V 2, 3rd issue all pages for website (1) by Corporate Citizen

CRADLE OF LEADERSHIP AN EXCLUSIVE WITH FRANK FREESE, CEO, BISHOP’S SCHOOL, PUNE Volume 2, Issue No. 3 / Pages 68 / www.corporatecitizen.in

April 1-15, 2016 / `50

TOP POSITION

Shriram Darbha, Head, Human Resources, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) TÊTE-À-TÊTE

IIM-B SEMINAR SESSION

EMINENT SPEAKERS SPEAK ON SIMPLIFYING DATA ANALYTICS DYNAMIC DUO: 27

NILIMA AND CHANDRA SHEKHAR GHOSH

Bandhan Bonds LOVED AND MARRIED

Sunita and Ravi on love and commitment

Neeraj Basur, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Blue Star Ltd

cover inner

2 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

INTERVIEW 2014-2016

TOP OF THE LADDER The Who’s Who list of top-notch corporate leaders featured in Corporate Citizen, 2014-2016 GOD OF GREEN

EASE OF DOING BUSINESS IN INDIA “45% of India’s manufacturing output and about 40% of India’s total exports is attributed to SMEs which provide the largest share of employment after agriculture sector.” - Baba N. Kalyani, Group Chairman, Kalyani Group

“Business has to be based on making profit, otherwise there is no longevity to a business if it is not viable financially. But that said, the role of business in society is very different. It has to contribute to society; it has to take from the society; it has to give back to society.” - Jamshyd Godrej, Chairman of the Board, Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company Ltd

FIRST AMONGST GIRLS “Gone are those days when people religiously stuck to one job for many years. Now, colleagues have to be made to feel like entrepreneurs themselves – that is, treating them like partners.” - Lila Poonawalla, former MD, Alfa Laval and Tetra Pak

CLAIM TO FAME “Never be afraid of failure. I failed in my B.Sc and then went on to top my class at M.Sc. Failure is not the end. It teaches you a lot of things. Do not worry too much about failing. Worry about not trying.” - Tapan Singhel, Managing Director and CEO, Bajaj Allianz

POWER OF MANPOWER PLANNING “Infosys (then) was not a very well-known company. Over a period of time people started recognising Infosys, as it became the darling of the stock market. At that point of time young minds wanted to be associated with Infosys.” - Binod Hampapur Rangadore, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Talent, Technology Operations, Infosys Ltd

EVERY CORPORATE IS DRAWING A PATH TO INDIA “I was scolded on the fourth day of my job. The partner I was working with asked me what I was doing in this profession. Ask him what his reaction was and he says smilingly, My manager did support me on that. But I would say I learnt a lot from day one of my job. This was a lesson too.” - Parag Saigaonkar, Regional Managing Director, Deloitte

LOOKING FORWARD HEADS A 60,000 CRORE EMPIRE, BUT HAS NO OFFICE OR MOBILE PHONE TO FLAUNT “We are very much in the business of financial inclusion of which the government talks a great deal today. We have 15 lakh truck operators borrowing money from us and are comfortable doing so, which is almost 20 per cent of the population of truck owners in this country.” - R Thyagarajan, Chairman, Shriram Group

“The best work is done when everyone contributes to their strengths, and this holds true for every job, irrespective of their disabilities.” - Mohammad Asif Iqbal, Manager, HR Consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 3

INTERVIEW 2014-2016 INSPIRING LIVES “People leave people, they do not leave the organisation. In my own practical experience I have seen that if you have the leadership presence, you can retain people because people just want to work with you.” - Dr. R Palan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, SMRT Holdings Berhad

HOW ENGAGED IS YOUR EMPLOYEE? “You can develop talent but people may leave, or stay and may not be productive for many other reasons. Even if someone is talented, it may not really lead to superior performance, because of his disengagement with the organisation.” - Vinodh Chelambathodi, Chief Human Resource Officer, Intellect Design Arena Limited (A Polaris Group Company)

GETTING A THOUSAND MOTHERS BACK TO WORK “If a drop of water falls in a lake or a sea it has no identity but if it falls on a leaf it shines like a pearl. So, we need to choose the best place to work.” - Priti Rao, former Senior Vice President, Head of Infrastructure Management, Infosys

DELIVERING THE BEST “The supply chain industry is gaining momentum and it is going to be one of the top industries which students will choose to opt for in the near future.” - Shashank Jagirdar, Director – HR, DHL

FINANCE, AS A PROFESSION, HAS EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS “Complying with the law is very important. Penalties are very high today. Under the Company Law, if you default, penalties are so high that even the directors can be put behind bars.” - Animish Bagchi, Senior Vice President-Finance, EagleBurgmann India Pvt Ltd

THE ART OF TOUGH LOVE “Bear in mind, you have to do your duty in life, come what may. As long as what you are doing is right and your conscience is clear, you should not worry about anything else.” - P. Dwarkanath, former HR chief of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals and current Advisor - Group Human Capital of Max India Ltd.

‘MICROSOFT’ING INDIA’S VILLAGES “You have to be careful about hopping jobs; moving careers is okay as long as it is for the right reason -- money is not the right reason. Money goes only so far, because there is always a point where it limits your career, but it also showcases who you are as an individual. Money also could be a hindrance to your growth.” - Anil Reddy, Chief Strategy Officer, Microsoft India

OLD RULES OUT, NEW WAYS IN “Always be optimistic. Never give up even if you fail. Persistence is equally important. Always be enthusiastic about your job, and your role. Going to work on a Monday morning should not be a big chore.” - Madhav Samant, CFO, Vodafone India Services Pvt Ltd 4 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

BUILD ON STRENGTHS OF EMPLOYEES AND SET THEM TO WIN “It’s important to ensure that every time a ball drops, we reflect as an organisation on ‘what could have prevented it’. This helps bring in sustainable processes and encourages employees to question the status quo (a key principle in continuous improvement).” - Anjali Byce, Director, Human Resources at SKF India

CHAMPIONING SPORTS “I belonged to a generation that hung on to the wave of the economic boom post liberalisation, sure enough, but today a lot of us are older without having really acquired any new skills in the past 15 years. Don’t let that happen to you.” - Samar Singh Shekhawat, Senior Vice President, United Breweries Ltd

WE DON’T GO ONLINE ANYMORE, WE LIVE ONLINE “The speed at which new technology is being adopted is literally doubling with every wave. We at Google feel that the next wave of technology or mass technology will be one that touches one billion users in less than five years.” - Nitin Bawankule , Industry Director, E-commerce, Google India

ART & SCIENCE OF TALENT ON DEMAND

IN BUSINESS, THERE IS NO GOLDEN RULE “Left part of our brain is exact replica of technology. Therefore the things can be done or managed through technology. However, human mind can never be replaced and artificial intelligence will remain only close to the real and will never be the real.” - Rajeev Bhadauria, Director, Group HR, Jindal Steel & Power

BE SINGAPORE-MINDED “When there is a rule in India, Indians don’t tend to follow it; they love to think how to break the rule. Singaporeans are so process driven that, it has become a culture. People at the top think;others execute and follow those rules.” - Rajesh Panda, Managing Director of Corporate Gurukul and Chairperson of the Higher Education Forum (HEF), Odisha and Singapore chapters

“Today there is no job security and the likelihood of lifetime employment with one company is a thing of the past. Moreover, in open market economies, why would you be investing in talented people who, you know, will soon leave your firm for a competitor.” - Prof Peter Cappelli, Professor of Management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

INTEGRITY CANNOT BE COMPROMISED “Your attitude, aptitude and adaptability are the key features that we look at when we hire fresh recruits. If the attitude and temperament are right, technical skills can be taught.” - Ash Malik, MD, GTO Corporate Technology India and Global Head Deutsche Bank AG

A MAN OF METTLE “If you are wrong or even perceived to be wrong, you should accept the fact first, move forward with an open mind and talk about your real intentions to find a meaningful solution.” - A Thirunavukkarasu, President, Corporate HR , JK Organisation (EZ)

A BALANCED APPROACH IN MANAGEMENT OF RISK IS ESSENTIAL “Managing talent is quite a serious problem. Private companies are picking fresh graduates and training them for the job.” - R. Balasundaram, Vice President, TATA AIG General Insurance

A CFO’S ROLE IN STEERING STRATEGIC CHANGE “As a CFO, one must be very proactive and quick to respond to the macro parameter changes in the global economy, try and protect the operating margin of the company and secure its cash flows.” - Anil Parwardhan, Senior Vice President, Corporate Finance & Governance, KPIT Technologies Ltd.

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 5

Contents 26

COVER STORY

Dynamic Duo 27

Bandhan Bonds An in-depth interview with Nilima and Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, Founders of Bandhan Bank, on what makes their marriage work

COLLYWOOD

Chatpata Chatter from the Corporate World

WAX ELOQUENT

Who said what and why

TOP POSITION

An in-depth interview with Shriram Darbha, Head, Human Resources, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE)

IIM-B SEMINAR SESSION

Eminent speakers speak on data analytics 6 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

Volume 2 Issue No. 3 April 1-15, 2016 www.corporatecitizen.in

TÊTE-À-TÊTE

A candid conversation with Neeraj Basur, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Blue Star Ltd

CRADLE OF LEADERSHIP

An exclusive with Frank Freese, CEO, The Bishop’s School, Pune

MANAGE MONEY

Dr Anil Lamba on Marginal Costing Principles & Break-Even Analysis

STRAIGHT TALK

A candid talk with Prem Singh, Global President (HR), Wockhardt Ltd.

LOVED AND MARRIED TOO

Sunita and Ravi Teja on love and commitment

CORPORATE LIFE

Design thinking—Creating unique customer experiences

CORPORATE HISTORY

LAKMÉ was Nehru’s idea

SURVEY

India’s Obesity Report Card —An in-depth survey on the National family health survey and the latest official government statistics to put the spotlight on this obesity epidemic

SPORTS BIZ

Cricket advertisement earnings scale a new high

STAR CAMPUS PLACEMENT

Gurjap Kaur on her first corporate break

52 April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 7

56 Editor-In-Chief Dr (Col.) A. Balasubramanian Consulting Editor Vinita Deshmukh

Assistant Editor Joe Williams

Senior Business Writers Mahalakshmi Hariharan / Rajesh Rao

BOLLYWOOD BIZ

Senior Sub-Editor Neeraj Varty

From Bollywood to Hollywood

Writers Delhi Bureau Pradeep Mathur / Sharmila Chand

PEARLS OF WISDOM

‘Shift your focus’ by Dada JP Vaswani

Bengaluru Bureau Sangeeta Ghosh Dastidar

HEALTH

Pune Bureau Dinesh Kulkarni / Suchismita Pai / Kalyani Sardesai

Brain produces pain

BEYOND THE BOTTOMLINE

A good sleep for productivity

MOBILE APPS

The best smartphone accessories for photography

Manager Circulation Mansha Viradia +91 9765387072 North : Hemant Gupta +91 9582210930 South : Asaithambi G +91 9941555389 Circulation Officer Jaywant Patil +91 9923202560

CLAPS & SLAPS

Our bouquets and brickbats of the fortnight!

Creative Direction Kiyan Gupta, The Purple Stroke

THE LAST WORD

‘Difference between Education and Learning’ by Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman of Pune City Connect and NASSCOM Foundation and Vice Chairman of Zensar

VP - Marketing & Sales M. Paul Anderson

Graphic Designer Anil Walunj

BE A CORPORATE CITIZEN

How do you like this issue of Corporate Citizen - The Cool Side of Business? Send in your views, news, suggestions and contributions to corporatecitizenwriters@gmail.com We would love to hear from you! 8 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

On Cover Page Nilima and Chandra Shekhar Ghosh Cover Page Pic Dr Vivek Arora Photographers Yusuf Khan, Shantanu Relekar Website / Online Subscription www.corporatecitizen.in For Advertising, Marketing & Subscription queries Email: circulations@corporatecitizen.in (Corporate Citizen does not accept responsibility for returning unsolicited manuscripts and photographs. All unsolicited material should be accompanied by self-addressed envelopes and sufficient postage) Tel. (020) 69000677 / 69000672

COLLYWOOD

PEOPLEE IN THE NEWS

VIRAT KOHLI JOINS DEEPIKA AS TISSOT AMBASSADOR Tissot, a Swiss w watch brand has appointed ace cricketer Virat at Kohli as its brand bran ambassador. The cricketer, who mirrors brand’s mastery for breaking new ground and its the Swiss brand uncompromising commitment to excellence, also oozes style uncompromisin le and confidence that makes him a youth icon. Kohli joins actress Deepika Padukone in being the reigning Bollywood Bollyw face of the brand, bran who has been representing Tissot since a record in cricket, Virat Kohli went 2007. Owning many m on to become aan exemplary batsman and won the historic 2011 World Cup with his teammates. He now W leads lead the Indian Test cricket team and is a trend setter, set both on and off the field. Commenting about the association Kohli said, “It is an ab honour to be chosen by Tissot, a brand that ho is recognised for its precision. I also hold that th very close to my performances. A watch is about the only accessory I love wearing and an I am so happy that Tissot is what I will be wearing now. I am looking forward to our journey together.” Welcoming Virat into the jo Tissot world from Toronto, Padukone said, “I Ti would like to welcome Virat to the Tissot family! wo y! I think th he completely defines the Tissot man and d I look forward to our association together as Tissot ot ambassadors.” amba

SoftBank Group splits; Nikesh Arora to lead Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group has split plit into two organisations which will look into domestic omestic and global operations. Nikesh Arora, SoftBankk Group’s chief operating officer, is now the CEO O of the global operations. SoftBank, in a release said that Arora will also be continuing his role of COO at Soft Bank ftBank Group. The investment securities held by Soft Bank ftBank Group will be transferred to the respective operations erations management company in phases. Domestic subsidiaries ubsidiaries such as SoftBank Corp. and Yahoo Japan Corporation poration are to be transferred primarily to the domesticc operations management company from SoftBank Group. The transfers are expected to happen by the end of December, this year and the method and timing iming will be left to SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son. April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 9

COLLYWOOD Alibaba likely to enter India on its own; Paytm, Snapdeal can wait

Religare’s CEO Shachindra Nath calls it quits Religare Enterprises, a financial services firm said its group CEO Shachindra Nath has called it quits with its company. His resignation will be effective from close of business hours on June 3, 2016, Religare Enterprises informed BSE. “Shachindra Nath, Group CEO of the Company has decided to move on in his career and accordingly has resigned from the company,” Religare Enterprises said in a BSE filing. Religare Enterprises offers financial services through its underlying subsidiaries and operating entities, includes Loans to Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)’s, Capital Markets, Wealth Management, Health insurance and Asset Management.

India will soon see a new member in the Indian e-commerce sector and it is likely, that Jack Ma-led Chinese Alibaba or ‘Alibaba plus’ could be the name. “We are planning to enter the e-commerce business in India in this year,’’ said Alibaba Group president J Michael Evans, after he met the communications and information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Alibaba, is yet to reveal its India plans. This has kept the e-commerce world guessing on what its entry would mean to the existing entities and the sector. Most experts say Alibaba is likely to make a dash into Indian e-commerce on its own, quite like Amazon did almost three years earlier. Its investments in existing players such as Paytm and Snapdeal could run parallel to its standalone India play, they suggest. A comment on the latest development could not be had from digital wallet and online marketplace Paytm, where Alibaba has a majority shareholding. Harish H V, partner (India leadership team), Grant Thornton, said Alibaba has substantial cash and is sure to make massive investments here. That will mean two big international players, the other being Amazon, competing in India.

How the competition unfolds will depend on whether Alibaba comes alone into e-commerce or along with the companies where it has already invested, such as Paytm and Snapdeal. Reports suggested it considered investing in Flipkart, too, which the latter denied. “If Alibaba actually enters India in tie-ups with the other e-commerce companies, the sector could well split into two camps, Amazon versus the rest,’’ the consultant said, adding this was only one of the scenarios. However, this looks unlikely. Most leading companies have been talking of a long-term play in this space. Also, these companies command steep valuation. Arvind Singhal, founder of retail consultancy Technopak, argued Alibaba would not acquire an Indian e-commerce entity unless it gets the right price. With no restriction on foreign direct investment in online marketplaces, Alibaba might want to come on its own. “Amazon announced an investment of $2 billion (₹13,300 crore) in the Indian market in 2014, and is still left with cash from that tranche. Alibaba might want to spend at that level, rather than acquire a Flipkart or Snapdeal at multibillion dollars,’’ Singhal said.

Pepsi back as BCCI sponsors Beverage major PepsiCo is back in the cricket fold. After pulling out as title sponsors of the BCCI backed IPL in October, they have entered into a four-year partnership with the apex cricket body as an associate sponsor for all its international matches at home. This would make PepsiCo BCCI’s official partner for refreshment, snacks and drinks besides getting ground rights where the beverage firm would have visibility on the field. The announcement comes four months after PepsiCo had withdrawn as title sponsor of the Indian Premier League (IPL) by walking out from a five year contract which was due to expire in 2017. The agreement also gives PepsiCo benefits of prominence in In-Stadia branding and On-Ground advertising for 80 matches in four years across the three formats.

10 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

“PepsiCo which has been our long term partner is back on board again as partner, as official associate sponsor,” said BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur. Besides PepsiCo, there would be two other official associate sponsors of BCCI, from whom the cricket body would get Rs 150 crores for the next four years, Thakur said. The names of the other two sponsors will be announced in the next seven to10 days, he added. Mobile commerce platform Paytm is the official title sponsor of the BCCI. “We have a title sponsor which is Paytm. But we have opened up new revenue streams to get three more sponsors for us as official associate sponsor,” said Thakur. “This would not only increase the engagement, but also enhance the revenue stream of BCCI at the same time,” he added.

Sudhir Mankad appointed to RBI board

The Complete Man Is Changing Gautam Singhania’s passion for fast cars is nothing new, as this 50-year-old chairman and managing director of the Raymond Group owns several of them. Incidentally, he was the first Indian driver to win a race in the Ferrari Challenge Europe Championship 2015, and topped it with 10 podium finishes in the series despite two accidents; he escaped unhurt on both the occasions. “Motor racing keeps me physically fit and agile, and mentally disciplined, focused and capable of split-second decision making,” he says. What about the accidents? “Like many other sports, motor sport is also dangerous,” he adds. “I believe in taking calculated risks, but not stupid risks.” The same

philosophy seems to drive his business. Having taken over Raymond from his father Vijaypat Singhania in 2000, he has, in five years, brought many changes into the 90-year-old company, all risks of a kind, adding new verticals and introducing new varieties. Gautam Singhania had to take some risks when he took over in 2000. A host of legacy businesses - cement, steel and synthetics - started over the years as unrelated diversifications were funded through debt. The servicing of that debt was already exerting pressure on the financials of the profitable textiles business, which he exited from, but entered new non-core businesses in which he is yet to make any significant mark.

