture & People Centric Focus

Mr. Krishna Raghavan is the Chief People Officer at Flipkart and brings over two decade of experience working in product companies across the US and India. He has extensive experience with E-commerce apps, SaaS delivery models, engineering leadership and management, product startups, enterprise solutions/integrations, and running 24/7 high availability product operations. Mr. Krishna was the Technology Head for Flipkart's Fulfilment Services, and Customer Experience Groups. In the course of his tenure at Flipkart, he has also spearheaded the launch of the marketplace platform and has led multiple strategic technology initiatives for Ekart.

Mr Krishna has been a part of some of the prominent tech companies such as Yahoo and Cleartrip. He is also a leadership coach and has a track record of building competent, motivated, and successful teams within an organization.

Key Learnings:

• Entrepreneurship, Inclusion and Sustainability being key pillars of Flipkart's Culture. The whole ecosystem is built around authentic communication that is instrumental in enduring any adversity.
• Taking out the fear of anxiety in your employees, will be the most important thing in managing your supply chain - in post pandemic world

 

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Digital Real Estate Boom in India

Mani Rangarajan is the Group COO of the Elara Group, the only full-stack real-estate company in India. The Group operates Housing.com & Makaan.com, two of India's largest real estate portals and PropTiger, one of India's leading channel partners. He heads sales, business development, monetization, marketing, operations, research, and data solutions at the Group. Mani has extensive global experience in P&L management, monetization, operations, finance, and strategy in the internet and financial services sectors in over 25 countries. Mani has held executive-level roles in companies such as Citigroup, Yahoo! and with leading Silicon Valley start-up companies including Boku, Kosmix, Cloudera, and the Climate Corporation.

Key Learnings:

• Growth in the real estate market in India post Covid-19 times
• New opportunities in the digital segment of the real estate industry
• Expansion of the digital tech to broader market like healthcare, etc.

 

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Digital Transformation with AI & Business Strategy

Mr. Dhaval Thanki is the Vice President of Asia Pacific, ME & Africa at LogiNext, Worlds # 1 AI powered transportation automation platform. He has 16 years of experience in the digital, CRM, analytics space. Skilled in Strategy, Business Development, Product management, Account Management, Client Servicing, Digital Marketing, Analytics, Retention Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Precision Marketing & Product Marketing.

Key Learnings:

• Digital transformation - AI is just one of the 5 elements (Strategy, Digitization, AI, Customer Experience and Analytics.)
• Automation is the first and necessary step to Intelligence. And it requires relatively lesser effort for businesses, but can help unlock a lot of value.
• Create huge business impact and deliver increasingly richer customer experiences.

 

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Entrepreneurship Growth and Competitiveness in recent times

Mr. Rajat Jaiswal is a high-flying pilot with over 7,000 hours of flying experience and co-founder of Noida-headquartered burger brand Wat-a-Burger. In just over five years, Wat-a-Burger has grown into a well-known desi burger brand in India with over 60 outlets across 21 cities.

A deep thinker, problem solver, and motivational speaker, Mr. Jaiswal started his career as a pilot at a private airline in 2009. He then moved to SpiceJet as a Flight Commander, eventually becoming a Senior Captain at a leading airline company.

Key Learnings:

• Being persistent towards your goals pays off
• Importance of a strong supply chain network in any entrepreneurship endeavor
• Clarity towards your target audience and a clean and concise positioning statement can help in creating a concrete competitive advantage

 

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Positive Intelligence (PQ) - New age human skill for sustainable behavioural change

Mr Rajeev Nayak is the CEO of Exponentium Coaching & Consulting and has over 20 + years of Pharma Leadership experience in India, Asia & Eastern Europe. He is the Ex Country head – Ukraine, Dr Reddys Labs and has had held leadership roles in large Pharma MNCs, including Dr. Reddys, Ranbaxy, Cipla & MSD. He is the Member of the International Coach Federation (ICF) and has 100+ Hours of Executive & Life Coaching Experience.

Rajeev has extensive experience in building Coaching Cultures in organizations and Coaching leaders in Executive Positions to Create High-Performance Teams.

Key Learnings:

• Traditional leadership training focuses on insights than muscle, treats symptoms than the cause and does not have a of common framework for different issues
•  PQ and the neuroscience behind behaviours and how it is linked to our activities and thought processes. information on different personality types including "The Hyper achiever, Hyper-Rational, Hyper-Vigilant, Pleaser, Perfectionist and Victim"
• Road to Sage Personality à 5 Sage Powers - Empathise, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, Activate
• Performance of an individual= Potential - Interference "Potential" includes the capabilities well as the ability to learn. "Interference" represents the ways that one undermines the fulfilment or expression of the capacities

 

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Setting up successful B2B E-Commerce Opportunities and Challenges in recent times

Ms. Pallavi Chelluri is the Director Marketing at Moglix. Pallavi brings 11 years of experience and expertise in the domains of B2B marketing, strategic sales, and consulting. In her current role at Moglix she leads the company's initiatives for brand building, demand and lead generation, corporate communications and sales enablement. During the course of her career thus far she has held leadership roles while working with leading enterprises across the supply chain, technology, heavy engineering, and PSU verticals. In her last role at Siemens India, she led the development of Siemens' Digital Center that provided IIoT solutions and anchored business development, marketing, and sales of custom digital services and products of the company to mid-market and enterprise customers. An alumnus of the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Pallavi is a gold medalist in Mechanical Engineering from the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She takes keen interest in business model innovation, creative problem solving, brand storytelling and mentoring young leaders.

Key Learnings:

• What differentiates B2B from B2C
  - Individual purchasing for their business
  - Buying in large quantities
  - Buying industrial grade items
  - Buying and selling are governed by organizations processes and rules
  - Credit cycle
  - Tax invoicing
• B2B Ecommerce is headed towards
  - Consumerization
  - Integration
  - Intelligence

 

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Transitioning to a managerial role at the workplace

Mr. Ram is an alumnus of IIM Indore batch of 2012. He has been with the IT industry for over 14 years. He started as a developer and has gone on to take up leadership roles within the industry. With a techno-managerial blend, he has led teams in software development and software delivery. He is currently responsible for several growth functions within his current organization, such as learning and pre-sales.

Mr. Ram talked about the skills needed to excel at the workplace, the ways to handle conflicts, the managerial skills required from the digital perspective, among many key takeaways. The session was really insightful and would definitely help us in our transition to a managerial role.

 

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Digital and Preparing for Digital Careers

Mr. Raghuraman is a software professional, with a passion for software, IT and Technology. Raghu spent the first 16 years of his career in India, before moving his family to the USA. He has over 35 years of experience in the technology industry, working in several large organizations, including Citibank, Dell, General Motors and now as a Senior Vice President, Digital Engineering at Schneider Electric.