Former Chief Secretary of Gujarat Sudhir Mankad and two others were appointed as non-official directors to the board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved the appointment of Mankad as part-time non-official director on the central board of the RBI for a period of four years, an order issued by Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said. Mankad was Chief Secretary from April 2005 to August 2007 when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Besides Mankad, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services has also been appointed as part-time non-official director on the RBI board, it said.

Poddar to sign off association with Goldman Tushar Poddar, chief economist for India at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is leaving the company, spokesman Christopher Jun said. Poddar, based in Mumbai, has spent about a decade at Goldman, according to the company’s website. Prior to joining Goldman, he was an economist at the International Monetary

Fund. “Yes, I am leaving and will be on leave for the next couple of months and will be taking up a buy side position in London outside Goldman,” he said. He declined to provide more details. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides

a wide range of financial services to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and individuals. Founded in 1869, the firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world.

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 11

COLLYWOOD WIPRO NAMED WORLD’S MOST ETHICAL COMPANY Wipro Limited earned another feather to its cap. Ethisphere Institute, the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices named Wipro as 2016 World’s Most Ethical Company. In all, 131 companies spanning 21 countries made it to the 2016 World’s Most Ethical Companies list, marking the 10th anniversary of the designation. The World’s Most Ethical Companies designation recognises organisations that have had a material impact on the way business is conducted by fostering a culture of ethics and transparency at every level of the company. It emphasises Wipro’s commitment to ethical leadership. Being a fifth consecutive year honoree underscores Wipro’s commitment to leading ethical business standards and practices that also ensure long-term value to key stakeholders including customers, employees, suppliers, regulators and investors. Wipro is one of only three companies in the global Information Technol-

ogy Services industry honoured this year. “Unyielding integrity is one of the three values of the Spirit of Wipro, something that we live by in all our actions, day after day. Doing business ethically is a matter of first principle for us. We are honoured to be recognised by Ethisphere for the fifth time in succession,” said Anurag Behar, Chief Sustainability Officer, Wipro Ltd. The World’s Most Ethical Company assessment is based upon the Ethisphere Institute’s Ethics Quotient™ (EQ) framework

developed over years of research and vetted and refined by expert advice from Ethisphere’s World’s Most Ethical Company Methodology Advisory Panel. The EQ offers a quantitative way to assess a company’s performance in an objective, consistent and standardised way. The information collected provides a comprehensive sampling of definitive criteria of core competencies, rather than all aspects of corporate governance, risk, sustainability, compliance and ethics.

Ashok Chawla, Yes Bank’s nonexecutive director Yes Bank appointed former Competition Commission of India chairman Ashok Chawla as its non-executive director. The board approved the appointment of Chawla as additional non-executive director of the bank with immediate effect, Yes Bank said in a statement. “The board of directors have further approved the proposal to seek approval from RBI for the appointment of Chawla as a future non-executive part-time chairman of the bank, upon expiry of the term of the current chairperson in October 2016,” it said. Chawla, a retired IAS officer was also finance secretary before becoming head of CCI.

TCS certified as a top employer in the US Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been recognised as a top Employer in the United States for the second consecutive year by the Top Employers Institute, an independent organisation that certifies employers around the world for excellence in creating a total work environment for their employees. The Top Employers certification is awarded to a select group of employers who demonstrate forward-thinking HR practices, exceptional employee offerings and an employee environment

Sury Kant

that promotes personal and professional development. TCS was recognised as an exceptional performer across nine catego-

12 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

ries: Talent Strategy, Workforce Planning, On-Boarding, Learning & Development, Performance Management, Leadership Development, Career and Succession Management, Compensation and Benefits, and Culture. “TCS is proud to be certified as a Top Employer in the United States for the second consecutive year,” said Sury Kant, TCS President of North America, UK and Europe. “This award further demonstrates our deep commitment to attracting and retaining the best people by

creating innovative practices and programs to ensure their success, which in turn benefits our customers.” One in only eight global organisations have earned such global recognition. “Optimal employee offerings and HR best practices ensure that people develop themselves personally and professionally,” said Top Employers Institute CEO, David Plink. Compiled by Joe Williams joe78662@gmail.com

FEEDBACK A well-written interview An in-depth article featuring R.Balasundaram, Vice President - Broker Relations at Tata AIG General Insurance Company Limited in the February 1-15, 2016 issue, titled ‘A Balanced Approach In Management Of Risk Is Essential’, is very well-written. I have read a lot of featured articles in the past but this interview is well covered and edited as it covers his personal as well as professional aspects simultaneously. My heartiest congratulations to the CC team and good luck. Best wishes to Dr (Col.) A.Balasubramanian for coming out with a magazine that’s well-crafted and fresh. - Satish K Naidu, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Co Ltd

Excellent piece An in-depth interview, titled ‘A CFO’S Role In I Steering Strategic S Change, ’ C with w Anil Patwardhan, in P the t February 16-29, 2016 issue deserves i applause. The a final output in i terms of o content, layout, print l quality and q coverage is very good. The interview widely covers his experience and contribution at KPIT. The language is simple and understandable. Commendable effort by the writer. Best wishes. - Stella Alex, KPIT Technologies

Happy twist to business writing If one needs to take a break from the regular corporate stories, Corporate Citizen is the one to go for. The magazine has all the ingredients to be called the cool side of business. The interviews, corporate history and the cover stories make this magazine unique from all the other corporate magazines. You bring in a new dimension to business writing. - Manish Shingote, Business consultant

A source of inspiration I have read the Corporate Citizen magazine and the coverage is excellent. The interviews

RUSSI MODY’S STORY IS INSPIRING This is with reference to Dr (Col) A Balasubramanian’s editorial titled ‘Commendable Commitment’ in the issue dated February 1-15, 2016. No other academician has been able to invite Russi Mody as well as Ratan Tata to a business school. It shows one’s involvement with students and making the best of efforts to develop a brand equity for an institution. I also had a small stint with Russi Mody long ago, when I had met him in Mumbai. His personal secretary had slated only a 10-minute meeting with me. However, he gave me half an hour saying he had great respect for academicians. Great people have magnanimous minds. I appreciate Dr (Col.)A.Balasubramanian Sir’s Editorial in every issue, along with several other articles that bring education and industry together. I wish you continue with the same strength. - Dr. P. C. Shejwalkar

of people who have risen in the corporate world are really good and can be a source of inspiration to the younger generation. - Subramanian Sharma, Chartered Accountant

A new dimension Corporate Citizen covers are most memorable. I like the way Corporate Citizen puts cool events in business context. The amazing stories and interviews bring in a new dimension to business writing. Looking back over the year, it’s been a fascinating journey and I am pretty impressed with your achievements. I have big hopes for this year from you and look forward to reading this magazine. - Umesh Shinde, Marketing professional

Corporate spice of life I am an avid reader of Dr (Col) Balasubramanian Sir’s editorials, his experiences with Russi Mody was not only a breezy read, but made a worthy management literature. It is our duty to throw light on grand footprints left by giants like Russi Mody. Truly an inspirational note! The Dynamic Duo series on Vasanthi and Premchand, titled ‘Rejoicing in research’ that

appeared in the February 1-15, 2016 issue is another example of corporate spice of life. Sure, this duo motivates many working couples. Corporate Citizen has a blend of a management journal and a popular magazine. Like a pulp fiction work, it makes an easy read; yet has a pithy content. Kudos to the editorial team for striking such a balance! - Dr R Karthikeyan, MD, Gemba Management Consulting and Chairman – ISTD, Chennai Chapter

CC enjoys a comparative advantage The Corporate Citizen magazine caters to a unique genre unto itself. The magazine does seem to endorse global considerations in its content and design elements, and therefore enjoys a comparative advantage. But my suggestion is that to be the best hybrid, your effort should have more focus on best offerings, from the huge world of ideas and noteworthy content. The magazine does offer insights, discussing new trends and changes in the Indian corporate world. - N Harimurthi, CA April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 13

WAX ELOQUENT

A BOOST TO GROWTH AND SUS Future is all about digitisation

“In the next 20 years, in a networked society, we are going to have change much more than we have seen in the last 100 years. It’s really digitisation and the digital world that is going to lead this. From an India point of view… India cannot be left behind in this revolution.” Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries Limited Courtesy: http://www.firstpost.com/

Bringing art and culture on one platform “We have Olympics for sports, we have economic forums of different kinds for business and industry, we have UN summits of leaders of political parties getting together. I don’t find anything like this in the field of religion, spirituality or arts.” Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, spiritual leader and founder of Art of Living, on the World Culture Festival (that was held in March this year)

Sign of a healthy company “Good companies do not need too much capital to win. It can give you a head start, but it is your core innovation which has to work. We are focused on having enough revenue channels and scale to grow without external capital. We will grow with our internal accruals, that is our plan and it is a sign of a healthy company.” Shashank ND, founder and CEO, Practo Courtesy: Financial Express

Courtesy: Indian Express

Things look bright for the Indian cagers

“We (UBA) want the Indian youngsters to grab the opportunity and make the most of it. Things are looking bright and cagers will be given their due and India could be one of the top teams in Asia, to start with. There is no dearth of talent in India. A good infrastructure and training grounds could see great players coming out of this country.” Todd Mack, the managing director, United Basketball Alliance Courtesy: http://www.sportskeeda. com/

14 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

The needle has moved “Earlier, the perception among both entrepreneurs and investors was that a start-up had to build a rapidly scalable venture. Now the needle has moved. This strong focus on unbridled growth has given way to sustainability of businesses.” Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder, Paytm Courtesy: Economic Times

Paradox of being a good leader “The paradox of being a good leader in today’s connected digital world is that you have to be both, a very good teacher and an equally good student. So, you need a teachable point of view and you need that learning agility.” D. Shivakumar, chairman and CEO, PepsiCo India Courtesy: www.livemint.com

India has possibility to stand out “Potential is a funny word. It is not exactly clear what it means. I would say India has the possibility. That is not a certainty but if it can get more efficient and reduce red tape and behave like a capitalist country, a free-market country, I think India could have great future.” Howard Marks, American investor Courtesy: Economic Times

To stay relevant in India’s diverse markets

“You have to know your consumer really well. Know what they want, when they want and try to add something to their lives and you will be rewarded for it. This means deeper consumer insights in real time and adaptive planning that caters to the everchanging consumer trends.” Tanmay Mohanty, managing director, Performics and Resultrix (India)

Courtesy: http://www.bestmediainfo.com

TAINABILITY

Take a look at what our corporate leaders have to say about recent trends and their experiences in business world Big leap in technology “India has done many things without looking at the West. India moved from ‘no identity’ to ‘online identity’, whereas the other countries are going from ‘no identity’ to ‘smart cars’ and then to ‘online’. So we have taken a big leap in technology.” RS Sharma, chairman, TRAI Courtesy: Financial Express

Uday Kotak, executive vice-chairman, Kotak Mahindra Bank

Bit more energy and push “You have everything, with a bit more energy and push from several quarters you can create and sustain an ecosystem which can support a lot of youngsters, who are talented and skilled.”

Indian e-commerce story is intact

Courtesy: Financial Express

India is like a Bollywood movie with happy ending

Having a co-founder is a big advantage

“Having a co-founder is a must, be it from any gender. I tell this to every young entrepreneur. Having a co-founder with equal passion and commitment is a big advantage in the long run.” Radhika Agarwal, cofounder, ShopClues Courtesy: Times of India

“Investors must look at India as a movie. India as a movie is awesome and like a Bollywood movie, it tends to be long at times. Normally, Bollywood movies have happy endings. So, one needs to look at India like a Bollywood movie, long but happy ending.”

Courtesy: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

“The Indian e-commerce story is intact. As with offline businesses, online businesses too have to get their fundamentals right and probably take several steps in that direction, in their bid to sustain and grow. That is happening.” Nandan Reddy, co-founder, Swiggy Courtesy: Economic Times

GST a must, to lower trade barriers across Indian states “The number one policy that we would like the government to implement is to introduce the goods and services tax. The GST will not so much be a revenue-raiser but will lower trade barriers across the 29 states of India and give a boost to growth as well.” Christine Lagarde, managing director, International Monetary Fund Courtesy: www.livemint.com

Everything has friction

“Everything has friction, be it in organisational behaviour, customer behaviour, ease of use, machine interface, or channel distribution. Knowing how to reduce friction is key to building any company.” Dheeraj Pandey, founder, Nutanix Courtesy: Times of India

Nirmala Sitharaman, Commerce and Industry Minister

We learn from bubble “One of the most important things for an entrepreneur to see is a full product cycle. You have to see a product do well and then watch it crash. The problem in India is we’ve not seen a fall. We look at the bubble only in a negative way, because people lose jobs. But, look at the learnings we get from them.” Sanjay Nath, managing partner & co-founder, Blume Ventures Courtesy: Business Standard

Speculation comes as a garnishing for an actor

“When I am an actor or a spokesperson for an international luxury brand, I am being hired in a professional capacity. I need to protect that identity. Speculation is a garnishing that comes with the profession of being an actor, it’s not something that I believe one should get caught up in.” Katrina Kaif, film actor

Courtesy: http://www.bollywood.com/

Compiled by Rajesh Rao rajeshrao.rao@gmail.com April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 15

TOP POSITION

TAKING THE BULL S BY THE HORNS Shriram Darbha, Head, Human Resources of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), who has carved a niche for himself in a spectrum of corporate establishments, believes that ‘Bull is considered as the symbol of Dharma and riding a bull is leading the Dharmic way of life’ and even materialistic success is an outcome of one’s Dharmic and Karmic strength, which comes through a process of self-actualisation as described in our ancient philosophy and Yoga. He spoke extensively to Corporate Citizen on his success and provided an insight into the corporate world BY VINITA DESHMUKH 16 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

hriram Darbha is Head, Human Resources of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). He has over 24 years of strategic as well as handson Operational HR & OD leadership experience spread across reputed services, IT (BFSI), ITES, telecom, pharma, manufacturing, consulting and financial services organisations. His expertise covers a wide range of HRM areas such as understanding business realities and formulating HR imperatives; crafting HR policies/systems/processes; talent acquisition, engagement, development, assessment and appreciation; individual training and organizational learning and OD initiatives; effective employee engagement, organisation culture, change management and life coaching. Darbha’s significant professional accomplishments include operational strategy for SMEs and growing organisations; developing HR road maps, organisational structures, policies, manuals/ guidelines/ training calendars/PMS/ C&B and rewards & recognition structures/process improvements. He has also successfully set systems/processes / competencies, service guarantees/SLAs and trained front line sales force and customer service staff to create customer delight with the required speed and quality. He has introduced and implemented comprehensive performance management systems; defined JDs/KRAs and performance metrics; ensured fair C&B and reward systems based on performance and potential competencies in line with internal and external market parity; created talent pools for accelerated career and growth plans. He ensured absolute industrial harmony by pro actively managing the IR/ER function; employee welfare, grievance resolution, trade union concerns, signed multiple wage settlements, statutory and audit compliance issues, public relations with government/industry/academic/functional colleagues and general administration. He also handled cross culturally diverse work force issues as well.

Darbha has participated in various training programmes such as Train the Trainer, Strategic HR & OD, Self-renewal for HR Managers, Leadership Development (GRID), Team Building, TQM, Balanced Score Card, Competency Mapping, Psychometric tools like MBTI, Thomas profile, Gallup, Firo-B, OPQ, 7 Habits, Emotional Intelligence, Communication, PMS, Service Quality, Service Excellence etc., in reputed institutes. His ongoing innovative research work includes the unique Ten Commandments of Workplace Spirituality and Seven invaluable tunes for Self-Actualisation to help employees balance their personal and professional lives better. He is the recipient of the “50 Most Talented Global HR Leaders in Asia” Award from the World HRD Congress; the “Lokmat- HR Leadership Award” and ‘HR Leadership Award’ at the 5th Asia Best Employer Brand Awards event at Singapore, and is a recipient of the Best HR and Talent Practice Award at the IWP awards.

What was your childhood dream? I am the eldest from a family of seven siblings - I have three brothers and three sisters. My father was working with LIC and my mother was a great housewife. Values and education are the best things we got from our father. I started my primary education in a Vedic gurukul and later I did all my secondary schooling in Telugu medium, always with Sanskrit as my second language. In fact, even for our B A (English Litt.) degree course, our teachers would teach us in Telugu. I had to study on my own then to work on my English to write the exams. Besides, participating in various extracurricular activities also proved helpful, providing the necessary exposure. I was president of the LEO Club way back in 1986 and conducted several literary and fine arts events. I tried my hand even at mimicry, starting with imitating our lecturers, and went on to win state and national level gold medals for mimicry. Though I had an aptitude for science, I was

Business partners need to be HR people. The job of an HR is not that of an HOD. His/her job is to act as an internal consultant or facilitator. So you help people to manage their business. The new paradigm is that an HR head has to be a strategic person or as a facilitator who works closely with the management team. In fact, 50 percent of the role of a CEO is people management, if not more

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 17

TOP POSITION not much inclined towards maths, so I opted for B A with English Literature as major and History & Political Science as ancillaries. I stood first in my college at graduation and was a ranker in the University at my MA (English). There were two options before me - to do a PhD in English or start earning by getting a good job. Although I got admission for MPhil at CIEFL (Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages), Hyderabad, I got selected for LIC through a competitive exam. It was to be the first batch of select Development Officers. Since working for LIC was in the family, my father suggested that, rather than becoming a low-paid English lecturer, I should go for this well-paid, respectable job. Even though you would like to study further, at times, because of the responsibilities, you have to let your dreams go. So I did that job, reluctantly, for two years, trying to sell insurance and simultaneously appearing for competitive exams for higher studies. That’s when HRD was just about coming up, say around 1989-90. So I decided to sit for the competitive exam for TISS (Tata Institute for Social Sciences), the premier institute for HR. As I got selected for TISS in 1989, I sent in my resignation to the LIC. Thus my dream came true -- to study and excel.

So how did you open up to this world of HR, in practice? TISS, being the premier institution for HR, naturally gave me the required orientation. Here I got exposure socially too. The institute also has courses in social work (MSW) and PMIR (Personnel Management and Industrial Relations). With its four streams each with typically 30 students in a class, there would be a total of 150 students of whom 120 would be girls. Having attended boys-only schools and colleges, I was unaccustomed to this co-ed environment, even with routine things like a handshake with a girl! So that’s how the indoctrination and socializing took place, forcing me to learn and adapt the new ways. And despite starting off as a typical oil-haired, dark Madrasi (south Indian as they call) looking youngster, I went on to win the student elections and I became the cultural secretary at TISS. I used to sing, play a couple of musical instruments, and of course there was mimicry, for which I won gold medals at the national level, having delivered thousands of stage performances. It was not Johnny Lever or Raju Srivastava-kind of comedy that I was into; my specialization was producing mechanical sounds of airplanes, bombs, storms, musical instruments, characters and scenes from Hollywood movies, etc. One of my humble contributions, in my capacity as the then Cultural Secretary, was the creation of the annual cultural festival of TISS with the name, coined by me, “QUIN’TISS’ENCE” which is being celebrated for the last 25 years. 18 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

So when did you get your first break into the corporate world? It was through campus placement at TISS that I was offered a job with the Taj Group of Hotels. It came as a shock to many people, as I was a vegetarian, teetotaller, non-smoker, orthodox and did not resemble the typical Delhi-Punjabi man who has an impressive personality and a certain flair for the hospitality industry. In those days, the Group Head HR was a visionary called Prof. VS Mahesh, an alumnus of IIT Madras, a nuclear physicist. But through Tata Administrative Services, he worked with the Tatas and was considered a doyen of HR. Not hopeful of getting selected in the interview, I decided not to go for it at all. I was playing around in the campus when some of my friends asked me why I was loitering there instead of attending the interview since I wanted to work with Prof. Mahesh. I said I didn’t think I stood any chance at the interview. But they insisted that I must attend it. So

him. It took considerable time to get acclimatised to Taj in Mumbai and Delhi. After that, within three to four months I was posted as Manager of a Taj Hotel in Bangalore, from where I worked in several leadership positions.

What does it take to be in the hospitality industry? A touch of human sensitivity and sensibility because the product is service. So HR becomes extremely important in the hospitality industry and the Tatas are known for their value system, which makes working for the Tata’s hospitality industry, a double bonanza.

What kind of youngsters would you take into the hospitality industry if you were to recruit? Not a topper, but an above-average student with good communication skills, good attitude and humility. That, to me, is the mother of all vir-

Typically I would work on policies/ processes/culture and after actively completing that, my role became more like a consultant. Then the company started wondering why it should continue togive such heavy salaries. That’s when I got this idea that maybe I should start something on my own and provide head HR services to companies on a retainer basis by 5 p m, I boarded the bus for Colaba; by 8 p m I got the offer — being the only guy who was offered that position. I then came back to TISS and had a big bash that night.

How many years did you work there? Nine years, with the Taj at different hotels, starting from Bombay Taj and ending up in Bangalore.

Why do you think that you were the chosen one for HR at Taj? I pondered about that. Probably, he had seen some kind of humility or simplicity about me, which was required for an HR function, for a Tata company and the hospitality industry. Probably that could be the main reason, because I didn’t even have much fluency in English then. But that was what I had mastered in that period at TISS. My communication otherwise was good; he saw that. Besides, there were no ‘temptations of Taj’, I being a vegetarian and a teetotaller.

So you were not there for glamour… Correct, probably that might have impressed

tues; it is something that cannot be taught. In the Western system, humility is not taught; it is considered a weakness. People are driven by personality development, leadership development, and aggression, but in the hospitality industry particularly, you need to be humble.

After nine years at Taj, why did you leave and where did you go? In the industry where I was working in, computers were not that widely used. There was much manual work. And you used to see your colleagues joining IT companies, carrying laptops and the pay was very high. Also the salaries in the industry I was working in were meagre in comparison, e.g. a chef was better paid than me. And there came a great offer from an IT company with a 150 percent salary increase! The name of the company was Primark India Pvt. Ltd, which was later taken over by Thomson Reuters. I was Country Manager HR

of its BPO in Bangalore. They wanted somebody with experience from the service industry and this provided me an opportunity to work with an MNC and travel to London for the first time.

So what was the difference? It was a culture shock, because it was a BPO/ KPO which mostly had youngsters who were brash, without any value system and long-term career orientation. And the management there was also not very people-oriented, it was more task-oriented, with more emphasis on achieving targets on a daily basis. In such an environment, I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stay long. I was hardly there for a year. Also, nobody ever goes out because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bad organization; most times people leave due to bad bosses, bad supervisors, which was the reason for my leaving the company. And there was no value compatibility. My personal values with those of the organization did not match.

After this where did you go? In 2000, I joined as the Head of HR in Airtel in Hyderabad, a posting I was looking forward to, as my father had retired and lived there. I wanted to take care of my parents. Airtel then was a family-driven business and they were still trying to put things together. At that time it was JT Mobiles Company. After a year, Airtel took over. I handled the merger integration and was also in charge of recruitment.

Your observations on young IT managersâ&#x20AC;Ś They are trained, skilled people with a lot of confidence; actually they think they are a gift of God to mankind. So in a sense, they are self-centred. people, but very ambitious and hardworking. As I said, their value system is also not in place. They give more importance to the achievement of a task. For them, the end is more important than the means.

Many people think of work-life balance only in the framework of what the company does for the individual. However, worklife balance is a two-pronged approach. The other point of work-life balance, which many individuals overlook, relates to what individuals do for themselves April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 19

TOP POSITION What’s your advice to them? They could learn on their own, over a period of time, what we call maturity or emotional intelligence. I studied spiritual intelligence which could also be helpful to them. They should have an open mind to learn from experienced and thinking people. My mantras for the millennials are: Belief in Self, Faith in God, Humility to Learn, Commitment to Contribute and Passion to Excel.

After Airtel, what did you do? After Airtel I joined Citicorp Overseas Software Ltd, as I wished to stay in Hyderabad. Then the company went through a couple of changes. Citicorp divested its stake and became OrbiTech and later, Polaris. Polaris was Citigroup’s vendor and the latter despite being a giant, sold its business to its own vendor. However, the culture was totally different. There was also a high rate of attrition. I was not happy there and Hutch came my way. They needed somebody from telecom to look after the HR function in Andhra Pradesh. I was there for one year, during which time, Hutch became Vodafone. It seemed like I became a victim of a merger, wherever I went, though with significant contribution.

Your tenure in Tally… It was around 2008-2009, when I Joined Tally as their Head-HR & OD. Tally is an accounting software company. In the case of Tally too, it was taken over by Reliance. Tally needed its first professional HR and I was chosen. I went there and then created a policy manual. Typically I would work on policies/processes/culture and after actively completing that, my role became more like a consultant. Then the company started wondering why it should continue giving such heavy salaries. Particularly for SMEs, it is difficult to sustain such high salaries. That’s when I got this idea that maybe I should start something on my own and provide Head HR services to companies on a retainer basis. So we floated a company called Arthved Consulting. I have helped a few growing and SME organisations both in India and the US in building, operating and handing over a professional HR function.

So you still have that company? Yes, it’s dormant now, as I can’t operate it. We had a good business in algo trading and HR & OD services. We did a business of one crore rupees in the first year itself. We were running our own company, with our home as the office. Of course, it was thanks to my illustrious brother Late Dr Gangadhar Darbha who was a domain expert in algorithmic trading and the business sponsor. I also conducted training programmes. People say I am a good trainer, as God has given me the gift of the gab and a sense of humour. 20 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

Youngsters are skilled people with a lot of confidence. They give more importance to achievement of a task; the end is more important than the means

So how did you come to BSE? BSE was looking for a professional HR guy to strengthen the HR function, I had the opportunity through a referral and I decided to shift from Hyderabad as my father passed away and so I could move to Mumbai, where my brother was already working. We brought our mother along with us here. I moved to Mumbai three years back. Since the last three years, thanks to our supportive MD & CEO Ashish Chauhan, it’s been a good experience setting up key policies/processes, introducing a performance management system, culture building, employee engagement events and holding personal relationship training workshops.

Tell us something about the work and culture at the BSE… We have emerged as the fastest Stock Exchange in the world, setting standards in best-in-class global practice in technology, products innovation and customer service. This feeling is also shared amongst employees. Streamlining the HR Function, having a uniform system of organisation structure in various aspects, compensation and benefits, training and development and employee engagement are some of the top priorities. We have also adopted a mechanism of an on-line performance appraisal system in order to help employees to understand their competencies, KRAs and helps in systematically monitoring and improving their performance. It’s a multi-generation workforce management that is a key feature at BSE. I have initiated a unique sharing platform

called the `The Thought Exchange’ where interested employees share a platform, once a month, to voluntarily exchange ideas and solutions to issues related to work. The main objective is to adopt a culture for open communication and sustained improvement in quality of work. It has significantly helped in reducing gossip and fostered team building and inter-departmental co-ordination.

What is your general overview of the HR field in the Indian industry? As I have been training people, what used to be a labour function, a personnel function, has become an HR and people management function, with all the fancy titles in place. However, the core concept of the function hasn’t changed much. Now, the corporate is talking about the need for HR to be a business partner or a strategic business partner. Nobody talks about finance or marketing in those terms, as they may already be recognised as strategic partners. Many HR people generally are not business-savvy or quantitative-oriented; they are very qualitative/people-oriented. That being so, I would say business partners need to be HR people. The job of an HR is not that of an HOD. His/ her job is to act as an internal consultant or facilitator. So you help people to manage their business. Rather than act like God, or what Jesus Christ said — `come to me and leave all your troubles to me, I will take care of them’. That’s an old paradigm of an HR person. The new paradigm is that an HR head has to be a strategic person or as a facilitator who works closely with the

management team. In fact, 50 per cent of the role of a CEO is people management, if not more. You have to be an adviser, confidante, the watchdog and the custodian of values/culture. Very often though, HR function becomes bureaucratic because many HR heads try to get politically closer to the power centre or authority by becoming administratively strong and legally safe. The paradigm needs to be changed.

You are a very spiritual person. How does it gel with your ambition and materialistic pursuit in the corporate world? Self-actualisation is the key to the highest level of performance in any pursuit. The meaning and purpose of life is to realise your own actual self, which is the spirit, the consciousness, the chaitanya as we call it. There is something called universal consciousness in our system in India - you call it God or Brahman or spirit or whatever. So, that is the prime mover of our existence. Like electricity, which is the energy behind all appliances, our body is an appliance and the energy is the chaitanya, the consciousness, which is part of universal consciousness. I do an advanced practice of daily meditation/ contemplation on the Supreme Consciousness and seek energy for the pursuit of eternal happiness rather than temporal success.

You mentioned about vaulting ambition and desire to excel fast creating disaster. Please elaborate… A holistic work-life balance model is the need of the hour. Because if you have observed, in the last 30-40 years, people who were high performers and high achievers have often burnt out early in life due to immense stress. My younger brother, Dr Gangadhar Darbha, is a recent example. He was a great achiever, a well known global professional and a scholar, he passed away recently at the age of 45 years. He was a Post Doc fellow from Wharton, an Executive Director with Nomura Securities, a Japanese investment bank. He was Global Head of algo trading at the Royal Bank of Scotland in London for long. He was recently appointed consultant and economic adviser to the Governor, Reserve Bank of India where he wanted to serve public policy, leaving a highly lucrative job. In fact, he suffered a massive cardiac arrest in office, just a week after he joined RBI and suddenly passed away in his office in September 2015. There could be several reasons for his death, but I could see that he worked too hard and was unable to maintain a holistic work-life balance. Everyone has four aspects of life: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. We all play different roles. Life may not have any meaning by itself; it is an opportunity for us to add meaning to it.

So, you should excel in your action and achieve peak performance - that’s self-actualization - but while carefully balancing all aspects of life.

Please elaborate on the corporate world adopting the path of Dharma… Traditionally, small and large Indian organisations have either consciously or unconsciously followed the holistic Dharmic and Karmic approaches in running their businesses and managing people for a long time. Indians have cracked the contented way of living and letting others live, for many centuries. The Indian work ethic has been one based on loyalty and commitment to one’s own duty -- one’s own dharma (swadharma) -- so employees and employers are primarily contented, and not greedy. Entrepreneurs have been predominantly philanthropic in their approach to business, like the Tatas and Birlas. The purpose of business is not only for profit but also pursued with the highest levels of Corporate Social Responsibility. These organisations could win lifetime loyalties and retain employees for longer time by taking care of their overall welfare. Employees had a stronger sense of belongingness, ownership, duty-mindedness, balanced approach to life (samatwa) and satisfaction. On the other hand, current global corporations seem to be struggling to attract, engage and retain talent in spite of their so-called mastery over scientific management principles and practices.

satisfaction in all spheres of life of the self and others by the balanced pursuit of four important aspects of life, viz., Dharma (righteousness), Artha (wealth), Kaama (fulfilment of desires) and Moksha (liberation and bliss). This creates a context and need to study the relevance and usefulness of such traditional Indian-wisdom approaches (concepts propounded in the Karma Yoga of the Bhagawad Gita) for better management of the self and the people, to unleash their latent talent for an effective work-life balance and overall well-being. This has been my ongoing Ph.D. thesis about to be completed this year.

Please elaborate on the work-life balance you advocate… Many people think of work-life balance only in the framework of what the company does for the individual. However, work-life balance is a two-pronged approach. The other point of worklife balance, which many individuals overlook, relates to what individuals do for themselves. According to Jim Bird, CEO of Worklifebalance. com, “Work-life balance is a meaningful achievement and enjoyment in everyday life.”

You are an author and an artist too… Yes, my first published book was “Vibudharaama Shatakam”, an anthology of 108 poems written in Telugu (along with English translation) on moral values for the benefit of young students. I have distributed 1000+ books to school children free as a charitable/social cause. I have also written over 50 evergreen songs of Kishore

I have initiated a unique sharing platform called the `The Thought Exchange’ where interested employees share a platform, once a month, to voluntarily exchange ideas and solutions to issues related to work. The main objective is to adopt a culture of open communication and sustained improvement in the quality of work. It has significantly helped in reducing gossip and fostered team building Did globalisation change all that? My personal and professional experience has been that all western theories of motivation/ behaviour modification seem to have focused on diagnostics based on symptomatic, pathological and reactive behaviour in general, giving an elaborate account of certain traits. Whereas the holistic principle-centered Indian scriptural wisdom seems to be more prescriptive and proactive for the positive attainment of success and

Kumar in Telugu (translation of the meaning, to tune). I have personally rendered them on a Karaoke system and uploaded some of them on YouTube. The other was the national HRD quizzes that I conceived and conducted along with Siddhartha Basu of KBC fame, under NIPM 18 years ago. Generally I am happy with myself and what I do. vinita.deshmukh@corporatecitizen.in April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 21

IIMB SEMINAR SESSION

Data Science for Business Decisions Large chunks of information visually into a cluster of dots or colour maps might seem fun, but its interpretation is a crucial and an effective tool to solving problems and arriving at palpable business decisions. But, what is data intelligence? The nuances of utilising data, and the related technology were discussed indepth at the Third International Conference on Business Analytics and Intelligence held at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB). Eminent speakers attempted to simplify data analytics – a highly technology driven tool which is gradually becoming ubiquitous for businesses to harness their core potential and those of their employees. Data mining applications in real life scenarios, especially in analysing human behaviour help predict and evoke the right responses for decision making in almost all sectors - in education, accountancy, legal or in IT domains and in almost all walks of life - that demand consumer behaviour to impact business goals. It could be to harness hidden marketing potential of brands or for data findings that have in the recent past connected losing elections to longer lifespan as in the news headline - “Good news for Rahul Gandhi, those who lose elections live longer,” is a predicament of collecting and analysing immense data. While this available data can provide lot of fun, there is serious stuff that data mapping can do to obtain deep insights in work- life domains, as was highlighted. Corporate Citizen took to some of the basic learning on Data Science and Business Intelligence from Flipkart’s transition and progression in e-commerce By Sangeeta Ghosh Dastidar

nless you understand the context of the business; you might as well sit in a math class and do math. The purpose of analytics is leveraging data and map it for solving a problem that has immense amount of business context. So, unless you understand the business context in which you are solving these problems, there is no relevance to analytics as such, said Ravi Vijayaraghavan, Vice-President & Head – Analytics, Flipkart. com, on his session on ‘Analytics and Science for Growth and Consumer Experience at Flipkart’. “When you look at data across multiple domains such as business, science and technology together is known as analytics or data science. If I do a distribution of how they are used, you find analytics to be used as more focused on the business and data science is more on the technological aspects.” And, analytics is what these companies

22 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

resort to, help us buy online. Almost all of us have resorted to the luxury of buying online, at least once. Imagine looking for ladies’ shoes and surfing through pages and this, Vijayaraghavan says, is in using data to predict consumer behaviour. “Who are the ones who wear high heels or low heels? Where do they buy their goods? The volume and value of goods bought over a period give idea about consumer behaviour. When you have 50 million users coming to your platform, just being able to visualise and look at data will give you insights about what’s happening in the country and what’s happening in e-commerce in India. Once you have that kind of scale, we can understand what’s happening to e-commerce in India.” Adding punch to matter, Professor U Dinesh Kumar, Convenor at the seminar and Chairperson, Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management and Quantitative Methods & Information Systems, IIMB noted that men don’t want to stay much time in the shop, rather run away from the shop. In such

a scenario, what analytics will actually give is a kind of insight on your consumer behaviour and once you have this data, you can do well in the business.” said Kumar. India, grooming ground for data analytics The seminar brought forth new outlook in building on the current data platform—tools and technology in data analytics for business gains. With the Indian education system and its strong emphasis on mathematics that forms the key element in analytics, the speakers were optimistic of India’s progression in this domain. However, industry stalwarts feel that there is an anomaly while computing data as there is a deficiency in business understanding while

Looking through Flipkart’s lens – e-commerce to m-commerce With e-commerce growing at 34 percent yearon-year for the last five years, is considered a conservative estimate. “If you look at the world of e-commerce, there are primarily

“With Flipkart’s business scale—around 30 million products, 70+ product categories, 30 exclusive brands, 10 million receipts a day, 60 million registered users, 50 cities with a 30,000 people organisation; a lot of it is people delivery. The scale here determines how Flipkart can actually use the data generated in driving decision making. “…That’s the scale of data that our systems churn in 5 billion raw events; it could be on a Webpage or a Web app. Close to 900 raw streams of data is generated and it could be in our order management system or a supply chain system, or HR...” Ravi Vijayaraghavan, Vice President & Head - Analytics, Flipkart.com April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 23

Pics: Sanjay MD

correlating data to real life business scenarios and building goals based on them. A large number of B-schools are addressing analytics as a subject, and this they say would fix the problem. Talks also centred on how to provide competitive advantage in the analytics space by Indian companies. A case in point was Flipkart’s experience in the e-commerce space and its data determining tactics to salvage business through various channels – Web, mobile and Apps.