The session was very informative, where Mr. Raghu talked about his experience of Digital, and what lies ahead for businesses across the globe to adopt. It's not just working with data and automation, It's about re-examining the way businesses work. Where future managers have to focus more on delivering than only managing. And certainly, working towards adding value than just working on automation.

 

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What Accelerated Digitization Means for India

Mr. T R Ramachandran (or TRR as he is known) is the Group Country Manager for India & South Asia at Visa, the global leader in Payments. In this capacity, he is responsible for Visa' franchise and P&L and all of Visa's activities in these countries, including Business Strategy formulation, Product development and commercialization, Sales & Business Development, and partnerships and relationships with financial institutions, FinTech's, Merchants, Governments, and other Payment's ecosystem participants. He is also a member of the Visa Asia-Pacific Leadership Committee.

Key Learnings:

• The underlying forces driving digitization in payments in the Indian context
• The new exciting spaces in digital payments: open ecosystems &
• Trend of open banking & finance and its importance

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Daring to "BE WHAT YOU CAN BE"

Mr. Armstrong Pame is an IAS Officer, a TEDx speaker, popularly known as the "Miracle Man" of Manipur. He truly manifests the duties & responsibilities that come with the tag. The IAS Officer's first claim to fame was constructing a 100 km stretch of road been built in the state, joining two inaccessible villages Tusem and Tamenglag, in 2012. The arduous task of building the "People's road" was surprisingly completed without any help from the government and instead by the money raised through social media. In 2012, he was nominated for CNN-IBN Indian of the Year in the Public service category. Armstrong Pame is also the founding curator of the Global shapers Community, Imphal hub under the world economic forum. He is now declared as Young Global Leader of the class of 2018, as announced by the World Economic Forum.

Key Learnings:

• The meaning of leadership in an efficient perspective, expectations from society
• Importance of vision and its implications for a purposeful life
• Finding opportunities amid disappointments and difficulties

 

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Interactive Session

Mr. Vivek Nawathe is the current Head- PaaS of SKF Group, where he oversees transformation services and digital tech performance. He worked with leading companies McKinsey & Company, Reliance Industries Ltd., TRF Ltd., and others. He has ~15 years of experience with leading Energy, Chemicals, Manufacturing, EPC, and Mining organizations across India, Australia, SE Asia, Europe, and Latin American regions. He has been responsible for Performance transformations spanning operations, maintenance, supply chain, marketing, and Capex - including digital/Industry 4.0 aspects; Strategy development, implementation, and refinement; business development and product/service introduction to markets.

Mr. Vivek also co-founded a B2C technology-enabled start-up, one of the top 3 selected by the Government of India for National level start-up awards in 2018. Mr. Vivek is an alum of XLRI Jamshedpur of GMP batch of 2010-2011. He was nominated for the TATA Business Leadership Award - 2013.

Key Learnings:

• Strategies for the evolving digital transformation markets
• Critical skills for an MBA to bridge the gap between the current and future trends
• Challenges to overcome during a transition from a technical to a managerial role
• Expectations of the recent consulting firms from business leaders

 

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What it takes to thrive in a High Growth Start-Up

Ms. Sana Nayyar is an HR generalist with 9+ years of diverse experience across roles (Business Partnering, Learning, Recruitment, Operations) industries (Transport, Logistics, Corporate) and business types (large global organization, technology startup). She is currently heading the HRBP function for Urban Company, based out of Gurgaon.

She completed her B.Sc. Hons. in Business from the University of London, following which she went on to do a diploma in Economics and Masters in International Employment relations & Human Resource Management from the London School of Economics.

Key Learnings:

• Adaptability is absolutely critical to sustain oneself in today's dynamic world. Getting put up in an undefined space – a blank canvas, and being able to build things, processes, solve complex problems will define one's success.
• Bureaucracies in organizations are the roadblocks to sustainable growth, albeit necessary. Organizations should aim to limit these bureaucracies as much as possible. People and teams are not built by these artificial roadblocks.

 

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Interactive Session

Mr. Gautam was a Lead Talent & Learning Consultant, Certified Agile HR Coach, LEAN, and Six Sigma methodologist with expert insights into behavioural assessments, talent management solutions, skill development, and succession frameworks.

Passionate about building and implementing scalable talent & organizational development solutions anchored in innovative technology and user experience design, manifesting a productive cultural shift to deliver measurable business value.

With 18+ years of talent management & development experience, amidst in-depth expertise in building strategies for end-to-end delivery across global markets. Projects include global change initiatives across 14 countries on performance management, skill enhancement, leadership development, talent marketplace, diversity equity inclusion, and career journey for campus hires, along with designing long-term talent engagement strategy, uncovering behavioural and skills insights for talent landscaping, and implementing through Agile HR teams.

Key Learnings:

• How to Build Skills Everyday
• What is Ikigai
• How to be ready for unknown challenges and Power of building network
• Identifying own Advisory Board for Self development
• How to obtain 4C'S Cheer leader, CRITIC, COACH, CONNECTOR

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Interactive Session

Ishaan is currently working as Assistant Vice President at Citi and is part of APAC Campus Recruitment and University Relations Team. He holds PGDM - HRM from XLRI and has over 7 years of experience across industries. He is passionate about early careers and talent development. He is also a certified Project Management Professional from Project Management Institute, the world's leading association for the project, program and portfolio management profession.

Key Learnings:

• Banks are collaborating with FinTechs to accelerate digital transformation and stay ahead of the curve. This in turn is generating various employment opportunities in the BFSI space
• Customer centricity, cognitive proficiency, and people management lie at the heart of a successful career in the BFSI sector

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Transformational Trends Impacting Mobility

Kaushik Madhavan is currently working as Vice President-Mobility with Frost & Sullivan, managing the Automotive & Transportation business unit for the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

He has previously worked with Nissan Motor India Pvt. Ltd. in Product Planning. Worked with a cross-functional team in charting out the passenger vehicle product/technology roadmap for Nissan and Datsun in India. He specializes in Competitive benchmarking, Market entry strategies, Product portfolio, Market expansion strategies and Emerging technology evaluation.

Key Learnings:

• Transformation of product based automotive market to a more service-oriented mobility market.
• The Four future Scenarios of Mobility.
  • Multimodality of Mobility
  • Platformization of Transport
  • Technology singularity in Mobility
  • Transcendental Mobility
• Projected growth of Indian economy from the shared mobility model augmented by aspirational Indian mindset.

 

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Advancing in the new normal – a leadership perspective

Mr. Raghavan is a business leader with more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, key accounts, and strategic planning across Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific. He is also a Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma. He has been with 3M for more than 24 years, currently as Director for their Commercial Solutions Division (CSD) in their second largest region, Asia. Prior to 3M, he worked at BASF, a German multinational.

Aside from his core functions, Manohar is also passionate about mentoring young leaders.

Key Learnings:

• Booming e-commerce, global brand trends entering Asia, mergers and JV's.
• There are six styles of leadership including, coaching, commanding, visionary, pacesetting, democrazt, and affiliative.
• Prioritization always starts with setting right priorities, focused on creating values for the shareholders.