IIM-B SEMINAR SESSION “While we run a platform that can drive the best consumer experience and seller experience, the reality is that there are consumers that will try to pull a fast one on the seller and there will be sellers pulling a fast one on the consumer and the challenge for us is how we can quickly identify that and drive the right behaviour on the platform... How much they (consumers) engage with the platform and how much they actually buy from the platform” Ravi Vijayaraghavan, Vice President & Head - Analytics, Flipkart.com three markets based on its maturity. The U.S. is close to maturity, followed by China, and then India, which is the least matured. But, while it took 15-20 years in the US to show growth in e-commerce, which I think, in India will show in the next five years”, said Vijayaraghavan. “But the interesting part about India is that it is the power. E-commerce in India holds importance because of two major reasons—the lack of transport infrastructure is not always a great experience to go from point A to point B in any major metro, especially, a drive to a shopping mall on a Saturday at 4 or 5 pm in Bengaluru, need not be very productive”, he added. Also, based on the size of malls, the selection in any particular shop is bearable in most of the stores when compared to the US market. In electronics, in any given store in the U.S., they probably have 4-5 types of cameras or say about 10 types of mobile phones, which might not be the case here. With India’s Internet penetration, he says, despite India’s low percentage compared to 87 percent Internet access, India still has a long way to go but there is a huge runway for the industry. Rural Internet growth marks the future that will likely come from rural areas because of mobile access in these areas. “India’s evolving demographics is the other trigger for e-commerce growth in India with a very Internet savvy generation which was born or grew up pretty much with Internet knowledge”, he said. “The other aspect is m-commerce or mobile commerce. While e-commerce is growing at a certain rate and in that pie; m-commerce is growing at an even faster rate .If we look at smartphones in India, the rate is close to 8 million and an additional 50 million monthly (get data on net) as app downloads.” Scale of business in analytics “What is the most challenging part of analytics in Flipkart? It is the scale of business”, says Vijayaraghavan. There is a need to address scale of business and he explained that in their case, when the need is to shape demand for products. 24 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

“Say, we are running out of stock and you don’t want your consumers to discover products which are out of stock and so on and so forth. If you have to be able to process all that, be able to connect all that systems, know that you are out of stock, be able to sort of check in such a

manner that they are not putting out these items to the consumer etc; it calls for a need to run recommendations at scale, personalisation at scale and that is the reason you need to operate at this scale”. On developing relevant academic curriculum on data analytics, “Over the period, as we evolve, what would become more important for top notch analytics curriculum would be to understand scale because the future is not going to be problems that are solved with small data set but a lot of the important data that are going to be solved will be solved at scale. If you are not able to solve them at scale then the solution itself will become meaningless ...” With Flipkart’s business scale - around 30 million products, 70+ product categories, 30 exclusive brands, 10 million receipts a day, 60 million registered users, 50 cities with a 30,000 people organisation; a lot of it is people delivery. The scale here determines how Flipkart can actually use the data generated

in driving decision making. “…That’s the scale of data that our systems churn in 5 billion raw events; it could be on a Webpage or a Web app. Close to 900 raw streams of data is generated and it could be in our order management system or a supply chain system, or HR. Literally, it could be any system and with around 900 streams of data pouring into our platform on a daily basis- that is the scale of data we have to operate and the queries that come onto our data system to solve day to day business problems. These could be: what is my sale? How do I shape demand? ” Flipkart-ing on analytics In a large organisation, analytics is driven across multiple operational domains and marketing and customer analytics and growth is just one of them. Seller and market based analytics is one of the crucial areas that need to be monitored to maintain demand and supply base. “You must have heard about

growth hacking from Facebook. “How do you therefore drive growth in this industry and for your company based on seller and market based analytics?” asks Vijayraghavan. Flipkart’s role has also been to focus on their sellers to help them in their understanding of how best to price their products and understand what is in demand and what is not. “For example, there are these mom and pop shops that do not have the ability to have huge analytical organisations. They do a few course on business a month and we then think on how we can help them in their businesses, is one of the agenda. Supply chain obviously is a big deal

experiences. So, ensuring experience is good and ability to migrate people from one segment to the other is crucial. “We can define engagement as, “How often people come to our app but also frequency of purchase; but most importantly diversity of spent is equally important. Do you come to Flipkart to buy a mobile phone or do you buy a variety of goods of diverse spent, also on whether it is high value spent. Once you build these parameters, through data mining, you build this to acquire customers, engage with them as to know who are the people who buy a certain set of products across which channels.

“Men don’t want to stay much time in the shop, rather run away from the shop. In such a scenario, what analytics will actually give is a kind of insight on your consumer behaviour and once you have this data, you can do well in the business” Professor U Dinesh Kumar, Convenor at the seminar and Chairperson, Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management and Quantitative Methods & Information Systems too. Once consumer makes an order, we have to understand the logistics system, fix them and kind of sort the channels to fulfill the demand or how we can drive demand based on our pricing and demand model. For supply chain analytics to be successful, it is important to gauge your ability to forecast demand as far as possible. The better your ability to forecast demand, the less risk there is on supply chain and supply chain analytics job becomes easier as and when the demand forecasting gets better,” he added. ...On buying pattern Flipkart’s observations are that there are some users who come on Flipkart every week and buy some small things and while others who come once in three months buy a huge volume or value product. “The point is how do you understand what drives these behaviour. How do you make high spend guys to become more engaged and how do you get the low engagement guys to buy more? What is our share of growth with the low engagement guys? How and what drives purchases from such groups of users?” Flipkart’s success points have been in detecting behaviour that can predict if a certain set of buyers after two weeks will become high value customers or not. There are various channels via which one can bring customer acquisition so understanding these channels like mobile, website or Apps can help in high value targeting and personalization; also find out best possible experience on first order experience which is normally non-linear in driving future

Their early engagement with Flipkart are the people we should normally invest on, go on to rating them through loyalty programmes and monetise through whatever means.” Because different acquisition channels have different values such as mobile space from Web or apps, predicting customer spent based on his first two weeks, we can tabulate and see High Engagement High Value customers etc and work on models accordingly to predict sales. The purpose of all these is to understand, “Who are these customers? You are looking to create a unique value proposition from experienced customers from the quality of goods bought from that perspective. Understand behavioural segmentation and then marrying these segments to understand people profile and buying tendencies”, he concludes. ...And timely delivery “Our business depends on timely delivery too. So, field executives from the delivery hub products come to the mother hub. They will manually read address and assign it to subareas; then the field executives take it over and deliver. So, now the challenge is to take an address at scale and be able to assign it to a landmark. Labelled data is build using a field executive who labels an address (sample) and inks it with the relevant area. This is built on a corpus for machine learning and done manually with field executives; but we also check and do some error reduction.” sangeetagd2010@gmail.com April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 25

COVER STORY dynamic duo 27: Nilima and Chandra Shekhar Ghosh

Bandhan Bonds There are many who look at match-set-go arranged marriages as easier said than done, but for some it is a magical thing that works wonders. The magic, Nilima and Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, founders of Bandhan Bank, discovered in their arranged marriage was—when two partners have a good mutual understanding between themselves, they can handle any situation. This story is about Chandra Shekhar’s amazing journey from working at his father’s sweet shop to owning the largest microfinance network in India in less than 15 years and thereafter venturing into Banking. The husband-wife duo share the journey traversed by Bandhan and the various challenges they faced, with Corporate Citizen

On their entrepreneurial journey, the husband and wife duo have together effectively handled the daunting task of building and running India’s first and largest micro finance network and then venturing into Banking, with great success. As the chairman and managing director of Bandhan Bank, headquartered in Kolkata, Chandra Shekhar today is heading a banking network operational in 27 states with 615 branches across India, with over 19,500 employees. The numbers indicate the years of hard work and dedication that has gone into achieving it. “I am committed to the poor and that will always remain my focus,” says Chandra Shekhar. Since Bandhan became a bank, Nilima says, life has changed for Chandra Shekhar. “I feel proud when I see him in newspaper or on a TV show. He really deserves it for his hard work, perseverance and determination,” she says.

Jab we met Though it was an arranged marriage, it was a poor-boy-marries-a-rich-girl story, says Chandra Shekhar. “I thought it will be tough for her to adjust to my ordinary lifestyle, but she got easily adapted to my family and the hardship

without difficulty,” recalls Chandra Shekhar, while relaxing with his wife in their house in Kolkata. They got married in the year 1993. It is true, says Nilima, that one has to adjust. “I had to compromise on the lifestyle I enjoyed before marriage, but in return I received lots of love and affection. My father and Chandra Shekhar’s father were friends, so his joint family accepted me like their daughter after our marriage,” she said. Nilima grew up in an affluent joint family from Agartala, Tripura, with her four sisters and two brothers and her father was in the transport business. For Nilima it was about moving from one joint family into another after marriage. Living in a joint family, she says, has its advantage. “It gave me a tremendous sense of security and support to pursue my goals. I would not have managed it without their support. The concept of a joint family creates family values for the children,” she adds. Both Chandra Shekhar and Nilima are religious and maintain a very humble lifestyle and live in a joint family with Chandra Shekhar’s brother. Their house is in a middle-class locality in Kolkata. The only difference over the years, Nilima says, “is the couple of security guards

26 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016 Son, Anshuman with his proud parents

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 27 nts

COVER STORY

Launch of Bandhan Bank by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely in 2015

manning our small house, as many people come to visit us, looking for jobs and donation.”

and giving tiny loans to help the poor in Kolkata’s suburban town of Konnagar.

Early days

Moving to entrepreneurship

Chandra Shekhar was born into a family of Bangladeshi refugees who settled in Agartala. His morning began with helping his father in his small sweet shop before going to school. He recalls that he would open and clean the shop in the morning and often make chapatis and serve breakfast to customers. A bright student, Chandra Shekhar moved to stay with his uncle in Bangladesh for higher studies after his schooling in Agartala. He completed his master’s in statistics from Dhaka University in 1985 and then joined BRAC, an international development agency based in Bangladesh. “Unfortunately, I lost my father the same year and as the eldest son of the family I had to shoulder the family responsibility,” he said. He returned to India and started working for several NGOs

It was a very humble beginning, says Chandra Shekhar. It all started with him taking the big risk of leaving a steady job at the Village Welfare Society, where his monthly salary was ₹5,000. “My parents opposed my decision of leaving the job, but I was determined and started Bandhan, an NGO, in 2001 with a borrowed capital of ₹2 lakh and two employees,” he said. It was a tough call, since he was the only earning member in the family. “I had only two options, either make it a success or commit suicide,” he says. Nilima also joined her husband in the dream to make Bandhan a success. “We were very shaky about the outcome of his venture. But I had seen his willpower and that gave me confidence,” she said. Realising that success lies in building strong

His morning began with helping his father in his small sweet shop before going to school. He recalls that he would open and clean the shop in the morning and often make chapatis and serve breakfast to customers 28 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

links with people and understanding the ground reality, the husband and wife duo set out on a difficult path of doing good for the society through financial inclusion and committed themselves to touching the lives of marginalised people by offering them financial services at affordable cost. “Mainstream banks failed to reach out to rural customers and I wanted to fill that gap where the need for banking was higher. Which is why I started Bandhan. Bandhan means bond or togetherness,” said Chandra Shekhar.

How the idea started Chandra Shekhar had no degree in finance or management, but he says that the idea of building a proper financial system for the poor came to him when he was working as a field officer for BRAC. “Working in one of the poorest areas in Bangladesh had given me exposure to the ground reality of the need for a proper financial system for the poor. It was a huge learning experience and thus emerged the possibility of banking the unbanked,” says Chandra Shekhar. Chandra Shekhar was further exposed to the needs of marginalised people while working in India. He realised the greater need for an organised money lending system to save the poor, the farmers and daily wage workers from exploitation by unscrupulous local money lenders who charged 100-200 percent interest on small

Praises for Bandhan

“I believe that with the arrival of institutions such as Bandhan Bank, modern banking is stepping into an extraordinary league. It is not just catering to the privileged lot, but making dreams come true for those who seek a better life. I stand for this kind of growth as it lends each and every citizen of India a greater chance for progress.” Pranab Mukherjee, President of India

“A great institution is being born in Bengal. The launch of Bandhan Bank will not just boost the growth of Bangla entrepreneurs, but signify the return of entrepreneurs to West Bengal.” Arun Jaitely, Union Finance Minister

Ghosh with women self-help group. Pic courtesy: Bandhan

“Mainstream banks failed to reach out to rural customers and I wanted to fill that gap ... which is why I started Bandhan” - Chandra Shekhar Ghosh loans. “I made up my mind that this was the area I should get in, and act as a link between the bank and poor people.”

Nurturing their goal In 2006, Chandra Shekhar turned Bandhan into a non-banking financial company (NBFC), called Bandhan Finance Services Limited. Thereafter, he did not look back and scripted his success story with constant support from his wife. “We have experienced many ups and downs, but with sheer hard work and determination, we steadily nurtured their goal and gained the confidence of the rural people.”

The challenges ahead “Bandhan started with the twin objectives of women’s empowerment and poverty eradication. With a repayment record of 99 percent, the organisation has been successful in its objectives.” Amit Mitra, Finance Minister, West Bengal “Bandhan has changed my life by giving me a loan on easy terms to buy sewing machines. This has helped to increase my monthly family income. Now I can deposit my savings with Bandhan Bank and earn interest.” Sunitajana, member of Bandhan’s Women Self Help Group, West Bengal

The biggest challenge Chandra Shekhar and Nilima faced was creating trust among the poor people. Chandra Shekhar and Nilima would go door to door and visit villagers personally to try and win their confidence. They would sometimes receive threats from money lenders, but that did not deter them from their goal. When threats did not work, rumours were spread among villagers that the couple were into human trafficking. However, Chandra Shekhar said, “The unconditional support from the then district magistrate helped us in overcoming all the obstacles and the women from the villages slowly started showing faith in us.”

The turning point The second challenge Bandhan faced was raising funds from banks to provide small loans. Chandra Shekhar recalled that no bank would

give them loans. “I was desperately knocking on the doors of every bank for funds with my proposal, when the executive director of the Small Industries Development Board of India (SIDBI), Brij Mohan, showed confidence in Bandhan and granted ₹20 lakh in 2002. That was the turning point of my life,” said Chandra Shekhar. He still remembers how Nilima worked hard for two days to give a facelift to their small office before the SIDBI officials visited for inspection. Later the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and SIDBI became investors and picked up equity in Bandhan. Many banks and financial institutions started funding Bandhan for microlending. Today the company has over 13,000 dedicated employees working in Bandhan branches spread across the country.

Balancing work-family life After their son was born in 1997, Nilima had to cut down her active involvement with Bandhan for some time. But she continued to lend her support to Bandhan and managed both home and work efficiently. Once their son entered high school, she came back to shoulder many new responsibilities in the company. “My strength is my joint family. I could not have managed it without their support,” says Nilima.

How they did it Bandhan addresses the dual objective of poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment. It helps in the crucial fields of education, health, employment and sustainable livelihood. “Today, Bandhan touches the lives April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 29

Getting the banking licence Chandra Shekhar says that it was the biggest transformation for Bandhan when it was selected for granting a banking licence by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in April 2014. “Bandhan and IDFC (an integrated infrastructure financing company) emerged winners among a list of 25 hopefuls. These were new banking permits given by RBI for the first time in ten years. Bandhan became the first microfinance company in the country to get a banking licence, and post-independence, it was the first new bank to come up in eastern India,” he informed.

Selection criteria “It was tough to compete with big players but we were confident of winning the license because

our focus was always on the financial inclusion of the marginalised people,” said Chandra Shekhar, proudly sitting at his large office at Salt Lake in Kolkata. Nilima remembers the tension they had gone through before RBI announced the names for the banking license. “I was worried about his health, but finally we made it,” she adds. RBI had received 27 applications in July 2013, after which Tata Sons and Videocon Group withdrew, leaving 25 contenders in the fray. The Anil Ambani Group, Aditya Birla Group, Bajaj Finance, Muthoot Finance, Religare Enterprises, Shriram Capital, Srei Infrastructure and Magma Finance were the strong private sector participants, says Chandra Shekhar. He informed that RBI had assessed the quantita-

Awards and Recognition ‘We built the relationship of trust with our need based services for rural folk. We have minimum paper work for disbursement. We help our beneficiaries to choose the correct product within their repayment capacity. All this has paid off’ of over 70 lakh people with a loan book of ₹10,000 crore. It has a base of over 2.64 lakh women self-help groups,” Chandra Shekhar said. On how they did it, he says, “We built the relationship of trust with our need-based services for rural folk. We have minimum paperwork for disbursement. We help our beneficiaries to choose the correct product within their repayment capacity. All this has paid off and today our bad loan is negligible at 0.01 percent and the current net profit is ₹428 crore on a revenue of ₹1,200 crore as on March 2015.” Chandra Shekhar has received the Senior Ashoka Fellowship in 2007 for his outstanding contribution to creating entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment. Bandhan was also ranked 1st in India and the 2nd in the world as per the Forbes list of the world’s top 50 microfinance institutions, in 2007. 30 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

x Economic Times Bengal Corporate (ETBC) Awards Bandhan won the ETBC Awards presented by the Association of Corporate Advisers & Executives on February 14, 2015, in the category of ‘Highest Job Creator’. x ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ 2014 Award Chandra Shekhar Ghosh was presented with this prestigious award by The Economic Times. x ‘Finance Man of the Year’ Award 2014 Chandra Shekhar Ghosh was presented with the ‘Finance Man of the Year’ Award 2014 by Bombay Management Association (BMA) in Mumbai on November 15, 2014. x Global Growth Company (GGC) honour Bandhan received the honour of a Global Growth Company by the World Economic Forum, on November 5, 2014 during the India Economic Summit in New Delhi. x Forbes India Leadership Award 2014 Forbes India Magazine conferred upon Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, the award ‘Entrepreneur with Social Impact’ in 2014 as part of Forbes India Leadership Awards. x AIMA Managing India Awards 2014 Chandra Shekhar Ghosh received the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award by AIMA Managing India Awards 2014, on August 06, 2014 in New Delhi. x Economic Times Bengal Corporate (ETBC) Awards Bandhan won the ETBC Awards from the Association of Corporate Advisers & Executives on February 13, 2014 in Kolkata, in the category of ‘Best CSR Idea’.

x Skoch Financial Inclusion Award 2013 Bandhan recieved this for its initiative in the field of health, in New Delhi on January 05, 2013. x Genius HR Excellence Award 2011 Bandhan bagged this award in the category of ‘Best HR Practices’, on April 22, 2011, in Kolkata. x Skoch Financial Inclusion Award 2011 Bandhan received this award for extending grant-based, sustainable support paraphernalia to the marginalised population. x ‘Institution of the Year’ Award Bandhan was conferred the ‘Institution of the Year’ Award as part of the HSBC ACCESS Microfinance India Awards, on October 26, 2009, in New Delhi. x Skoch Challenger Award Bandhan was recognized with Skoch Challenger Award for Financial Inclusion, on 19th March, 2008. x ‘Senior Ashoka Fellow’ Chandra Shekhar Ghosh was bestowed with the honour of “Senior Ashoka Fellow” in September, 2007 in recognition of his vision, commitment and innovative solutions. x Bandhan in Forbes list of World’s top 50 MFIs Bandhan ranked 2nd in the World and 1st in India by Forbes’ first ever list of the World’s top 50 MFIs, in December, 2007. x ‘Pro Poor Innovation Challenge’ Award Bandhan was conferred this award in March, 2006 by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, an affiliate of the World Bank. (Source: http://www.bandhanmf.com/awards.aspx)

tive and qualitative aspects of the applicants, including their financial statements, 10-year track record of running their business, the proposed business model for the bank, demonstrated capabilities for running a bank, plan for expanding inclusion, and the culture of compliance and integrity. The day the RBI announced his banking licence, Chandra Shekhar was flooded with praises. “Many of these wishes were from those banks that had rejected my application to open accounts with them when I was struggling to form my company,” said Chandra Shekhar.

The journey as a bank Over the 18 months since Bandhan received the banking license, it complied with RBI’s conditions and met all the criteria easily to become a bank. It started the journey as a bank on December 23, 2014, with financial inclusion as the prime focus. It has received capital support from its key stakeholders—SIDBI, International Financial Corporation (IFC), Caladium Investment Pte Ltd (a company managed by GIC Special Investments Pvt. Ltd), Bandhan Employees Welfare Trust, and a few individuals. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley inaugurated the Bandhan Bank at the Science City Auditorium in Kolkata at a function attended by regulators, policymakers and luminaries from the financial sector and corporate India. Bandhan commenced its operations as a universal bank,

which presently has operations in 27 states with 615 branches, 2,022 Doorstep Service Centres and 205 ATMs.

Growth so far In less than a year, the number of branches has expanded to 615 and 205 ATMs, with a deposit base of ₹4,000 crore. The bank has two divisions —micro banking and general banking—and it offers complete retail financial solutions, including a variety of savings and loan products. The bank will have to go for stock market listing

in 2012. It is a retail chain which offers a range of local ethnic handloom and handicrafts from different parts of rural India. “Craft and textiles are our proud heritage. Our focus is to support the livelihood of local artisans and help them to revive their art and facilitate the market linkage for their traditional art and craft,” said Nilima, director of Bandhan Creations. Nilima regularly interacts with the artisans and advises them on the quality, design and pricing. Most of these artisans are beneficiaries of Bandhan Microfinance. She is now planning

The day the RBI announced his banking licence, Chandra Shekhar was flooded with praises. “Many of these wishes were from those banks that had rejected my application to open accounts with them when I was struggling to form my company,” he said within three years as per the RBI guidelines. “Traditionally, most banks collect money from urban and rural segments and deploy the money in the corporate and retail sectors. Our bank would like to take the money from both rural and semi-urban segments, but we promise to the give the money back (in the form of credit) to the rural and semi-urban sectors also,” says Chandra Shekhar. He adds that Bandhan Bank will stay away from large corporate credit and concentrate on credit to micro and MSMEs. They have also waived processing charges for loans up to ₹25,000.

Building links with people Bandhan Bank is now focused on improving the skill-sets within the current workforce for providing efficient banking services. It enables the rural poor people to park their small savings in the bank, rather than getting duped by money depositing firms and chit fund companies who promise big returns and cheat poor people. Chandra Shekhar’s success lies in the strong links he has built with the people, and his understanding of the ground reality. He often goes and meets his microcredit customers. “Mainstream banks have failed to reach out to rural customers where the need for banking is higher. They have not found a workforce in the villages. We are trying to fill that gap. We have a strong rural base in the eastern region. The east always has a high number of small savings depositors. We offer products that suit the needs of the people,” assures Chandra Shekhar .

Developing new avenues Nilima decided to create a platform to help rural artisans and set up Bandhan Creations

to explore the possibility of selling the products online and creating an infrastructure for artisans in Kolkata, where they can come and work. She is also the editor of ‘Sanko’ an in-house magazine for the Bandhan family to express their views and experience.

Leisure time Chandra Shekhar is a workaholic and leads a very simple lifestyle. On holidays, he prefers to spend time with his wife and son, Anshuman, at home and enjoy good food cooked by Nilima. However, Nilima complains that the most boring holiday she had with Chandra Shekhar and their child was when they went to Washington, USA, a few years back. Talking about the trip, she said, “It was our first trip to the US in 2012. After checking into a hotel, he left for work with a promise that he would come back and take us out for sightseeing. He finally turned up at night when I and my son were asleep. Work was always his first priority.” Chandra Shekhar quickly responded with a wide smile and reminded her that their recent trip to Cape Town was pure holiday and no work.

Parenting Son, Anshuman, says Nilima, is a XI standard student in the Future Foundation School in Kolkata. He is a professional sprinter, who participates in state- and national-level championships. Talking about his son’s future, Chandra Shekhar says, “He is still studying. But in the future he has to take the call whether he wants to join Bandhan or do something else. Neither I, nor my wife will dictate terms to him.” corporatecitizenwriters@gmail.com April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 31

TÊTE-À-TÊTE

CFO The Conscience Keeper From delivering efficient finance processes to supporting business strategies, Neeraj Basur, CFO, Blue Star Ltd, is an adept who knows the breadth and depth of financial matters. He was previously associated with Max Bupa Health Insurance Co. Ltd. as the company’s CFO, where he built a high-performing finance team, with a focus on delivering effective finance and business strategies. Prior to this role, as the Senior Vice President - Corporate Finance at Max India Ltd., he was responsible for capital market transactions, private equity, deal structuring and new venture start-ups. He was also the Corporate Controller at HCL Technologies. In an exclusive interview with Corporate Citizen, Basur talks about his professional experiences and personal life, while sharing tips for young aspirants to succeed BY VINEET KAPSHIKAR With complexities in businesses increasing over the years, how has the role of CFO evolved? Have you seen any changes in the trend? In the last five years the CFO’s role has evolved and changed a lot. What we deal with today are very different from what it was fifteen years ago. Now the CFO is expected to play multiple roles—not only as financial officer but also to guide the business, in terms of strategy. We have to make sure that the business expenses do not go beyond the boundaries and limits, which are generally prescribed by the board. CFO is expected to play the role of conscience keeper in that sense, ensuring that the quality and standard of governance are of the highest order. In a public listed company, CFO’s role is to work as a Key Management Person (KMP), as defined in the Companies Act. In case there is 32 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

others (friends, colleagues or organisation you work for) and keep learning.

Tips to succeed BELIEVE IN YOUR DREAMS Dream about what you want to be and people you want to associate with, thirty years down. Having a dream and living that dream are two important elements of succeeding in the business world. Dream big and most important is believe in your dream, because if you believe, others will. Go for excellence and success will follow. LEARNING IS IMPORTANT Learning is a journey which never stops, so having a learning mindset allows us to enhance our knowledge. Focus on upgrading and adding to your skills, because skills have a lifespan. Some skills might last longer, some may not. In this digital age, competition is big a challenge. In the first five-seven years of your job you will have the opportunity to set up a platform where you can keep adding

a serious default in terms of compliance, governance, regulatory atmosphere, and regulatory requirements then along with the directors the CFO can and will be also get called up. So, there is a huge amount of personal obligation associated with professional obligation. CFOs are now required to make sure that transparency and ethics with which the business are supposed to be run, is followed.

As a CFO, how do you manage to strike the right balance between work and life? I have a few hobbies and one of them is to play musical instruments. I find that extremely de-stressing and I use it to distract myself when it gets too heavy in terms of work. The other thing I like to do is travel whenever it is possible, to the places close to nature. One has to be conscious about work and life and personal space, and it is quite possible. A lot of people complain that we don’t get time. Expectations will remain. You need to be flexible enough to be able to switch between your work and personal life. There will be situations where your official space needs priority and then one has to be flexible to sacrifice personal time. But it is possible to balance work and life.

Tell us about your education and career. I have done my post-graduation in Masters of Commerce and later completed Chartered Accountancy (CA) and Company Secretary (CS). For the last one and a half years, I am working as a CFO with Blue Star Limited, a leading air-conditioning and commercial refrigeration

skills. New skills help to maintain stability. STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH In his 2005 speech at Standford, Steve Jobs had said “Stay hungry, stay foolish”, which is a powerful piece of advice to the students. No matter how successful a businessman you are, your hunger to learn should never end. BE OPEN TO CHANGE Growth has to be nurtured just like a sapling that will grow into a tree. Be open to change, because change forces you to take risks, exposes you to vulnerabilities and the unknown. But change leaves you with huge amount of learning and potential. Don’t be afraid to take risks, because unless you are willing to walk an extra mile and push your limits, you will not grow.

I have always been guiding my own team and other people that the first five to seven years one should not bother about the cost to company (CTC). These years you are investing in your skills because over a longer period of time the compensation difference gets neutralised company. Before that I have worked with companies like Max Bupa Health Insurance Company Limited, HCL Technologies, Spice Telecom and Escorts Limited. As a CFO at Max Bupa, I worked with for six years and was involved in setting up the company from day one.

How do you see the new trends youngsters follow today and what is your advice to them? The youngsters, so-called post-millennials or ‘Generation Z’, surprisingly are far more technology-driven. They are far more instant in terms of expectations and ability to deliver. They are impatient in terms of what they want to achieve. I can probably relate to them in some way because I also changed my first job after six years. My advice to them is learn, grow, help

What is your view on youngsters who go job-hopping for better pay? I am a firm believer of the philosophy that people join the company as a new entrant and leave it as a manager. Money could be a trigger but not a genuine factor. What typically happens in initial few years of one’s career is that if someone offers a better package, then one might change the job. However, if one is equally hungry to grow, you would see a mentor in your manager, gain experience—that’s real investment. I have always been guiding my own team and other people that the first five-seven years one should not bother about the cost to company (CTC), CTC is a hygiene factor. Your friend my might be getting more money than you, but that should not bother you. Think that the first five-seven years you are investing in your skills, because over a longer period of time the compensation difference gets neutralised. So if people are willing to see that the compensation is hygiene, what is more important is learning the skill set. Eventually if people are willing to add to their competencies money follows.

With the government asking corporates to devote two percent of their profits to CSR activities, what are the initiatives taken by your company? As a leading company in the air-conditioning and commercial refrigeration space, Blue Star has been in the field for last 72 years. Our CSR activities are carried out through a trust within the company. Activities involve donating some of our products to institutions like schools and hospitals. For instance, our water coolers are a very useful product when it comes to providing clean drinking water to students in educational organisations. We also donate air conditioners to schools and hospitals. We have our own CSR programmes, which look after the requests which we keep getting throughout the year. vineetkapshikar@gmail.com

tadka

Arming on export deals India’s arms export target by 2025 is pegged at $3 billion and if it does achieve this, India would become a major seller from its current status of an arms importer. The Indian government seeks to not only become self-sufficient in the defence sector but also count as one of the world’s biggest arms exporters.

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 33

CRADLE OF LEADERSHIP

THEThe BISHOP’S Best

A good 150 years in existence and still reckoned among the best is no mean feat for a school. Little wonder that The Bishop’s School can boast of illustrious alumni and an impressive list of achievements. Frank Freese, CEO, Principal & Hon. Secretary, of the School, spells out the pushes and pulls of a changing world, and what it takes for a school to stay the best, while talking to Corporate Citizen By Vinita Deshmukh and Joe Williams

ack in April 1864, with just 15 students and one school master, The Bishop’s School was established in Pune’s Cantonment area. Today, 150 years later, it has grown by leaps and bounds, reaching a milestone that is touched by few institutions. The school boasts of illustrious alumni including stalwarts like former Chief of Naval Staff Sushil Kumar (retd), Indo-American entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia of Hotmail fame, Chairman of the Poonawalla Group Dr Cyrus Poonawalla, Chairman and MD of the Magarpatta Township Satish Magar, and many famous personalities from all walks of life. The school was founded by the Rt. Reverend Bishop of Bombay, with the explicit purpose of providing education to the children of European, Anglo-Indian and Christian communities as per the principles of the Anglican Church. Started by Reverend Fenton and Lt. Col Sydney T. Stock on April 19, 1864 to cater for the sons of warrant officers and non-commissioned officers of the British Indian Army, today its campus resonates a spirit of diversity and inclusiveness amongst its students and faculty. At the time of its inception, the school found its shelter in the barracks under Corporal Mansfield on April 19, 1864. It moved to its present location in 1868. With a mere 15 students on its rolls in 1864 to a count of 11,964 in 2016, the history of 34 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

The Bishop’s School has indeed come a long way. Frank Freese, the CEO of the School spoke to Corporate Citizen about the highs and lows he faces in running and maintaining the tag of one of the most prestigious schools in the country. Mr Frank Freese and Mrs Valerie Freese have been with the school since May 1999.

You are the principal of a prestigious school, and become ‘seasonal VIP’ particularly during the admission season. What are the challenges, demands you face, in terms of political and other pressures? We are not seasonal VIPs, I would say we are VTPs (Very Targeted People). After getting declared as Pune’s ‘number one’ school for many years now, everybody wants to get into Bishop’s. Wherever they come from, there is a famous line included in the application, ‘My friends told me the best school is The Bishop’s.’ That means a million friends have told him that! We are under tremendous pressure. Once the admission results are declared, the trouble starts—those who do not get admission want to make the cut. They get recommendation letters from so-called influential people. We can’t honour everyone—having already filled up 250 seats, where do we put the next? And there are still another 1,500-odd!. When we refuse, they (touts and others) hold andolans, they break into the school, and rough up my chowkidars. We need to get bouncers to keep us protected. All this happens

at the time of admissions. So we are not VVIPs, we are very weak, much targeted people.

You must be feeling so terrible about all this… What I worry about is not myself, but my staff. My staff naturally tends to prevent those who forcibly try to come into the office and pressurise us with threats and so on. They get abusive and threatening; eventually some of them do come to me. And when they come, it is in groups and I cannot accommodate them in my office. I can only speak to them one at a time.

So what would you advise parents who don’t get admission for their wards? My advice to parents is to look for alternatives. They should apply to many schools and have their options open. Many parents say they have not applied elsewhere, which is very wrong. It is their child and they should get the child into school, if not one particular school, then some other. I am sure there are many other schools available.

This must mean you need protection, especially when you go outside your premises? We did get some police protection some years back, but that has stopped, maybe because of shortage of police staff. Now the police come only when we call them.

Talking about your alumni, who are spread

Pics: Yusuf Khan

Boys being ‘a terrible lot’ is not true. There could be a few. But overall I would say, 98 percent are good. They are hot-blooded, full of life and fun. Who wants to sit in class for five hours, going through books? Obviously, they shouldn’t cross a certain line which could be termed indiscipline April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 35

CRADLE OF LEADERSHIP across the country and overseas, could you name some outstanding students among them? The first name which comes up is Sabeer Bhatia who invented hotmail.com. There are many army officers – among whom are many generals --besides editors and freelance journalists who have passed out of this school. At one stage, we had six serving Rear Admirals and Vice Admirals in the Indian Navy. One of them, Admiral Sushil Kumar became the Naval Chief. Air Marshal Keshav Rao who was Commandant of AFMC is a Bishopite. There are others, very successful businessmen, as also a couple of actors in Hindi movies.

What is your take on the present generation who are said to be a pampered lot? And this being a boys’ school, how do you manage? Boys being ‘a terrible lot’ is not true. There could be a few. But overall I would say, 98 percent are good. They are hot-blooded, full of life, and they are full of fun. Who wants to sit in class for five hours, going through books? The boys like to laugh and joke and obviously shouldn’t cross a certain line which could be termed indiscipline. That’s how it is, but I don’t think boys are bad today. They are just living in a different world than you and me. I mean their ideas, their morals, their ways of thinking and way of life are different. Yes, they are born with technology. We try to learn it but still cannot keep up with the youth. So it is a different life for them, but that does not make them bad.

You have been with this institution for almost two decades. How do you compare the present generation with the past? The biggest change that I find is the physical size of the present boys -- they are much smaller compared to the earlier generations. Earlier, a boy was much taller, bigger, and many of them were taller than the teachers. Mentally, today’s children are fast players. Not because of any difference in the brain system but because today’s child is exposed to many things. Due to the electronic revolution in the world and the many electronic inventions, a child is much smarter now than what we were in our days, all because his exposure is much more. We did not have things like laptops, telephones, games, leave alone smart phones. It’s a different world for them. As children, we were scared of our teachers, fearing, I’d lose my pocket money, I’d not be allowed to go home for Diwali holidays, so on and so forth. All we could think of was, ‘if I do this, what punishment will I get?’ Today’s child just doesn’t know what punishment means. Because of the laws of the country, today you cannot use corporal punishment on a child and nobody

dares to do it now. You rarely can punish a child. So children now are quite unrestricted where discipline is concerned. They tend to be full of life without realising they could be crossing the line of discipline.

Is this good or bad? I don’t think we can justify using those words because what is good for me is bad for somebody else. What is discipline for me at my age is not discipline for a young child. Look at today’s world outside. Today’s young adult, more often, is either giving or taking a bribe and he says, “what have I done wrong?” He doesn’t realise that it is wrong to give or receive a bribe. Today it is almost a way of life.

So that puts a lot of pressure on a person like you to manage it? Yes! It puts a lot of pressure on us, teachers, or the Head of the schools. More pressure on the parents. Children are with us for five-six hours; they are with the parents for the rest of the day. And if they don’t get their way, then the parents have a very tough time. Parents have come crying to us for help. On the other hand, parents are putting pressure on schools. Earlier when we were students we didn’t dare say anything about the teacher or the Principal to our parents who would shut us up. Then, the teacher was always right.

Do you get this kind of pressure from the parents? We do. Parents are models for their child. They are aware of the laws of the country and so rather than facing pressure at home from their child, they will stand by the child and put the blame on the school. And this is where a teacher faces a lot of flak. The moment the teacher says, “Come on, we will go and talk with our Principal,” the parent is quiet and walks away. They won’t come to the Principal, but

All the niceties of telling the child a bedtime story, or tucking him into bed are gone. All that the parents do and say is, “Go, get to bed.” We have technology and the compulsion of both parents having to work, to blame for this! 36 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

would take it out on the teachers who seem to be punching bags.

With this nuclear family and materialistic pattern, do you think children have psychological problems? If yes, do you have counselling facility to deal with it? Yes, about 14 years ago, I found there was something wrong with a certain child. He didn’t strike me as the ‘boy next-door.’ So we took him in and we watched him for about a month or two. Yes, he had a lot of problems. He couldn’t read properly, he couldn’t write properly. He couldn’t sit still. There was no eye contact with anybody. And he was quite different from the other children. When I spoke to some of the teachers, they said it was difficult to handle him because he was very different from the others. He knew no boundaries and he did not know what he was doing, they said. So we decided to experiment by opening a separate class for such children. We did this for other children like him, because we realised that we had more children like him in our school. We started a class with three children. I named it ‘Sparkles’ because I feel there is a sparkle in every child, we just have to find what it is. After a meeting with all

THEN

Staff Room

Principal’s Bungalow

NOW

those parents of such children, they understood the concept behind my effort. They were very excited. After a stint in the Sparkles class, we would put them back with the regular children. So that the child never felt that he was different from the others. He didn’t have this feeling of being segregated. Since then we have been expanding. Today we have a psychologist on our panel, I have nine remedial teachers in Sparkles, three in each school. Each school has a Sparkles department and each school has about 200-odd children to nurture, guide and educate.