 

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Digital Transformation in the Automotive Industry

Mr. Mahesh is the current Vice President – Human Resources of Mercedes-Benz Research & Development India Pvt. Ltd. (MBRDI). With an overall experience of nearly 24 years in Human Resources, Mr. Mahesh is a versatile leader with deep expertise in Human Resource Management, Leadership Development, Cultural Transformation, Change Management, and Digital Transformation in HR.
He has been handling the entire HR gamut, and he has built up a diverse organization in terms of talent acquisition and development in the last couple of years. He has transformed the HR function focusing on ‘customer dedication’ and ‘digitalization’ which has made MBRDI the largest R&D unit of Daimler AG outside Germany.
Mr. Mahesh studied Personnel Management at the Institute of Business Management & Research, Pune, and received his Master’s degree in Personnel Management from the University of Pune

Key Learnings:

• Digitally enabling the automotive sector is the new hot trend.
• The transitional phases of the automotive sector over the years.

 

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Strategy and Digitalization

Mr. Subramanian currently leads strategy for the Cummins group in India.

Previously, he held the role of strategy & digitalization for the Distribution systems business of Siemens India. In his 6+ years at McKinsey and Siemens Management consulting, Subramanian has significant experience in spearheading transformation programs and developing business and corporate strategies for players across sectors (e.g., Logistics, Cement, Oil & Gas, Conglomerates, Engineering) and across functions primarily in Strategy, Operations, and Sales & marketing.
Subramanian has several national and international papers and articles in Operations and Strategy to his credit.

Key Learnings:

• The major trends driving the industry like climate change actions, digitalization.
• Importance of the VUCA world and resiliency
• Emerging start-up environment for newer technologies

 

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International Expansion @ OYO

Mayank Singh delivered the session "International Expansion @ OYO" in the XLRI Industry Expert Connect Series on 9th February 2022,
Mayank Singh, the Director - Merchant Product at OYO, has led expansion in 6 countries across the Americas and South-East Asia. An ISB alumnus, he has 9+ years of experience in fast-paced growth startups and consulting. Before OYO, he worked at Deloitte and a startup called Indix.
He loves to play basketball in his free time and is a wannabe coffee aficionado.

Key Learnings:

• Tactics the company followed to sail through the expansion challenges, including adopting the new technology specific to the latest market requirements, hiring local talent and imparting OYO culture to them, building direct demand channels from scratch, battling competition and copycats and new innovative deals for different markets.
• Importance of the prelaunch activities required for a successful market entry, including Market research, compliance and legal, hiring, Tech setup, and operational setup with a 100-day prelaunch plan.
• Approach to stabilize & scale the operations post-launch – Market sizing and city prioritization and deep dive to establish hotel chains and plan for on the groundwork including recruitment, marketing and communications and deploying them.

 

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Managing the Millennials

Mr. P Senthil is an accomplished HR Leader, He has straddled various sectors: FMCG, Engineering, Hospitality, Oil and Gas,Metals and Minerals in his career spanning 29 years. His contributions have been significantly in the areas of culture building, Design of Talent Management systems, Leadership Development & Assessment Centres, creating a high performance work culture, Strategic HR aligned to the Business goals, setting up HR systems in start-ups and Employee engagement practices.
Mr. Senthil brings fresh thinking to any context and believes that every context is unique. He therefore adds custom-fit Value to People challenges and issues. A keen learner armed with a sharp grasping ability connects, relates, and gets to the root of any issue. He is known to hit the 'Bulls eye 'while coming up with solutions.
Mr. Senthil's last two corporate roles were as CHRO at Tata Steel and Director-HR at Cairn Energy. He led HR at MNCs and Indian conglomerates straddling across sectors before these. As a comprehensive HR Leader, he has led various OD initiatives, M&A integrations, and Leadership development initiatives. An accredited Coach from CFI, he has coached the top CXOs in both the Public and Private sectors.
The session was very insightful, where Mr. Senthil talked about his incredible experience and how one should adapt to the changing leadership qualities from the perspective of Millennials. The session allowed the students to interact and get their queries answered.

Key Learnings:

• How one should work on creating a strong company culture
• How offering a work – life Balance environment creates a constructive impact on performance of the employee.
• How correct leadership and guidance can enhance employees professionally.
• How one can leverage the cutting edge technologies to increase efficiency.

 

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Demystifying Product Management in Software World

Samarth Upponi delivered the session "Demistifying the Produtct Management in the software world" in the XLRI Industry Expert Connect Series on 15th February 2022,
Samarth Upponi, Head of Product & Engineering in the E-commerce Marketplace at Rakuten has over 15 years of experience in the industry, he has pursued his mba form IIM Bangalore and holds computer science engineering degree from RV college of Engineering Banglaore. He has vast product experience in the companies like Cisco and Edulistic.
He is an avid book reader and loves sports.

Key Learnings:

• A few Hard skills are required to get in product management, such as knowledge of UI/UX and understanding of the Business model and web development. Still, soft skills are critical in order to excel as a product manager, like influencing without authority, ability to take the initiative and articulate communication.
• Difference between a good product and a bad product, the idea of the origination of the product can come from any department of the company and sometimes the consumer.
• There are three elements involved, namely Input, Output, and Impact. We need to understand that Input should be minimized, and at the same time, output and the impact should be maximized with the limited resource available.
• A Product manager should have an accurate understanding of the requirement since there are differentiated understandings of the requirement within the various departments.
• The impact of a user story in creating a product is quite high and plays an important role in order to define the customer journey path.

 

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Skill Set for Future Finance Leaders

Mr. Anil Suneja comes with over 16 years of experience. He has previously worked in Deloitte before joining Baxter International, where he has worked for nearly 15 years. In Baxter, he has donned various hats including that of Finance Manager, Finance Controller of Philiphines and Thaliand Region, Finance Head of India Region, and currently as the Director of Finance for Indian and South East Asian Region. In his current role, Mr Suneja is handling commercial, captive and shares services including IT (GDCI) and R&D with more than $125M overall business size across locations.
He has been felicitated with Global Finance Leadership Award multiple time and various other awards at regional and country level.

Key Learnings:

• Future of finance is inevitably going to be different than it is today and so are the required skill sets for finance professionals to be “relevant leaders”
• Core finance skill sets must match the changing business scenario to drive long term value with ease of doing operations
• Agile mindset in finance is transformational for the next generation of finance leaders.

 

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Financial Inclusion- Innovations and Storytelling

Ms. Debolina is the Director, Audit at Grant Thornton LLP. She has over 14+ years of experience in Statutory Audits in US GAAP, IFRS, and IGAAP. She joined the INDUS office in 2014 and has worked on various public and private companies across industries, specializing in the CIP industry, Technology audits. Before joining Grant Thornton, she was associated with KPMG and EY in a client-facing Audit services role in the India offices, handling the audits of various listed clients covering CIP and software companies.
Ms. Debolina has expertise in the CIP, Technology, Software Real Estate, NFP sectors.
She is an MS in Finance, MSc in Economics from St. Xavier's University, and a CA & a CS from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and Institute of Company Secretaries of India.