So what do you do in the Sparkles class? We teach them in “a different way,” We try to bring out their weaknesses and work on them. There are psychologists, who are specially trained to treat such problems in children. There is a lot of love, a lot of personal attention given to each child, depending on what his weakness is, be it ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), dyslexia, or dysgraphia or things like that. If he has dysgraphia, then they will work in that direction. These teachers are specially trained to deal with a Sparkles child. This concept has not lost its need even today. Some parents realise that something is

not normal with their child. So they come and talk to my psychologist. My counsellors even counsel the parents and help them understand what is wrong with the child. We have trained people to find out what is wrong so that we can treat them correctly. Rather than a medical/psychologist intervention, this is without medication in most cases. It’s just with love and guidance in the right direction.

Do you think other schools should also have such facilities? If they don’t, they should open one, because I believe today’s child goes through a lot of trauma. The mother goes to work in the morning, there is no breakfast. The father comes back late at night. The child is left alone the whole day. What does the child do? Myriad problems develop.

What is your take on the lack of communication between the parents and children? There is very little quality time when both the mother and father are working. In a lot of cases, if not all, when the mother is at home when the child comes home, she cannot cope with him. He/she goes for tuitions or say, art class, or judo and comes

back for dinner. When the child comes home for dinner, the father returns home after a hard day’s work and since he has little time with the child, the child’s bedtime is stretched to after 10 pm, which leads to his / her having much less sleep than he normally needs, as he has to get up early for school the next morning. All the niceties of telling their child a bed-time story, or tucking him into bed, or even saying “good night” are gone. All they do and say is, “Go, get to bed.” We have technology and the compulsion of both parents having to work, to blame for this!

What, according to you, has changed in your school administration or outlook after the RTE Act was brought in? What do you think about the 25 percent reservation for the underprivileged students in every class? Would you elaborate on the pros and cons of the RTE Act, as a Principal? In itself, the RTE is a good Act because it is attempting what our country should have done years ago. It is trying to spread education to those who do not have the opportunity. It’s still not successful because most of it is concentrated in the big cities. It does not go to the villages and talukas April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 37

CRADLE OF LEADERSHIP where there are so many people who don’t know what education is. Where we are concerned, we are minorities. We are either linguistic or religious minorities, and the Constitution of India grants us the right to open and run our schools. We are doing this to give our children the best. We sponsor students irrespective of their education, or what community they belong to. There may be 12 or 15 Anglo-Indians that we sponsor because there are only that many Anglo-Indians left. The rest of the 500 would be Hindus, Muslims, Marwaris, Sikhs and also from very poor, broken families. So we do it voluntarily, not under force or pressure. We have taken the Government to the Court. We have fought against the RTE and won the case. Now all Minority-Aided and Unaided schools are free from the RTE. We don’t come under the RTE. However, most of these schools do a lot of social service. We all have scholarships, we have sponsorships, we have freeships. We also go even further. We are training six boys and six girls for teacher’s training, sponsoring the whole lot.

Which is the better idea, a boys’ school, exclusively girls’ school or a Co-Educational school? In the past, a co-ed school was ideal, even though it was a boarding school, because everything was different in those days. Today, we are exposed to so much, TV, films and computers. The media has exposed children to a lot of things they should not be exposed to, because of which we have a lot of boy/girl problems. Although we have this problem, I still say it should be co-ed as young teenagers learn. Else, when they leave school and go to college, and they suddenly come across men or women, they do not know how to react and thereby get into trouble. Co-ed is a better system, because they learn a lot about themselves, or how to behave and how to respect a lady or a gentleman, and how to grow up socially in a balanced way and clean environment. Most of them learn that there is a certain line that you do not cross. However,

Taking time off to be with the students

day, provided he is getting the best, he is happiest there. “Why should I put him into a nearby school, if it is going to provide second- or third-rate education?” is their view. So it is not practical because there is not going to be a good school within three kms radius in every neighbourhood.

What is your opinion about the different School Boards in the country and the ultimate growth of the child? Do you think there should be just one central board? No, I don’t think there should be one Central

“The present system is good with the states having their own boards, besides the CBSC, ICSE Board. Students can choose what they want. With these various boards, children get a lot of exposure, and they can plan for their future education” every basket may have a bad apple. It doesn’t mean that the whole basket is bad!

All the restrictions that the government has imposed on you, such as to take students from a three-km radius, no interviews for primary admissions, etc. Is it practical in reality? In reality, it is not practical because every parent wants to go to the best school. They don’t want any mediocre school or government school. Parents say it is okay if their child has to travel nine km a 38 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

Board. If you are talking about the CBSE, State Board, ICSE, these are recognised Boards. They set certain trails which are very well established and have produced very brilliant people in the world today. Curtailing it all and merging them into one Board, would leave no choice for the student. Education would get stabilised and stagnant. The present system is good with the States having their own Boards, besides the Central board as well as the ICSE Board held Examinations for all over India. Students can choose, because that is

one of the things we have - freedom of education, freedom to choose what they want. With these various Boards, children get a lot of exposure, enabling them to plan for their future education.

What do you think of the transparency that is coming into the CBSE schools because of the Right to Information? It is very much needed as long as it is not abused. You see, all schools are open to giving information which will not be used against them, but this is just data collection, which they use against schools. Today, people do not look at things as they are. They want to look beneath the surface and in many cases, they do manufacture problems.

What is your opinion about teaching as a profession in India? Do you think you get quality teachers? Do they get the right salaries for this noble profession? Does it match? Today, a teacher’s job is not the ideal job with regard to maintaining your living standards, ensuring your future or your children’s, because you cannot be paid enough in this profession. It does not generate income enough to pay what the corporate sector pays. A school does not have enough finance to give all the privileges that the corporate world gives to its staff. Then what is the future of the teacher? When teachers retire, what do they get? Do they get pension? No, it’s just provident fund and their personal savings. However, if you are a government teacher, you get pension, you get

Should technological applications be taught in schools on a big scale? Yes! We have already started that with the help of the software that exists. About 50 percent of our classes are furnished with these technological gadgets. We will bring them to the rest of the classes in course of time, when finances are available.

Do you think technology will take away something from the child, like handwriting or something else we used to do manually?

What would you want from the government for a teacher? All schools should be able to pay teachers government rates, at the level of a gazetted officer. That’s a good salary. They should get privileges of pension, medical insurance from the government. They should get housing privileges.

So you do agree that teaching is a thankless job? Absolutely! A thankless job as far as finances are concerned, as far as the problems are concerned. However, at the end of the day when you go back and you have a good class, a good lesson, children behave themselves, they give you good results— that is gratifying in itself. It doesn’t buy you onions and potatoes but it gives you satisfaction that makes one feel that “because of me they have benefited.” That’s the reward.

z Admiral Sushil Kumar – Chief of Naval

Staff (Retd) z Vice Admiral Sangram Singh Byce (Retd) z Rear Admiral C S Patham (Retd) z Rear Admiral Mohan Rao (Retd) z Vice Admiral A K Singh, Director General –

Indian Coast Guard (Retd)

It definitely affects handwriting. It affects the reading ability too because he is not picking up books to read, he is looking at screens. He would rather look, than read. It is happening that way, but otherwise it is producing brilliant minds.

z Air Marshal B. Keshav Rao –

We spoke about psychological problems, do you have addiction problems such as drugs, alcohol in the school?

OTHER NOTABLE ALUMNI

So far, thankfully we haven’t had any cases of drug addiction. We don’t suspect anyone of taking drugs. In the past, when we had bigger boys in the school, we might have had one or two incidences, but it has not been a problem with us. Definitely not in the school.

get pension, you get loans, and so on. With other teachers, you have a small salary but 10 times the number of problems. Teaching does not end when the bell rings for the last period of the day but extends to the time the teacher goes home. He / she takes a pile of notebooks, and has examination papers to check. They have to prepare for the next day’s lessons, as well as convince themselves that they want to go back to a rowdy class, face rowdy children. So, ideally, I would not tell somebody to become a teacher, unless they are devoted to the profession.

Illustrious alumni of the Bishop’s School, Pune

Earlier you had just two or three schools at the level of Bishop’s in Pune, but today you have a whole lot of schools thrown open. What is your take on that as regards quality of teaching, quality of schools, and the fees? Why is it that your school still stands out? I don’t know what to say about that. I ask myself, there are so many schools, they are charging such a lot of fees, they are promising the world, then why do people come only to Bishop’s? So let the public decide why they come here and they can answer that question.

How do your alumni give back to the school? Donations? Time? I have never found in any other school the spirit of oneness that I have found in this School. They are very close in their own way to their own little groups. They all still love Bishop’s. On singing the School Song, they will be standing tall, their shoulders drawn back, chest out and at attention. In that way, they are very faithful, very loyal. They come regularly to the school. They walk around with tears in their eyes when they look at their desk, still in the same place. They feel their history is here. You know they love the School so much. As for the contributions, we haven’t asked. We haven’t asked for them to financially support the School. A lot of them are doing extremely well. We have got students who are billionaires but we never ask for funds. Some have come forward in groups, voluntarily with donations. A lot of them come forward with sentiments, with suggestions. Most of them come back letting us know how much they love the School and what they are today is

Commandant, AFMC (Retd) z Lt General Bhupinder Singh, Director

General – Military Training (Retd) z (Late) Brig. N B Grant (Retd)

z Sabeer Bhatia, founder of Hotmail z Cyrus Poonawalla, Serum Institute of India z Pheroz Pudumjee, Director, Thermax Ltd. z Ken Ghosh, Hindi film director. z Purab Kohli, Indian model, VJ and actor. z Keshav Iyengar, Musician z Ahmed Khan, Bollywood choreographer z Sashi Menon, Indian Davis Cup, ATP Tour

Pro z Tausif Malik, Indian American Media

personality, publisher, editor, creator of Muslim Spelling Bee Competitions z Gautam Bambawale, Ambassador to Pakistan z Satish Magar, Chairman & MD, Magarpatta Township, Pune because of the Bishop’s care.

What is the one thing that you would like to tell the government to improve the education system and teaching profession in our country? Or about schools in the country? Trust the schools. Support the ones that are really doing a dedicated job. It is not a profession; it is a calling for them. They teach because they want to spread knowledge. Support them, stop ignoring them. In so many ways there are just roadblocks for teachers, roadblocks for schools. Remove these, and believe me, education here will match anyone’s dreams. They only have to stop bothering us and let us go forward, educating people.

What is the philosophy of your life and your school? The philosophy of my life is to help the downtrodden, whoever they are, whatever the matter. Where the School is concerned, we want to produce good, educated, thinking young ladies and gentlemen, ‘Thorough’ in every way, who will support the country in what is right and not in what is wrong - never ever wanting to work for themselves but to work for others first. vinita.deshmukh@corporatecitizen.in April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 39

MANAGE MONEY DR ANIL LAMBA

Marginal Costing Principles & Break-Even Analysis Apply Marginal Costing principles to understand your business better, and to take financially intelligent decisions

n the previous article we discussed what Break-Even Point is and what Contribution is. Can you tell me what this is a contribution towards? Contribution is called Contribution because it is the contribution of each unit sold towards the organization’s bottom line. Consider what the bottom line looked like when Rita was selling just one table. There was a loss of 9,850. She then made and sold the second table. Her loss reduced to 9,700. The Contribution of the second table towards reduction of the loss was 150. At a sales level of 67 tables, the profit was 50. When the 68th table was sold, the bottom line improved to 200. What was the Contribution of the 68th table to the organization’s bottom line? Yes, it was 150 once again. If an organization is making losses, with every increase in quantity sold, its losses will reduce to the extent of Contribution. And if the business is already making profits, with every increase in sales, profits will increase to the extent of the Contribution of the quantity sold. Bottom line is always impacted to the extent of Contribution. Let’s say that Rita’s business has crossed the breakeven point and is now selling 100 tables. Let us draw out the profitability statement for a sales volume of 100 tables. Per Unit

100 Tables

250

Sales

25,000

100

Variable Cost

10,000

100

Fixed Cost

10,000

200

(-) Total Cost

20,000

= Profit

5,000

On sale of 100 tables, the sales value, at the rate of 250 per unit, is 25,000. The Variable Cost at 100 per unit works out to 10,000. The Fixed Cost is also 10,000 and the effective Fixed Cost per unit would then be 100 (10,000/100). The company, therefore, makes a profit of 50 per unit, or 5,000 for 100 units. Now Rita calls a meeting of all the salespeople. She tells them that she has some good news to share. They are all aware that theirs is a relatively new table-manufacturing organization and their break-even point is 67 tables. She is now very happy to inform them that, since the sales team has done a 40 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

tremendous job, the organization has, in a short period of time, already broken even and today they have reached a sales volume of 100 tables, well above the break-even point! She then shares the financial results with her team. She informs them that today they are making a table at an inhouse cost of 200 and selling it for 250. Each table sold by the organization makes a profit of 50 and since they have sold 100 tables, at the rate of 50 per table, the organization’s profit is 5,000. Rita now exhorts them to carry on the good work that they are doing. But she also warns them that there are competitors in the field, and it may happen that the competition may quote a price lower than theirs to get the business. She informs her sales team that with this in mind, she is empowering them to be competitive and reduce the selling price of their tables, if required, as long as they don’t accept orders at a loss. Her instruction to the sales team is to sell the tables, as far as possible, at the stipulated selling price of 250. However, if circumstances warrant, they may reduce the price at their discretion. But they must under no circumstances reduce the price to such an extent that the organization makes a loss. (to be continued)

Dr Anil Lamba is a corporate trainer of international repute on finance management. His clients comprise several hundred large and medium sized corporations across different countries of the world. He is the author of the bestselling book Romancing the Balance Sheet. He can be contacted at anil@lamconschool.com

Pic: Yusuf Khan

STRAIGHT TALK

‘Life is a matter of choice... so choose wisely’ Prem Singh, Global President (HR) at pharma giant Wockhardt on the importance of passion, depth, creativity and willingness to go the distance in coming up with better and more efficient ways of doing one’s job By Kalyani Sardesai

imes may have changed, so have the challenges of business. Even so, a few values retain their timelessness. Hence, Prem Singh, Global President (HR) for Wockhardt would recommend a few mantras for success for young management hopefuls. “Be passionate about your work, go into the depth and the nitty-gritty of the ground realities, dirty your hands if need be and understand your business completely. For instance, I may be an HR professional, but I can speak in a logical and informed manner about the associated areas of work, even if they are not directly related to my work,” he says. Simply put, excellence is a matter of choice. “We tend to take the easiest possible route, which may not necessarily be the path of excellence. The path of excellence is not easy, but it is doable… if you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t—well, either ways you are right. “A keen athlete himself, he cites a few sporting analogies to illustrate his point. “Take the pole-vaulter for instance. Before taking that jump, he first gears himself mentally for it… he envisages victory and reiterates his faith in his own abilities. Similarly, when you are running the latter half of a marathon, it is not your body, but mind that keeps you going, even though you are exhausted,” he says. In short, everything starts with the mind.

Business against a backdrop of VUCA A VUCA (volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous) environment is a reality of our time. This is reflected in the changing strategies of companies. There was a time when five-year plans were possible; today people only look at

a horizon of one or two years ahead. It won’t be long before quarterly plans become a reality, he points out. To win in such a scenario, you have to think out of the box, and innovate. At the same time, it is wise to communicate. “In our company recently, I successfully managed to implement a paperless system of increments. Instead of sending out letters to employees through their respective line managers and higher-ups, an elaborate course that would take about four to six weeks, we managed to do the same in a matter of minutes via email,” he says. “Despite apprehensions from colleagues as to how the idea would be perceived, given that the procedure no longer required line managers to give out letters to their juniors, things worked out well.” But for that transition to happen smoothly, he spent weeks in preparation. “I spoke to lots of colleagues and convinced them of the importance of doing things differently. “Unlike the manufacturing industry, pharma is still a little conservative in its approach—and I had to factor that in. In short, to work smart, you first need to work hard.” Harnessing the potential of Gen-Z Not very long from now, India is going to witness a major shift in the work demography. As per projections, 60 percent of the workforce will be straight out of college, and thus very young. To keep this youth engaged and interested, the line managers will have to learn ways to deal with them. These youngsters are tech-savvy, think differently and have high ambitions. “Those companies who foresee this scenario and prepare for it will do well, others are in for a surprise. Similarly, there’s no wishing away tech-

nology and its influence on the youth. We have to learn how to leverage it to our advantage, and ensure its responsible use,” he notes. The quality of candidates—a wish list “I would say I am averagely happy with the quality of candidates we pick up from campus recruitments,” he says. However, he adds, it would be a good idea for management colleges to dedicate 30 to 40 percent of its attention on the industry interface, so that when these kids are finally ready for their first job, they do at an advantage in the sense of knowing what to expect. Challenges before the pharma world There is still a huge population that does not have access to medicine—and affordable medicine at that. Naturally, the effort is to reach out to as many as possible. “Besides this, R&D is a major area of focus given that there has been no blockbuster molecule aka major medicinal discovery over the last 15-20 years,” he says. Diversity and inclusion The perception that women are not suitable for certain jobs is fast-changing, as women are increasingly proving themselves in different aspects of industry, be it HR, R&D, intellectual property, or even marketing. In my own company, there is a deliberate policy that focuses on diversity and inclusion. My work-life balance I love music and sports, and that helps me destress. I play badminton on weekends apart from practising my singing. kalyanisardesai@gmail.com. April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 41

LOVED & MARRIED TOO

It is not often these days that a college romance fructifies into a wedlock. Corporate Citizen unlocks the story of love that has culminated into marriage, for we believe in the stability of a relationship and family unit. We bring to you real-life romances that got sealed in marriage

When love overcomes all Sunita and Ravi Teja have a simple mantra to keep it working: “If you care for and believe in each other, nothing else matters. Not the differences in culture, nor food habits, nor a million other irritants”. They sure know what they’re talking about—she’s a Thakur from UP, he a ‘pure veg’ rice-eating Andhraite. And they’ve been married for 18 years By Kalyani Sardesai

his story was scripted bit by bit at various points: from the time he was just one of her brother’s buddies—to becoming her ‘permanent’ boyfriend in engineering college as part of a ragging ritual—to the point when they actually became serious each about each other—got married and overcame cultural differences together. A good 18 years and two kids later, Ravi (45) and Sunita (42) aver it has been a rewarding process in every way. He is Vice President at Nihilent Technologies, she Senior Project Manager (R&D) at SAS. This is their journey, and this is how they see it.