Key Learnings:

• The need of financial inclusion in today’s social setup – 6 key digital ways
• The incorporation of data analytics and automation in financial services
• The emerging trend of innovation and how it is changing the face of audit services

 

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Understanding Business as a Leader

Mr. Arnab is a passionate finance professional with 23 years of expertise in Financial Reporting, Audit and Accounting Advisory and Financial Risk Management, driven by hunger for knowledge and diversity in the world. He has been associated with Macquarie since 2013 and is currently a part of the Macquarie India leadership team for strategic initiatives. He has led the Corporate reporting vertical as Associate Director at Macquarie group.
Mr. Arnab started his career with PWC in India in 1998 and has been associated with auditing and consulting large corporates like SAIL, NALCO, Maruti, CLP India, Hutchison India, Airtel group, HCL Technologies, Ballarpur Group, Essent N.V, KPN N.V., Schlumberger Finance and many more.
She is an MS in Finance, M.Sc. in Economics from St. Xavier's University, and a CA & a CS from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and Institute of Company Secretaries of India.

Key Learnings:

• Valuing People Over Profit. Social responsibility is becoming more and more important for a company
• Risk planning involves identifying the most important risk events in advance, prioritizing them, and developing the appropriate risk response plans.
• The Great Resignation is a phenomenon that describes record numbers of people leaving their jobs after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. Companies now have to navigate the ripple effects of the pandemic and re-evaluate how to retain talent.

 

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Changing Business Landscape and Our Preparedness

Mr. Praveen Kamath K delivered the session "Changing Business Landscape and Our Preparedness" in the XLRI Industry Expert Connect Series on 19th March 2022.
He has over 25 years of strategic HR & leadership experience working in large scale Manufacturing, IT & ITES organizations with a proven track record of leading global leadership teams, processes & talent management practices.
In the last 15yrs, he has been associated with Wipro Limited, managing multiple roles including Global Leader for Talent Acquisition; Global Leader for Training & Development; Global HR Business Partner & HR Strategic Initiative Leader across businesses in the US, Europe & Rest of Asia.

Key Learnings:

• Sustainable Employability is where the employees and employers are trying to reach. It involves the combinational development of resilience, engagement, talent development, physical and mental health.
• Millennial Employees are radically different from the previous generation. There is a need to balance the workforce transformation and project challenges. To maintain this balance, employees should
  1. Enhance the new skills and increase professional network
  2. Broaden knowledge of different functional areas.
  In a similar manner, employers should
  a. Develop leaders through new roles and challenges
  b. Appreciate cultural diversity and inclusion in the workplace
  

 

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A Responsive “Citizen Centric” Public Administration is the key to success of modern civil society

Ms. Nidhi Khare, presently Additional Secretary in Department of Consumer Affairs is an IAS officer of 1992 batch from Jharkhand Cadre.
She has held several important administrative posts such as Administrator, Patna Municipal Corporation and Collector of Jamshedpur, Madhubani, and Dumka districts. She has worked in the sectors of Education, Labour, Health, Disability, Environment and Finance.
About 20 years ago, she worked in the sector of Sanitation and several panchayats of Jamshedpur became the first in Jharkhand, to receive Nirmal Gram Puraskar for being Open Defecation free.
In Government of India, Presently as AS in Department of Consumer Affairs, she has been instrumental in notifying Protection of Consumer Rights Act and drafting 18 Rules and Regulations including those on E-commerce, Direct selling etc. She is the first Chief Commissioner of Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA).
Earlier, she has served as Joint Secretary in MHA, Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Climate change and Ministry of Expenditure.
She has travelled extensively across the world to places like USA, Netherlands, France, Turkey, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea and Japan.
She is a trained classical Hindustani vocalist and loves to spend her time reading extensively on diverse subjects like Anthropology, Economics and History. She has a keen interest in arts and has mentored social activists engaged in public service.

Key Learnings:

• The difference between the granular and accurate targeting use of technology.
• The seven core design principles across the goals to reach the vision.
• Single window system for administrative approvals, tracking and updation.
• Grievance’s redressal.

 

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Lifelong Learning

Ramachandran is a Principal Consultant in the thought leadership team in Infosys – the Knowledge Institute, or IKI.
He is the lead for Manufacturing and Engineering domains. Ram has more than 24 years of experience in the digitization for industrial applications. His topics of interest are Industry 4.0, Sustainability, Servitization and Future of work.
He is a regular blogger and speaker on these topics in multiple channels. He has co-authored a book titled “Neoskilling for Digital Transformation” along with Prof. L. Prasad, IIM Bangalore, published by Wiley India. He is a mechanical engineer with a Masters in Production Engineering and his Executive MBA - PGPEM from IIM Bangalore.

Key Learnings:

• Reskilling – to keep up with the rate of change
• Blended learning is the future of education
• Combination of soft and hard skills to make an impact in today’s businesses
• Technology and the role of automation is pivotal

 

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Diversity & Inclusion

Ms. Sharmila is a Senior Talent Management professional with in-depth experience in the entire gamut of People programs and processes. She has extensive exposure to managing change during acquisitions and mergers, building capabilities and talent during high growth phases, executing appropriate HR interventions, outplacement, and transition management. She has been the Head of HR for the Americas region for Virtusa for the last 18 years. She is Responsible for managing People processes for one of the company's fastest-growing regions.
The session started with the current statistics and the priorities the organization these days are setting to achieve their Diversity and Inclusion goals. The speaker also pointed out why diversity and inclusion is imperative for an organization and how diverse talent together with diverse perspective helps in achieving culture of inclusion.

Key Learnings:

• Achieving Diversity and inclusion goals are not only limited to gender and how Virtusa is an equal opportunity employer with zero bias with objective to create a better experience for their employees and stake holders.
• She also talked about how Diversity and Inclusion is an integral part of Virtusa’s OGSM- Objective, Goals, Strategy and Measures and how they have progressed on achieving D and I goals as it is one of its key objective.
• About the recently developed programs to nurture future leaders of certain section of organizations. Also some specific to women employees to enable leaders leverage personal and team’s motivational drivers, decision making and interaction patterns to enhance organizational efficiency.
• How the various initiatives at Virtusa helps in building stronger organization wide collaboration to enable expand their boundaries and support each other in enhancing individual and collective performance.

 

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AI in Business : Challenges & Opportunities

Tathagat Varma is the Vice President of Strategy & Operations at Walmart Global Tech India. Tathagat is a veteran software executive, product leader, technology strategist and innovation evangelist with over three decades experience building product and tech organizations with American, European and Chinese Fortune 1-500 companies and Silicon Valley unicorns.
He is currently heading ‘Technology Strategy and Business Operations’ at Walmart Global Tech India. A Postgrad in Computer Science & XLRI alum (PGCHRM), Tathagat is currently pursuing PhD in AI/Business from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Key Learnings:

• Economic impact of Artificial Intelligence is large and also people's jobs will be majorly impacted by it however there is a low ROI and high failure rate associated with Artificial Intelligence projects. So we as Managers will have to critically evaluate the AI projects.
• There are many business benefits of Artificial Intelligence but there are many challenges such as getting the right data for training and also avoiding any bias towards any specific community, race, or gender.

 

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Valuation: Misconceptions and Challenges

Prof. Aswath Damodaran is a legend in the field of corporate finance and valuation, and the author of the most widely used textbooks in B-schools across India. He is the Kerschner Family Chair in Finance Education, and the Professor of Finance at NYU Stern School of Business. He has done more than almost anyone in establishing valuation as a separate field of study, and is widely acknowledged to be one of the finest intellectual minds in the world.

Key Learnings

Prof. Damodaran, in a freewheeling discussion, touched upon the following

• How valuation is neither an art nor a science, but a craft
• The nuances of the difference between valuation and pricing
• The bias and misconceptions that arise in the world of valuation
• The influence of disruption on valuation

 

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Creative Leadership - Collaborative Governance

Dr. Kiran Bedi has been India's first and highest woman ranking officer having joined the Indian Police Service in 1972. Her expertise includes more than four decades of Public Administration, Creative and Reformative Policing and Prison Management. She is currently serving as the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry. Dr.Kiran Bedi shared her insights during the leadership talk on Creative Leadership - Collaborative Governance.

Key Learnings

The management students of the day must understand how COVID-19 as a challenge was handled by Human Resource Management in organizations. It is a class case study by itself in risk management, planning, and resource deployment.

The three key lessons for management students are UHF, which stands for Uncertainty, Health and Family.

COVID 19 has taught us how significant UHF is in our daily lives.

• Preparing for uncertainty
• Valuing health (over wealth)
• Value of Family and Friends

 

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Case Problems: The Structured Approach To Consulting

Mr. Marc Cosentino, global case interview preparation expert and author of Case in Point, in an interactive session with the students of PGDM(GM) discussed the need for resilience and structured problem-solving both in consulting and in the real world. He answered queries on the need for entering the consulting world with prior experience and also shared his thoughts on how the consulting world is adapting to the new global reality. He encouraged a discussion on the importance of not just frameworks, but of the structured mindset. The session was organised by XLRI's PGDM(GM) 2020-21 batch, led by Kautilya Consult Club.

Key Learnings

The foundation of case-solving lies not in the solution, but in the method; knowing the right approach and having the right mindset is the key to good business case solving.

 

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Customer Success - The What, How, Why and Why Now

Mr Santosh Sahoo, Customer Success, Sr. Director at MuleSoft, shared highlights of his professional journey with the students of PGDM (GM) at XLRI on 27 September, 2020. Mr Sahoo has over 17 years of diverse experience across Account Management, Customer Success, Strategy, Program Management and Delivery. Having worked extensively in eCommerce, Advanced Analytics, Cloud technologies, he has a proven track record of beating revenue and profitability targets by building trusted relationships with CXOs/VP suite.

In his session he gave an overview of the industry and the growth opportunities.

Key Learnings

• Customer success is a trend, and it is accelerating
• The value of customers and the central focus on them
• Outcomes are critical to the success of customer service plans
• Desired outcomes and exceptional experience result in Customer Success

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Musings on Surviving and Thriving in the Corporate Jungle

Mr Gautam Khanna, Vice President and Global Head of the Modernisation Practice at Infosys, shared his mantra on how to survive in the challenging corporate world. Mr Khanna has over 22 years of experience in IT services delivery, program management and sales. He covered a wide range of topics like importance of failures, workplace politics and how to curb counterproductive work behaviour.

Key Learnings

• No failure is catastrophic if you handle it well
• If you have a part in your team's success, you have a role in their inability to succeed also
• Conflicts are part and parcel of organizations, focus on positive disruptions

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The New Leadership Paradigm in Light of COVID

Mr Sanjay Banerjee, Director at SS Supply Chain Solutions, is an experienced professional with an enriching journey in Marketing Management, Business Planning, Medical Devices, Sales, and Biotechnology. During the leadership talk, he shared with the students various trends in multiple industries, especially healthcare, which helped students to understand company strategies that are continually evolving with changing environments. A pandemic situation like COVID-19 assesses the preparedness of an organization and the leadership acumen of its leaders.

Key Learnings

• Empathy goes a long way when leading an organization
• Being proactive and prepared goes a long way in crises
• There are learnings all around us in the leaders leading the world and organizations today we need to absorb

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Climate Change and Role in Consulting

Mr Sandeep Kumar Mohanty, Director in PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. in the advisory line of service, has over 10 years of experience in management consulting. He has advised corporates, investors, in diverse geographies on investments, across energy and infrastructure landscape. Mr Mohanty kickstarted the leadership talk by discussing the day-to-day dealings of a management consultant. He also shared insights into climate change - a topic that he considers very close to his heart. He emphasised on the importance of staying informed about climate change and the emerging opportunities.

Key Learnings

• A typical day in the life of a management consultant.
• Human impact on the environment (I) is a function of population size (P), per capita consumption (C), and technology used to produce what is consumed (T).
• Green Finance: Green Bonds that are specifically earmarked to raise money for climate and environmental projects.

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Value-based Leadership and Negotiations

Vice Admiral Jaywant Korde PVSM, AVSM, VSM is a veteran of the Indian Navy and has served the nation for over 40 years and retired as the Chief of Logistics for the Indian Navy. He is a keen sportsman with exceptional educational qualifications, and the recipient of three presidential medals the Param Vishist Seva Medal, Ati Vishist Seva Medal and the Vishist Seva Medal.

In his talk he spoke about his humble beginnings and his journey to top leadership position in the Indian Navy. He also discussed value-based leadership and its importance in these difficult times, people being the most critical assets and the importance of influence for a leader. He also spoke at length about negotiation skills, stages of negotiation, elements of negotiation and practical tips for conducting negotiation. He shared a few anecdotes where he had applied negotiations skills and ‘walked the talk.'

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Human Resource Management in FMCG

Mr Jaswanth Sharanarthy is the Head of Learning, Talent & Organizational design at Cavinkare with over 13 years of work experience in Human resources, Learning and development and Talent Acquisition. He addressed the students on the topic Human Resource Management in FMCGs.

The Key takeaways were

• Importance of being People-centric
• Importance of staying ahead of technology disruptions
• Always keep learning

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Building Personal Value Proposition

Ms Zulekha, Head HR, Times Business Solutions, Times Internet addressed the students on the topic Building Personal Value Proposition. She emphasized on understanding and playing to the personal strengths and weaknesses. "One must do a stock check of what is available and what is feasible," she stressed. Further, she provided valuable insight into personal branding and differentiation. She stressed on #doingourbit no matter how the circumstances played out. In the informative session with Zulekha, who is also a GMP alumna, the students had a lively interaction.