Back to the beginning It all started during their engineering days at the National Institute of Technology, Allahabad. While both of them had come all the way from

42 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

Mumbai to study, they barely knew each other. “It was during one of the ragging sessions at the girls’ hostel where we are asked to name a ‘temporary’ and ‘permanent’ boyfriend each,” recollects Sunita. “Not knowing what to do, I called up my brother who gave me the names of his friends who were studying in the same college. One of them was Ravi Teja—a ‘great and throroughly decent’ chap—as per my brother,” she smiles. “I had vague recollections of him coming home, but nothing more.” But, he was a safe bet, and she went ahead and called him her ‘permanent boyfriend’. Of course, he had no inkling of any of this. However, as things would develop in their own way—the controversial Mandal Commission and the associated brouhaha—happened just then. Thanks to the heat of student politics, college was shut down for a few days and the

Pics: Yusuf Khan

them with the choicest non-veg fare,” laughs beautifully to the need of the hour. I have seen Mumbai students decided to return home for Sunita. “She wasn’t very amused though. It her evolve from a fun-loving girl to a very serithe duration. highlighted the differences in lifestyle—which ous young mother and professional. Now that “A group of boys duly came to pick us up can turn into a serious matter later. Fortunately our kids, Ayushi (15) and Siddhant (10) are from the hostel as it was a night train. One of it did not, even though we did move in with our slightly grown up, she’s lightening up again.” them was Ravi. First impression: why on earth in-laws for some time. The thing is, I was just so While Ravi’s work requires him to travel a is he wearing dark glasses at this hour? Obvihappy to be married to the man of my choice great deal, Sunita is the grounding factor, not ously he’s trying to look cool.” (He was not! He that eating super-spicy, Andhra food was only a averse to taking a break from work, when resimply had conjunctivitis!) minor inconvenience.” quired. “It also helps that the company I am As for him, the first impression was pretty working for is known for its impressive. “A young, focused and studious girl consideration of its employseated on a suitcase—studying amidst all the ees. Besides which, I have chaos of a railway platform. (Correction: she taken the effort to cultivate was reading a novel!) So even as they did talk and groom household help. a bit on the journey back home, it wasn’t until Reliable help is hard to find, later that they seriously entered into each othand when you do find it, one er’s orbit once again. This time, it was a freshers’ must extend every facility party and the girls had to ‘propose’ to one of the as an employer,” says Sunita. boys. Obviously, Sunita’s first choice was Ravi!! Of course, Ravi does his bit Though this was all fun and games, Ravi did whenever possible, by takmake his interest known to her. “You know ing up their son’s studies and what she did in response? She summoned her making Sunday morning chai brother to the hostel and complained about that everyone loves. me!! But guess what? I had already made my Parenting is another imintentions known to him—and assured him I portant arena where teamwas serious about Sunita,” he grins. work is a must. “Well, I am Thus, to Sunita’s surprise, her brother actualthe bad cop, and he’s the good ly started supporting Ravi. “Honestly, though, I cop,” laughs Sunita. “But all sedid not mind about it too much,” she smiles at rious decisions with regard to the memory. the kids are taken jointly. Also, Gradually, they started dating. “We went on it is crucial never to contradict dates on a cycle rickshaw and I learnt to ride each other in front of the chila bike for her—and had an acdren. All disagreements must cident in the process,” laughs The pillars be dealt with in private.” Ravi. “But those were wonderof a marriage Quality time consists of ful days.” z Love, care and nurture playing cricket with the kids, Neither set of parents was each other or long overseas vacations as thrilled. “We both come from z Build a support system a family to exotic destinations highly conservative set-ups. to help with the kids from Australia to Dubai to My dad was a school principal z Take long vacations South Africa or Kerala. at Kendriya Vidyalaya. He was together The duo also believe in very keen I make something Sunita and Ravi with their daughter, Ayushi and son, Siddhant z Don’t prolong arguments out of my life—as it wasn’t z Let go of minor irritants common for girls from our villike food habits, etc. for lage to be professionally qualithe sake of the bigger fied. Ravi’s family was similarly picture traditional. His father worked in the accounts department at the Shipping Corporation of “Of course, we did sneak out for street food India. We were non-vegetarian Thakurs, they the importance of not letting negativity fester. every now and then,” adds Ravi. were vegetarian Andhraites,” she says. “Fights tend to be hurtful and energy-consumInitially, Sunita’s mother flatly informed her ing; so it’s best to talk it out as soon as possible,” that such a match could never be. It would have says Ravi. “Of course, in most cases I end up From strength to strength to be a Thakur boy and no one else. Howevapologising.” In any marriage, corporate or othAs is the case with any partnership, a marriage is er, time, and the positive impression made by erwise, love, respect and belief are non-negotiaabout cherishing each other’s qualities. “While the soft-spoken and gentlemanly Ravi had her ble. “Like any other couple we’ve had our ups the first thing I noticed was his obvious good change her mind. Nevertheless, the engagement and downs. But no matter what the situation, looks, I soon realised they were matched by a was a tension-fraught affair given that Ravi’s we’ve never lost our belief in the institution of fine nature as well,” says Sunita. “He is gentle, mother had never tasted North Indian fare like marriage. Despite the march of time, one aspect soft-spoken, respectful and giving. He is also an Chhole and Palak Paneer. “So she asked my that has stayed as is the sense of love and protecexcellent listener.” bhabhi, is this the food you serve your guests? tion I get from him. It’s a beautiful thing to be For his part, Ravi admires his wife for her To which my bhabhi replied in all innocence, cherished,” rounds off Sunita. “discipline, straightforward nature, clarity of of course not! We actually take pride in plying kalyanisardesai@gmail.com thought and communication”. “She can adjust

But, he was a safe bet, and she went ahead and called him her ‘permanent boyfriend’. Of course, he had no inkling of any of this

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 43

CORPORATE LIFE

DESIGN THINKING Creating unique customer experiences

In this fast-changing world, for the organisation to maintain its agility and competitiveness, design thinking is the need of the hour and no organisation can remain aloof to this kind of thinking and shy away from it

44 / Corporate Citizen / April March1-15, 16-31, 2016 2016

By Seema Jacob

o two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it is made by one central idea and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth and serve its own single purpose. It doesn’t borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.” What a great thought from Ayn Rand for the construction of a building! And, what a great way to construct a building according to the human need. When we keep the user at the centre of our thinking, just as in the above example, we end up creating unique experiences for each of them. Don’t you think such a people-centred approach will make customers feel unique? Will creating such kind of experiences help business? The answer obviously is yes. In this fast-changing world, for the organisation to maintain its agility and competitiveness, design thinking is the need of the hour and no organisation can remain aloof to this kind of thinking and shy away from it. Recently, I underwent a similar experience, where the challenge was to enhance customer experience. A new customer had approached, seeking an intervention training programme during a project transition, for teams based out of different geographies. There was a breakdown of respect and communication among the team members. As a consequence, trust was lost and work was severely impacted. When analysis was done, it seemed that the issue was emerging from the fact that all of them were thinking from their point of view and none of them were thinking from other’s point of view. Design thinking seemed to be the solution of this concern as one of its elements is culture. It was brought to people’s notice, that what happens in one culture, need not be the same in another culture and one should respect uniqueness of cultural values. The teams understood the crux of the solution and later when checked with the manager, he seemed to be happy with the results. This is just an example, however, every global organisation faces such situations number of times with internal and external customers. If one can convert an experience into memorable customer experiences, I do not see why customers will not come back to you again and again. Having said that, the question is how should one ‘think’ to create such unique experiences? It seems that many industries have found the answer to create such experiences through design thinking, which is about humanising busi-

ness. What is design thinking? It is a set of principles that can be used to make user experience simple and delightful by helping them to engage with and adapt innovative ideas. Design thinking applies the principles of design to the way people work and tackle complexities in modern technology and business. Is this thinking style innate, inborn or can people learn it? The good news is, it is a skill and when practised can be mastered over the years. There is tremendous scope to drive design thinking as a value and culture in organisations. People have to live it every day as part of their culture, otherwise it will remain a buzzword. Some of the elements of design thinking given below, when practiced and taken care of, can strengthen an organisation’s competitiveness.

What is design thinking? It is a set of principles that can be used to make user experience simple and delightful by helping them to engage with and adapt innovative ideas. Design thinking applies the principles of design to the way people work and tackle complexities in modern technology and business People-centric approach As we weave unique experiences for our customers, we cannot leave the individual out of it. While we create that experience, we would need to bring the person to the epicentre of what we do. Thus, it will be appreciated by the person experiencing it.

solution. Is it easy to acquire such a mindset? Answer may be no, because in this kind of thinking, assumption is, design thinking may not be successful and could lead to failure.

Keep it simple No matter how complex the processes are, while creating a product or a process for a customer, it is important to simplify, when you bring it to the user’s notice. Rather than dropping names of great technology we use, it is necessary to see how beneficial the technology would be for the user.

Involvement Unique experiences for the customer will not happen, if only a few think in this manner. Everybody in the organisation will have to work towards being MAD (making a difference). Design thinking is all about having a common understanding, by paying attention to simple things that matter. A good example is the UK Government’s Digital Services Department office. As we walk into the office, we would find the walls plastered with post-its, drawings that detail the work in progress, ideas and plans. In this simple method, don’t you see the presence of all five elements of design thinking that will impact the customer’s experience and make it flourish? These elements are just a beginning to build unique experiences. It is an uphill task, if one doesn’t have the desire to make things better. For this, persistent people should explore ideas adventurously. When people think in this manner, they are engaged and persuasive. Success cannot evade such people for a long time. What do you think? The need of the hour is to re-imagine the roles we play as professionals, and master the art of creating unique experiences for customers through design thinking. (The author is Manager, Wipro Technologies)

tadka

Understand the context Just as important it is to understand the person, it is equally important to understand the context the person operates in. This is a fundamental principle of design thinking. To do this, listen keenly with intent to your customers.

Break free of habitual thinking For design thinking, one has to trash the habitual way of thinking and challenge established rules. As you think and generate more options, you become flexible enough to choose a better

India’s giant appetite The Indian food and grocery market is the world’s sixth-largest, with retail contributing 70 percent of the sales. It is projected to grow at the rate of 104 percent, touching US$ 482 billion by 2020.

March April16-31, 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 45

CORPORATE HISTORY

Named after the French opera, made in India; global in outlook, yet every inch the Indian woman’s best friend for decades, here’s exploring the enduring trajectory of the cosmetics giant Lakme. Like several other good things, (no surprises there)it bears the JRD Tata stamp

LAKME was Nehru’s idea By Kalyani Sardesai

ye-conic. Face Souffle. Your favourite soot-black eye-liner, and beloved mocha lipstick. Memories--ranging from your first date to that picture from Convocation day--to your turn as the bride--to baby shower to kiddies’ birthday party...if you’re a desi lady, chances are most--if not all your life’s moments--have a touch of Lakme about them. With over 35 percent of the ₹1,100 crore Indian cosmetics market share, Lakme is still the brand that packs a punch. And we have two visionaries Pandit Nehru and JRD Tata associated with it. Here’s why.

Here’s how it all started Flashback to the early fifties. India was a young country, and typically possessed all of the economic troubles of a budding economy. Naturally, Prime Minister Nehru was concerned about the Indian middle and upper class ladies giving away valuable foreign exchange buying cosmet46 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

ics from the West. Not their fault really. What did the Indian market has to offer them anyway? Besides, two centuries of exposure to the Raj-and Europe-had somehow sent across a quiet message: make-up from the best, is by default, the best. To help change matters, Nehru asked industrialist JRD Tata to step in. He was the only one with the necessary entrepreneurship to make a difference. Never one to back off from a challenge -Tata began to study the situation carefully. To appeal to Indian ladies, the brand had to have an aspirational touch-be affordable to all classes and yet find resonance across the board. After much deliberation, he decided to call it Lakme--incorporating the dramatic and glamorous appeal of the French op-

era after which it was named. Interestingly, the name is a western derivative of the Indian Goddess of Wealth--Lakshmi. But there’s no way Indian ladies would be buying anything called Lakshmi kajal or lipstick- and so Lakme it was. A touch of irony there, anyone? In any case, this being the first time anyone was manufacturing cosmetics on desi shores, a lot of research was required to figure out the unique needs of Indian skin and colour. Experts were put to work round the clock. In 1952, Lakme started operations as a 100 percent subsidiary of Tata Oil Mills. Simone Tata, the Swiss wife of Naval H. Tata, joined as managing director in 1961 became its chairperson in 1982. It helped that she was an European lady and understood where exactly to steer the budding beauty brand. Christened India’s very own Corporate Czarina Simone was the breath of feminine air in a largely male dominated world. Stylish, warm and innovative, she had lived long enough through the second world War in Switzerland to understand the importance of thrift and value for money-and the Lakme line reflected that. It was Simone who was largely responsible in making Lakmé the household name that it

Deepika Padukone is amongst the best looking people it has featured

became. She was appointed to the board of Tata Industries in 1989. Time went on. Tata eventually sold Lakmé to Hindustan Unilever in 1996 for ₹200 crore-given Unilever’s vast and varied experience in the global FMCG field. In 2014, Lakme was ranked 36th among India’s most trusted brands according to the Brand Trust Report 2014. The company is the title sponsor for Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) a bi-annual fashion event which takes place in Mumbai.

Image over the years

looking people on the Indian landscape-and launched many an iconic career.

A touch of controversy Since its inception, there have been rumours of discontent with regard to the much touted Fashion Week, how it is more about politics and less about fashion and so on. From movie star Akshay Kumar getting arrested for obscenity (when he playfully asked wife Twinkle to lightly unzip the jeans he was wearing), to unexpected changes of mentors--apart from leaving out noted designers, there have been several criticisms directed at the event.

In 2014, Lakme was ranked 36th among India’s most trusted brands according to the Brand Trust Report 2014. It is also the title sponsor for Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) fashion event

Lakme has also played on pricing for its revamped range for the working woman. It is priced between ₹200 and ₹600, bringing it within the reach of most. International brands such as Revlon, Chambor and even L’Oreal Paris are all priced over ₹500, and Maybelline is the only mass-market brand among the global players.

Lakme Fashion Week and School of Style Over the decades, Lakme has not restricted itself to manufacturing make-up, but exploring the world of glamour in its entirety. From Lakme salons to cater to your daily make-up needs to a fashion week and school of style, the brand has gone the distance. For starters, the Lakme Fashion Week is a bi-annual fashion event that takes place in Mumbai in February and August every year. Run by the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), its title sponsor is Lakme, first started in 1999, it features the creme de la creme models and stars of the Hindi film industry, not to forget the most coveted and respected names in the world of fashion. From Arjun Rampal to Malaika Arora Khan, Aishwarya to Kareena to Deepika Padukone, it has featured the best

Surveying the Competition

It’s not that there haven’t been hiccups in the brand’s trajectory. From the early nineties, foreign giants like Maybelline, Revlon, Yardley, Garnier and L’Oreal have made their own mark, but Lakme’s outreach and affordable tag have always worked for it. It has also withstood the competition posed by cheap local brands and imitations. kalyanisardesai@gmail.com

tadka

Food Parks a reality now The Government of India has approved the setting up of five numbers of Mega Food Parks in the states of Bihar, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The Government plans to set up 42 such mega food parks across the country in next three to four years.

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 47

SURVEY

INDIA’S OBESITY REPORT CARD India is often portrayed internationally as a country with a malnourishment problem. A country where 270 million people live below the ‘poverty line’, the West often tends to paint India with a single brush. Here is a starkly different fact: India is the third most obese country in the world, just trailing the US and China. For the country’s rising middle class, junk food, alcohol and a sedentary lifestyle have led to an epidemic, making one in every five Indian men and women either obese or overweight. Corporate Citizen takes a closer look at the National Family Health Survey 2007 and latest official government statistics, to put the spotlight on this obesity epidemic By Neeraj Varty

48 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

t is time to sit back and reflect. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in India in the 21st century, with morbid obesity affecting five percent of the country’s population. Unhealthy, processed food has become much more accessible following India’s continued integration in global food markets. This, combined with rising middle class incomes, is increasing the average caloric intake per individual among the middle class and above income households. Obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascu-

lar disease, cases of which are rapidly rising in India. Overweight in adults are categorised as Body Mass Index of 25 kg/m² to 30 kg/m² and obesity as Body Mass Index of more than 30 kg/m². In 2010, overweight and obesity were estimated to cause 3 to 4 million deaths, 3.9 percent of years of life lost, and 3.8 percent of disabilityadjusted life-years worldwide. With lifestyle disorders forcing more and more people to reel under excess body weight, even relatively younger people are developing joint disorders and knee pain. Excessive weight is associated with a series of health problems, including blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular ailments. Yet another problem is that obesity puts people at an increased risk of developing osteoarthritis. “Osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease, involves degradation of the condition of joints mostly due to loss of cartilage and may cause stiffness, locking or pain. Excess weight makes a person more susceptible to osteoarthritis. Experts say the prevalence of obesity is greater in urban areas, and women are more affected than men.

Punjabis are officially the most obese people in India

30.3%

of Punjabi men are obese Almost 1/3rd of all Punjabi men are obese, which is a very scary statistic indeed. Punjabis love butter, ghee and foods with saturated fats, which are extremely fattening.

37.5%

of Punjabi women are obese Punjabi women are the most obese women in India, and some of the most obese in Asia. They almost rival Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s obesity high of 39% in some states, which are officially the most obese states in the world.

Tripura has the leanest population in India.

4.8%

Only

of men are obese This is an amazing statistic. For example, the leanest city in America is Boulder, Colorado, which still has a 12.4% obesity rate. Tripura is 1/3rd of that.

7.1%

of women are obese Again, a great score by Tripura. Obesity percentages of under 10% are considered steller worldwide.

Obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, cases of which are rapidly rising in India. Excessive weight is associated with a series of health problems, including blood pressure, diabetes, and osteoarthritis

South India is highly obese The states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh have obesity percentages of

24.3, 19.8 and 17.6 for males 34, 24.4 and 22.7 for females, respectively.

The high prevalence of rice in the South Indian diet is the primary reason for obesity. Latest estimates show that prevalence of obesity among adolescents (13-18 years) has grown from

16 29 percent over the last five

to years.

This can be attributed to more disposable income among the middle class, as well as the increasing prevalence of junk food in childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diet.

Central India is much fitter The states of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh have obesity percentages of

5.3, 5.4 and 6.5 for males

Obesity, much like money, is not equally distributed in India. There is a large disparity in weight distribution in the country.