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Career Choices and Subjects for Leveraging your MBA

Mr Sujoy Mitra, Technology Head at HomeTown, the retail chain of Praxis Home Retail Ltd, addressed the students on the topic Career Choices and Subjects for Leveraging your MBA. Coming from a vast experience of more than 18 years of building IT strategy in retail and IT services, Mr Mitra broke down the pros and cons of the entire spectrum of roles related to the IT domain. He stressed heavily on how robust an MBA curriculum is for sustainable growth. He highlighted the importance of topics such as NPV, cash flow, hypothesis testing, cluster analysis, project management and many more and also he suggested reading How to Measure Anything by Dr Douglas Hubbard. Mr Mitra is a 2007 batch alumnus.

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ABC of Self Check-In

Mr Deepak A Deshpande, Vice-President, Tata Business Excellence Group at Tata Sons, interacted with the students on the topic ABC of Self Check-In. Mr Deshpande, who has more than 27 years of industry experience in Human Resource and Business Excellence, tapped into how the students are feeling in this pandemic situation through a live co-creation canvass. He used Cynefin framework to classify those feelings into complex, complicated, chaotic and straightforward. The interactive session helped the students assess their own thoughts and feelings. The students also shared their personal emotions and experiences during the session.

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Top Five Skills Product Managers Need to be Successful in Today's VUCA world

Mr Ram Padmanabha, Vice President, Product Management at Publicis Sapient, shared his thoughts on the topic Top Five Skills Product Managers Need to be Successful in Today's VUCA World. Being a product manager himself, Mr Padmanabha gracefully guided the batch on dealing with VUCA situations as a product manager. He advised countering volatility with 2x speed thinking, uncertainty with differentiation, complexity with Cynefin Framework and ambiguity with agility. He also discussed the five must-have skills for a product manager:

• Customer Focus
• The Business Acumen
• Understanding of the Tool Capabilities
• The Core Product Development Craft
• And the magic ingredient: Skillful Negotiation and Collaboration

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Tête-A-Tête on Scaling Sustainably: Creating a Successful Startup

Mr Amey Mashelkar is the Head at JioGenNext, RIL and Jio Startup Mentoring Programme. He has run his own startup and is also a strategic angel investor in seed-stage startups. Mashelkar shared anecdotes from his professional journey of mentoring over 150 technology startups in their go-to-market, business model, commercial partnerships with Reliance, fundraising and facilitating startup acquisitions for Jio. He tried to inspire the students by citing examples of start-up ventures and their journey to success. He also encouraged the general management batch to present their business ideas.

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Leadership Lessons- an Interactive Session

Mr Raj Narayan is the Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Titan Industries Ltd. He is an international HR professional with over 25 years of experience as head of HR and member of the management team in different organisations. He is an esteemed alumni of XLRI Jamshedpur of batch 1982-84.

He pulled anecdotes from his professional journey as a leader and how one needs to make hard decisions with kindness. He narrated the incidents of crisis management, team management and conflict resolution in his career and how to address these challenges.

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The Importance of Nimble Thinking: An Interactive, Multi-Case Study Approach

Mr Neeraj Goel is the Chief Finance Officer at Jaquar & Company for Global Operations - Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. He has 23 years of experience in manufacturing, trading and servicing sectors while working with global, Indian, MNC and Global Fortune 500 companies. He addressed the GM batch by giving case studies for Real-life Leadership Challenges in the corporate world in various domains - Human Resources, Marketing, Financial Management - and encouraging students to brainstorm solutions.

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Innovation Management and Design Thinking

Mr Sumant Sood is the Head of Innovation, Titan Company Ltd with over 30 years of experience and specialisation in Innovation Management, Design Thinking, Sustainability, Business Excellence, Corporate Communication, Customer Experience.

He addressed the GM batch by giving examples, stories and case studies for interweaving innovation into strategy, design thinking, business acumen. He emphasised on using creativity for business excellence, on enhancing the culture of innovation, on enhancing innovation knowledge and on working with businesses to achieve high growth rates.

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Industry Expectations from HR perspective

Mr Chandrasekhar Mukherjee is the Senior President of Human Resources at Bhilosa Group and was previously the Chief Human Resource Officer at Magic Bus India Foundation. He shared his experience of working in both Greenfield and Brownfield projects and assignments, including working in different work cultures like MNC, Indian Companies and Government of India. He also talked about his experiences of working in different sectors such as technology, FMCG, media, BFSI, chemical, manufacturing and public sector and his learnings from international assignments in Europe, Malaysia and Nepal.

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Mindfulness and Well-being in our Lives

Ms Ruchika Sikri is the Head of Wellbeing Learning Programs and Strategy at Google (California, USA). She has over 10 years of experience at Google and is equipped with a wide range of expertise in People Operations. She addressed the GM batch on subjects like Leadership Development Program Design and Management, Talent Management, Succession Planning, HR People Program Management, Performance and Compensation Planning, Mindfulness, Yoga, Emotional Intelligence and Mental health.

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Intelligent Marketing

Mr Dhaval Thanki, Director - Solutions Business, Cartesian Consulting, has 16 years of experience in the digital, CRM, analytics space and is skilled in Strategy, Business Development, Product Management, Client Servicing, Digital Marketing, Analytics, Retention Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Precision Marketing & Product Marketing. He shared his ideas on how to build the concept of Intelligent Marketing from scratch. Audience have gained insights of systems that tracks marketing efforts/patterns and its positive effects on sales.

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Corporate - Campus - Corporate: Making the most out of the loop

Mr Saurabh Nigam, Vice President, Human Capital at Omidyar Network India. He is a Post Graduate Diploma holder in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations (PM&IR) from XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur, India. He is also the only Indian who holds the SPHR, GPHR, and HRMP certifications from SHRM, USA simultaneously, and in the first 10 globally. Mr Saurabh has been recognized as one of the Top 25 Future HR Leaders of the Country by People Matters & DDI International and is a regular speaker on Compensation & Benefits, Talent Management, and Managing Gen Y. He addressed the GM batch on negotiable and the non negotiable values we work with, Corporate Culture and identifying the right mentors. He shared the ways to keep business simple if founders do not lose sight of the problem, it means the organisation is going in the right direction.

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Healthcare Industry - How Information Technology is shaping the space

Mr. DK Venkatesh, Global Delivery Head - HLS (Healthcare and Life Sciences) at Virtusa. He is a Senior Global Technology Delivery Head with close to 30 years of career span, experienced in delivering Digital and Cloud Transformation services to multiple Fortune 500 clients across various industries including Communication, Hi-Tech, Media & Entertainment, Utilities, Chemical, Oil & Gas, Healthcare, Lifesciences and Insurance. He addressed the GM batch on "Healthcare Industry: How Information Technology is Shaping the Space". He explained about the healthcare providers expand into new markets and content with evolving state and federal regulations around access to care, streamlining the contracting process is critical. Transformation of claim processing and unleash productivity with Pega SCE and Cloud Migration.

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Future of Work

Mr. Satish Rajarathnam, Sr. Vice President & Head - Strategic Resourcing at Mphasis. He is associated with several industry groups and associations such as SHRM, Agile Leadership, LEGO serious Play, PCMM, Six Sigma, ISABs India and NFNLP, among others from which he has received certifications marking him a qualified practitioner. He interacted with the students and divulge into the varying aspects of ‘Future of Work, Workplace and Workforce.' He shared his insights on how the industry is going to transform and the dynamism that students will experience when they embark on their career.

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Product Speaks - Variety & Veracity of Product Management

Mr. Sumit Garg, Product Manager, Microsoft. Technology enthusiast and is also an XLRI PGDM(GM) 2012 alumnus. Before joining Microsoft, he has worked with IBM, EdgeVerve, Oracle and Amazon.

In his session he gave an overview of the Product Management Role:

Key Learnings

• Business - Business Management Acumen with exposure/ flexibility to work across multiple functions
• Market - Market Understanding. Able to visualise market potential. Marketing and Sales aspect for a product space
• Product Management - Product Management expertise. Road mapping, Prioritisation, Market Research, Strategy.
• Domain - Understand the problem and gaps for the domain/ industry/ practice in questions
• Technical - Exposure to technical aspects, technology behind a product User
• Software Development Collaboration - Agile/ Scrum Product Owner expertise
• Experience - User Design and Experience element

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Career Conversation

Mr. Manoj Jindal, VP- Supply Chain Management, Himachal Futuristic Communication Limited. He has over 17 Years of professional experience He is an Electronics Engineer with a double MBA from XLRI (Jamshedpur, India) and Cranfield School of Management (London, UK). He has expertise in procurement, e-auction, cost reduction, business strategy, strategic sourcing, working capital optimization, negotiations, competitive bidding, financial Analysis & contract management.

He addressed the GM batch and gave his valuable insights on :

• How to leverage GMP for future career
• Career landscape in Supply Chain Management vis Covid 19
• Career growth trajectory
• Challenges in supply chain
• Interview Preparation advice

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The Race to Forty: Insights on Career Planning

Mr Hetal is a dynamic and accomplished business leader with 21+ years in the tech industry. He has worked in Senior Management role across Asia for Wipro, Microsoft, LinkedIn and Intel.

Mr Hetal is a Startup Evangelist and prominent Angel Investor with a portfolio of 25+ with start-ups across different segments of Business, Enterprise and Consumer. He is a ' Mentor of Change ' for Niti Ayog and mentors school children on Innovation programs. Walking the GM students through his journey, he gave valuable insights into what differentiates start-up ecosystems from that of enterprises and what can management graduates understand, evaluate, and seize the opportunities in both the spaces.

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Emotional Intelligence-Business Tool

Dr Geetraj is a researcher & a PhD holder from University of Oxford (UK), a certified Master Coach, a psychologist, an MBA in HR, and a certified Trainer in various modules. He has worked and trained under world's best Trainers and Master Coaches such as Eric Berne's Institute, Myers Briggs (MBTi), Stephen Covey (7 Habits), John Maxwell to name a few.He currently Heads the HR & Organization Development Team at Mount Meru Group, Tanzania.

He addressed the GM batch and gave his valuable insights on Characteristics of Emotional Intelligence: Self-awareness, Self-regulation, Motivation, Empathy, Social Skills and the ways to improve the Emotional Intelligence.

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Growth and Stability in Corporate Life

Swami Samarpanananda, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute, Belur Math, Kolkata, shared insights on the topic "Growth and Stability in Corporate Life'. Swamiji covered many important topics during his lecture, for instance, the importance of detachment in life. Swamiji explained to the students that they must learn to look at stress in a new way. "Stress is a reality in the jobs you aspire to, but you are going to be compensated well exactly because you have the capability to handle such positions. It's a package deal" he said. Also, he shared his thoughts on how to develop and channelize their spiritual and mental energies to achieve excellence in the field of business management.

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Leadership Lesson series

Dr. Anil Kumar Misra, Chief Human Resource Officer, Magicbricks, is a Human Resources leader with over 22 years if experience across diverse industries, from Manufacturing to Hospitality, IT, E-commerce. Dr. Misra began the session by addressing the challenges faced due to the current challenges like the surge in job cuts, dip in the compensation, possible hiring freeze, appraisals put on hold and how many organizations are finding it difficult to sustain because of flawed government norms and evident sub problems like migrant labour movement. Dr. Misra also elucidated some goodness from the COVID-19 STOP. Where S is for Social Distancing, for both companies and individual. T for travel time reduction (research says that a person spends on an average 36% of his/her time, commuting to office and back. Thus, this has a huge impact on the productivity). O for office occupancy saving as organisations will minimise fixed costs of office rentals. Lastly, P for pollution and health hazards, a decrease in which is a boon for the society. Also, he shared the ways remain relevant in VUCA world through embracing change, believing in the ‘Reverse Mentoring process’ and learning new technologies.

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Airline Scheduling Process

Mr. Ankur Garg, Chief Commercial Officer, Air Asia India. During the interactive session, he gave a broader outlook about in-house Reservation Management System and analytical models, pricing strategy, organization restructuring and quality talent induction, and re-engineering of business processes. Also, he shared his deep insights about revenue ownership, pricing strategy, corporate planning, M&A, restructuring, operations improvement, cost optimization and analytics.

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Date with Artificial Intelligence

Mr Deepak Mishra, Director - Customer Insight & Analytics, Refinitiv. Mr Deepak is an Analytics professional with 13+ years of experience in developing and applying AI/Machine Learning algorithms for Marketing, Customer Insight & Credit Risk analytics. He shared his insights on developing Models and Strategies using Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning algorithms to generate actionable insights. Also, shared his concepts to Design and Build AI solutions for business to enhance customer experience followed by retention and growth.

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Credit Risk Analytics - Scorecards and Managerial Credit Decision Making

Mr Ranjeet Singh Rawat, Manager- Decision Analytics, Navi. Technology enthusiast and is also an XLRI PGDM(GM) 2013-14 alumnus. He has an extensive Credit Risk & Customer analytics knowledge and comes with diverse work experience in Analytics, Research and Computer systems. He has shared his thoughts on Underwriting model & Credit decisioning i.e. amount and interest rate strategy, Portfolio deep dive, segmentation, risk actions, scrub analysis, recommendations and Application & Behavioural Scorecard consumption, calibration, validation and Risk strategy.

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Atmanirbhar Bharat: Homegrown talent in drug manufacturing and Learnings from the Pharma sector

Mr Sameer Nagarajan, Global President, Human Resources at Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited. Mr Sameer is an esteemed alumnus of the XLRI HRM batch of 1988. His expertise areas include leadership development and talent management, strategic business partnering to deliver organisational outcomes. He is driven by a passion for people and performance. During the session he shared his thoughts on rapid technological advancements which are constantly changing the way pharma companies operate, deliver services and engage their workforce. He shared his deep insights on how the evolving pharma business processes have made it necessary for HR leaders in the pharma sector to drive a change in their people management practices and his talent management learnings from pharma sector.

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New Era of Innovation - Intelligent Automation & Advanced Analytics

Mr. Vartul Mittal who is a leading Technology & Innovation Specialist and a seasoned Digital Transformation & Automation leader. He has 14+ years of strong Global Business Transformation experience in Management Consulting and with Global Capability Centres. During his session, he gave a broader outlook about Intelligent Automation which has been changing the nature of work for over a decade. He shared his insights about how It has replaced labour intensive tasks, undertaken repetitive ones, escalated the speed of production and generated new streams of work. He has also shared his experience about strategies & challenges in enterprise wide adoption of Automation - crossing over from RPA to RPA + Cognitive , identifying the right operating model & establishing governance, Leadership & talent development, orchestrating stakeholders and board level endorsement.

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Application of Data Science in Supply Chain Analytics

Mr. Debasish Mishra, Data Scientist - Amazon Internet Service and an esteemed alumnus of the XLRI PGDM(GM) batch of 13-14. He has vast experience in Data Science, Machine learning, DeepLearning experience in supply chain retail, manufacturing and general insurance business. He shared his thoughts on the impact of Data Science on Supply Chain Functions. He mentioned that Data-powered decisions can help supply chain businesses set the standard for operational success. Also, the Fast digitisation and ready availability of data has provided the path for big data analytics in the supply chain industry.

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Quality Management & Design Thinking in B2B Markets

Mr. Ashok Ramachandran, CEO and President - Schindler India & Asia Pacific. An enthralled crowd heard Mr. Ramachandran trace his own journey from Chennai to Australia, then to Vietnam and Malaysia, as he rose through the ranks as a capable leader, inspiring his peers with his indomitable will. In a free-flowing and interactive session, Mr. Ramachandran spoke at length about the qualities inherent in a good leader, the importance of people skills, and the uncompromising focus on consistency in quality.

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Workforce Entrepreneurship

Mr Pankaj Bansal is the Co-founder and CEO at People Strong. He has been on the founding team of Altran's BPO division and is on the board of companies like Work10M, Sunstone zEduversity, Empower foundation. He is also the founder of a trust YOUinYOU for empowering young minds. He addressed the students on the topic Workforce Entrepreneurship and shared anecdotes from his professional journey.

The key takeaways from the talk were

• Believe that your work is a reward and find out the "WHY" that drives you and inspires you
• Importance of emotional equity and positivity
• Ownership and accountability empowers an employee driving them to excellence
• One value that always comes handy: be a peopleist

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Some Sizes Fit All

Mr Akhil Gupta is the Vice Chairman of Bharti Enterprises and Executive Chairman of Bharti Infratel Ltd. He has played a pivotal role in Bharti's phenomenal growth in the telecommunication services sector and also raised billions of dollars through project finance for the Group.

Mr Gupta narrated his life stories, challenges and leadership dilemmas that came his way in his career. He discussed different ways of convincing one’s seniors, investors and shareholders to approve tough decisions. He also narrated his risk management experiences in Bharti Group.

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Handling Challenging Times

Mr Anil Bhasin is the President at Havells India Ltd and an acclaimed motivational speaker, life coach and guide. He has served the FMEG (Fast Moving Electrical Goods) sector of Indian economy for over three decades. In his leadership talk he spoke about his professional journey that started as a sales representative. He shared his experiences of handling challenges and managing crisis situations as President of Havells.

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Suppliers Matters - Supply Chain Management

Mr Aditya Verma, Chief Executive Officer of DNS Fine Chemicals, Procurement and Supply Chain Professional with three decades of experience, shared insights on how critical it is to select the right supplier for growth and sustainability of organization as well as to handle variety of market disruptions. Mr Aditya's specialities include Business & Supplier Development, Purchasing / Global Competitive Sourcing & Supplier Relationship Management, Strategic Thinking & Leadership, Negotiations.

He has also recommended the students develop the three C's that define the credibility of an employee/manager-Connectivity, Competence, and Character. He has concluded the lecture by introducing his latest book, "Supplier Matters", to the students. There was a lot for the students to take away from the lecture, subject matter and a whole new perspective toward procurement.

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Leadership and Business Lessons: From the Lens of a CEO

Mr Sameer Chadha, CEO, KPMG Global Services. A seasoned professional, he has held several strategic leadership positions across diverse fields, including at third-party service providers and captive units of major multinational organisations. Prior to KGS, he spent eight years with Barclays Shared Services, initially as the COO and then CEO for about six years. During the interactive session, he shared his perspectives on diversity and inclusion, weighing the total value proposition for selecting Future shaping roles, the importance of Charismatic leadership over Authoritative Leadership and having a strong moral compass.

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Dynamics of Shipping Industry

Mr Maneesh Pradhan, Managing Director, Anglo Eastern Ship Management (I) Pvt. Ltd. He addressed the batch about the shipping sector which has been facing turbulence due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact of containment measures adopted by major economies, which has weighed down on the demand. During the session, he shared his thoughts on the shipping business, which is marked by high capital intensity, volatile freight rates, commoditised product offering and high level of fragmentation. He gave his insights on the coronavirus outbreak and its disruptions in container shipping flows and global supply chains.

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The Power of an Entrepreneur with a Purpose

Mr. Sarathbabu Elumalai is an Indian entrepreneur, social worker and politician. He is the founder and CEO of FoodKing. He is an alumnus of BITS Pilani and IIM Ahmedabad and is also designated as an honorary alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur. He has been the recipient of a host of awards including Pepsi MTV Youth icon (2008), Example to Youth Award (2008), RITZ Chennai Youth Icon (2010) and CNN-IBN Award for Young Indian Leader (2011). During the interactive session, Mr Sarath describes his rise from a Chennai slum to his journey to the nation's premier management institute to becoming a successful entrepreneur. The entire session was truly inspirational with lots of insights about entrepreneurship journey.

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The Art of Product Storytelling

Mr Sandeep Kochhar is an IIM-Bangalore alumnus and the founder of BlewMinds. He is a professional storyteller and his firm BlewMinds works in marketing, human resources, and tech. He shared the art of being the medium to be a better storyteller and insights on what makes online content viral. He is on a mission to transform lives one story at a time.

Key Learnings

One must find their micro niche to create maximum impact and storytelling is a powerful instrument to drive change and transformation.

Being credible and trustworthy lies at the heart of a successful leader/ successful organization.

Divide your story in the following elements - Content (What) ; Delivery (How) ; Evidence (Why)

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