Women are more obese than men In each and every state surveyed, women are more obese than men. This is a global issue, but starkly more evident in India.

5.9, 6.7 and 7.6 for females respectively.

neeraj.varty@corporatecitizen.com

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 49

SPORTS BIZ

Cricket ad earnings Sony with an estimated ad revenue of ₹1,100 crore takes centre stage with IPL under its belt, while Star India notches up ₹300 crore via ICC World T20 championship BY JOE WILLIAMS

ith two channels broadcasting HD feed and three the standard definition (SD) one, Sony, who got the right to telecast Indian Premier League have an edge over Star India who beamed the ICC T20 World Cup cricket which concludes early this month. The ninth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket grabbed centre spot in advertisement. According to sources, Sony Pictures Network (SPN, earlier called Multi Screen Media India), has scaled over ₹1,100 crore in advertising revenue, with just a few days for the championship to be kicked off. The mega event starts from April 9 and goes on to May 29, this year.

Sure shot, IPL “IPL is a mature event. The fluctuation in viewership ratings and reach is minimal. The outlays are huge, but so are the returns. We doubled the ad rates for the high-definition (HD) feed this year to ₹1.5-1.75 lakh per 10 seconds and despite this, interest from advertisers has been growing. We have very little inventory left on HD and are almost sold out on SD (standard-definition),” said inside sources. Sony has been IPL’s official broadcaster since the tournament began in 2008. Advertisement rates for the SD feed are up 15 percent to ₹ 5.5-5.75 lakh per 10 seconds. While Vodafone and Amazon continue to be on-air presenting sponsors, Oppo is the new entrant to the list. Yes Bank also continues as an on-air

sponsor, among others. SPN will telecast the tournament on five channels -- Sony Max, Sony Six, Sony Six HD, Sony ESPN and Sony ESPN HD. Sony Max will air the Hindi feed, while Sony ESPN and its HD counterpart will air the English feed. Sony Six and Sony Six HD will cater to the regional languages, Tamil, Telugu and Bangla. Earlier this year, SPN announced the replacement to its second sports channel, Sony Kix, with its new sports channel under a joint venture with ESPN. The audience will have the option of choosing their language feed on the two Sony Six channels through the audio option on their set-topboxes, as was done last year with Sony Kix. IPL’s cumulative reach was just short of 200 million viewers last year. It is expected to cross

‘We doubled the ad rates for the high-definition (HD) feed this year to `1.5-1.75 lakh per 10 seconds and despite this, interest from advertisers has been growing. We have very little inventory left on HD and are almost sold out on SD.’ 50 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

that figure this year, media analysts said.

Another money-spinner On the other hand, Star India expects over ₹ 300 crore as revenue from World T20 which began early in March. The main sponsors such as Flipkart, Nissan and Oppo are shelling out ₹25 crore for air time, according to estimates, and this championship promises to be a money-spinner for the official broadcaster Star India Pvt. Ltd. This 25-day League has in all 19 associate sponsors, co-presenting sponsors and commercial partners. One of the 19 sponsors is Star’s in-house digital brand Hotstar. According to estimates from media buyers at leading advertising agencies, the presenting sponsors are shelling out ₹25 crore each. Star India has four of them, including e-commerce firm Flipkart, Japanese auto maker Nissan Motors India Pvt. Ltd and Chinese smartphone maker OPPO. Each of them will get about 125 seconds of air time per match. The eight associate sponsors are paying between ₹15 crore and ₹20 crore each. Among them are snack brand Kurkure by PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd and chocolate brand Cadbury’s Dairy Milk,

scale a new high This edition of T20 World Cup has already done well for Star India. They are completely sold out. And more importantly, the fact that the Indian team is on a roll, makes its timing perfect

which will each get about 80-100 seconds of air time per match. This edition of T20 World Cup has already done well for Star India. They are completely sold out. And more importantly, the fact that the Indian team is on a roll, makes its timing perfect. With viewership in excess of 100 million guaranteed, the World T20 will help brands associated with the property to strengthen their national presence. For instance, Nissan has spent close to ₹30 crore to act as on-air sponsor as well as commercial partner for the World T20 in a bid to build its brand. Currently, Star India also has broadcast and digital rights for all cricket played in India through a separate deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), for which

it agreed to pay ₹3,851 crore in 2012. The deal gave it exclusive media rights to cricket matches organised by the BCCI until 2018. The rights cover all international matches played in India and domestic tournaments, including the Ranji Trophy and the Irani Cup. In all, Star has the exclusive rights for 96 matches, including updates on the Internet and mobile phones.

Assured eyeballs According to media planners, both the tournaments have attracted substantial advertising money. “Since both the tournaments are taking place in India, advertisers are assured of greater visibility. Given the form India is in, the (T-20) World Cup is sure to gain a lot of eyeballs,” said a Star India official. Both the networks have sold 80-90 percent of the inventory via sponsorships. Star India has already got close to 11 sponsors on board, including Raymond, Cadbury and Tata Sky. Raymond has allocated close to ₹35 crore for its T-20 World Cup campaign, reveal sources. The IPL is seeing the return of some of the

sponsors from the last season like Amazon, Vodafone, Ceat and Vimal Pan Masala. New ones on board include Freecharge, Tata Sky, Coca-Cola and Oppo Mobiles. Veteran sponsors like Havells, Mondelez, Maruti, Marico and Samsung are also in talks with Sony for an IPL berth, it is reliably learnt. Viewership for cricket in 2016 took off on a high with the Paytm India vs Sri Lanka series breaking a four-year viewership record. And nothing delivers both scale and impact like cricket with more than 100 million viewers aggregated over a three-hour T20 match. joe78662@gmail.com

tadka

White Revolution Amul Ltd plans to invest `5,000 crore

(US$ 750 million) to establish ten new processing plants as well as expand the current capacity to touch 32 million litres per day (MLPD) capacity by 2020.

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 51

STAR CAMPUS PLACEMENT

oday Gurjap Kaur, who completed her post-graduation from a leading management college, specialising in the human resources (HR) stream, is successfully placed in the HR department of the Vedanta Group. The sailing wasn’t smooth… She did face a lot of hiccups on her way but still managed to reach the top. Let’s hear it from her…

Campus placement experience “Right after coming back after our internship, the only topic talked about was about placements. I was slightly nervous and anxious about the placement process since the very beginning. Before getting through to the Vedanta Group, I had reached the final process of two other companies, but sadly couldn’t make it. This had made me more anxious, but I stayed positive. I was somehow sure that the day is not far and I will be placed with a good company soon,” recalls Gurjap. A few days before Vedanta could visit the campus, most aspirants were excited, yet nervous. “With good academic record throughout, I was able to clear the initial screening procedure of the company. A day before the process, I remained calm and just revised a few notes. It all went smoothly. I didn’t really panic or study hard to crack the process,” she says. “The interview process had two rounds, a group discussion and a personal interview. I cleared the GD and was one amongst the 13 other aspirants appearing for interview. During the personal interview round, various questions were asked pertaining to my résumé, some situation-based, some about my internship project. There were a few technical questions j

‘Work with honesty and passion, success will be yours’ Gurjap Kaur, who completed her post-graduation from a leading management college is today placed with one of the leading corporate houses in the country. She talks to Corporate Citizen on her first break By Mahalakshmi Hariharan 52 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

related to law as well. The whole process went smoothly. When the results were announced, I got through the company, along with two of my classmates. Package was never a criteria for me. I was only looking for a good profile and a good company. Here I would consider myself fortunate enough to have got all the three things in hand,” reminisces Gurjap.

f Gurjap (R) with her friends d Gurjap (L) with her sister, Harjap

Life at the campus “My experience on the campus has been wonderful, and the memories will be cherished throughout my life. Right from the induction days to the placement process, there has been immense learning in each phase—be it the surprise tests, hectic schedule, no weekly offs or the attendance criteria—all these are the preparatory steps for the tough corporate world ahead. While I did find it difficult to cope with this pressure in the beginning and it took me a few days to adjust to this schedule, but eventually I managed well and now I thoroughly enjoy it,” recalls Gurjap.

Pillars of strength With immense support from her family and friends, she could complete her journey with ease, Gurjap says. “I completely owe it to my family and friends have stood by me throughout my journey. I am also thankful to my faculty members who have always guided me and helped me get here,” she says. “We had various workshops and seminars, group assignments, which eventually enhanced my skills as an individual, groomed me, from a corporate perspective,” notes Gurjap.

Extracurricular activities Apart from studies, Gurjap actively participated in the college cultural festival. The extracurricular activities at college help her in building her self-confidence as a student, and she is indeed proud to have got here. “I am glad to be a part of such institution which provides various platforms to its students to showcase their talent,” she says.

Internship memories “The other thing that was of utmost importance to me, during this journey, was my internship period. I did my internship with ITC Infotech Ltd in Bengaluru. This was the time when I experienced life in the corporate world for the first time. It is here that I got to know more about the corporate culture in an organisation. The project helped me get various insights into the HR world, which otherwise we only had learned as theories in our study. My mentors guided me in my project. I must say that this two-month project has definitely helped me in the campus placement process. Even during my interview process, there were a lot of questions asked about my internship project, and my interviewers did like my project,” reminisces Gurjap.

dreams, and this is the thing that motivates me to perform better every time. Also, being the elder daughter, I was aware of the responsibilities and expectations that my family members had from me,” says a happy Gurjap.

When the results were announced, I got through the company, along with two of my classmates. Package was never a criteria for me. I was only looking for a good profile and a good company. Here I would consider myself fortunate enough to have got all the three things in hand Education history and family background “I come from Narsinghgarh, a small town in Madhya Pradesh. I did my schooling from St. Joseph’s Convent and higher secondary school education from ABM school, Bhopal in the Science (Biology) stream. Later on, I pursued my Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Career College. While pursuing my graduation, I decided to get admission in a good B-school and do my Master’s,” says Gurjap. Gurjap’s father, Vikram Singh Grewal, is an agriculturist and a landowner and her mother, Satpal Kaur Grewal is a homemaker. Her younger sister, Harjap, is currently preparing for Common Law Admission Test (CLAT). “I completely owe my success to my parents, who always had the faith in me. My father always says, “Work with honesty and passion, success will be yours”. I wish to fulfil all their

Hobbies Gurjap is fond of reading and singing. She is also a keen observer of things and people around her. She believes being away from home has taught her how to live on her own and be independent, without being dependent. “I have been away from home for over six years now and it has truly helped me become what I am today. I have stepped out of my comfort zone, started living in the real world and doing all the things myself. This has made me independent, mature and has helped me grow,” she adds.

Piece of advice to juniors • Get your concepts clear. For all HR students, knowing labour law is a must • Take your internship work seriously • Read a lot. This will help you during your group discussion and personal interview round • Stay calm • Be yourself • Be positive, things will definitely come your way Mahalakshmi.H@corporatecitizen.in

tadka

India to become 3rd largest oil consumer Boosted by fallen crude prices, India is expected to overtake Japan to become the world’s third largest oil consumer in 2016, at about 4.1 million b/d.

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 53

BOLLYWOOD BIZ

From

Bollywood to Hollywood

India has the largest film industry in the world. Still, Hollywood remains the Holy Grail for most actors. Until recently, it was difficult for Indian actors to get international roles, but with the growing reliance of American filmmakers on the overseas box office, Indian actors are now in demand. This edition, we bring you Bollywood actors with the biggest Hollywood cache! By Neeraj Varty

PRIYANKA CHOPRA Although quite a few Indian actors have managed to get meaty roles in American movies, Priyanka Chopra is the first to land a leading role in the television series Quantico. Quantico is the story of a young FBI recruit Alex Parish (Priyanka), as she tries to clear her name on charges of terrorism. Priyankaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spunky performance has earned her accolades as well as a major role in the movie adaptation of Baywatch. She is also the first r Indian actor to present an award at the O Oscars. She is working on a gruelling schedule as she shoots for sch her TV show as w well as Baywatch on the week and flies to India on the weekend to shoot for her Bol Bollywood projects. Hats off to Priyanka for not n neglecting her fans at home in favour o of international appeal.

AISHWARYA RAI BACHCHAN Aishwarya Rai has acted in major Hollywood projects much before any of her contemporaries had that opportunity. With her international looks, suave personality as well as her Miss Universe appeal, Aishwarya was a sought-after star with major roles in movies like Bride and Prejudice, Mistress of Spices, Pink Panther 2 and The Last Legion, before she took a break from acting after marriage. Although Aishwarya has now decided to take it slow, doing at the most one movie a year, she still is a regular guest at the Cannes film festival, and keeps getting international offers. Only time will tell whether she accepts any of them. 54 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

DEEPIKA PADUKONE Deepika Padukone has been in the news lately for landing a role against Hollywood star Vin Diesel in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage. This marks Deepika’s foray into Hollywood in an out-and-out commercial action movie. She has already begun getting complements for her professionalism and dedication from the film’s crew. It looks like Deepika’s star has definitively arrived on the global scene.

IRRFAN KHAN One of the most underrated actors in Bollywood, Irrfan Khan is the true star of global cinema. His versatility and gravitas have earned him roles in movies such as Life of Pi, A Mighty Heart, The Amazing Spiderman and the Oscarwinning Slumdog Millionaire. He has also appeared in the mega blockbuster Jurassic World, and also has a slew of international projects in the pipeline, starting with the movie adaptation of Dan Brown’s Inferno.

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 55

PEARLS OF WISDOM

By Dada J P Vaswani

Shift your focus Focusing on the problem rarely helps matters. Instead, it only wastes your time and energy as you go over it repeatedly in your mind. Instead of dwelling on the problem, get your mind off it

56 / Corporate Citizen / April March1-15, 16-31, 2016 2016

our life is a manifestation of the thoughts that go on in your head. Your life is a mirror of dominant thoughts that you think. Your mind thinks thoughts and the pictures are broadcast back as your life experience. You can change your life by changing the pattern of your thinking. If you want to change things, change the channel and change the frequency of your thoughts. There was a professor of economics who was discussing the theory of demand and supply with his students. At the end of the session, he asked the students, “Can you name anything, any product or service of which the supply always exceeds the demand?” Even before the others could apply their minds to the question, one student shot up like an arrow and said, “Sir, I can tell you one thing of which the supply always exceeds the demand. That thing is ‘PROBLEMS’. Their supply is unlimited, even when our demand for them is NIL.” He was right. Wasn’t he? The pathways of our life seem to be strewn with problems and challenges. There is hardly a day when we don’t handle some problem or the other. It is as if they are waiting in a never-ending queue outside your door; barely have you handled one problem when another immediately rears its head. Getting caught up in a problem isn’t just frustrating -- it can literally stress you out. He will automatically free us from our worries, and take care of all our ‘concerns’ and ‘problems’. I remember when I was a schoolboy; a holy man visited the town in which I lived. And I was very fond of meeting holy men. I used to go and sit at their feet, get their blessings, listen to their teachings. And when I took leave of this holy man, I said to him, “Please, give me a teaching.” Do you know what he said to me? And the teaching that he gave me was in a few simple words. He said, ““Sher Sher bano kuta nahin bano bano..” - Be a lion, do not be a dog. I was thoroughly bewildered. I couldn’t understand the meaning of those words. I told him hesitatingly, “Sir, I am lion already because I am

born in the sign Leo, but what do you mean by saying, be a lion do not be a dog?” The holy man explained, “You may have seen if you throw a ball at a dog, the dog will run after the ball, but if you throw anything at the lion, fire a bullet at him, he will not care for the bullet, he will not care for the ball, he will come and take hold of you. He goes to the thrower, not to the thrown.” We are all the time thinking of that which has been thrown to us, we think of circumstances and conditions of life, the changing vicissitudes of life, the changing phenomenon, the passing shows of life. We do not think of Him, the Thrower, who has thrown all these things at us! We do not concentrate on Him from whom it has come, the giver, the thrower who has thrown all these things at us! I read an anonymous statement which said: Focus on God puts you in touch with the Infinite so that your mind can grapple with the finite successfully. Therefore, empty your mind of all worry and anxiety. Renounce everything; throw out everything; don’t think of anything but meditate on Him; concentrate on Him; think of Him; dedicate all your work to him. Shift your focus from the problem to the Lord! Resting your mind in the Divine Presence, as it were, focuses the mind, energizes and vitalises your intellectual abilities so that you are able to give your best to the situation at hand. Problems do not come to us by accident. They are deliberately thrown in our way by a beneficent Providence for our own good. Instead of worrying about them, let us turn to God in prayer and place all our burdens at His Lotus Feet. This will give us an immediate feeling of peace and relaxation, enabling us to tackle the problems and perplexities of life in a spirit of calm surrender. Remind yourself, again and again, of the beautiful lines “O heart, why do you worry? So what if difficulties have come your way, the remover of difficulties is not far away.”

Problems do not come to us by accident. They are deliberately thrown in our way by a beneficent Providence for our own good. Instead of worrying about them, let us turn to God in prayer and place all our burdens at His Lotus Feet. This will give us an immediate feeling of peace and relaxation, enabling us to tackle the problems and perplexities of life in a spirit of calm surrender March April16-31, 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 57

HEATLH

BRAIN produces pain

It is pain that tells us not to do things—for example, not to lift with an injured hand, or not to walk with an injured foot. It is pain, too, that tells us to do things—see a physio, visit a GP, sit still and rest. By Lorimer Moseley If someone has a pain in his hand […] one does not comfort the hand, but the sufferer. – Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1953

hat is pain? It might seem like an easy question. The answer, however, depends on who you ask. Some say pain is a warning signal that something is damaged, but what about pain-free major trauma? Some say pain is the body’s way of telling you something is wrong, but what about phantom limb pain, where the painful body part is not even there? Pain scientists are reasonably agreed that pain is an unpleasant feeling in our body that makes us want to stop and change our behaviour. We no longer think of pain as a measure of tissue damage—it doesn’t actually work that way even in highly controlled experiments. We now think of pain as a complex and highly sophisticated protective mechanism. How does pain work? Our body contains specialised nerves that detect potentially dangerous changes in temperature, chemical balance or pressure. These “danger detectors” (or “nociceptors”) send alerts to the brain, but they cannot send pain to the brain because all pain is made by the brain. Pain is not actually coming from the wrist you broke, or the ankle you sprained. Pain is the result of the brain evaluating information, including danger data from the danger detection system, cognitive data such as expectations, previous exposure, cultural and social norms and beliefs, and other sensory data such as what 58 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

you see, hear and otherwise sense. The brain produces pain. Where in the body the brain produces the pain is a “best guess scenario”, based on all the incoming data and stored information. Usually the brain gets it right, but sometimes it doesn’t. An example is referred pain in your leg when it is your back that might need the protecting. It is pain that tells us not to do things—for example, not to lift with an injured hand, or not to walk with an injured foot. It is pain, too, that tells us to do things—see a physio, visit a GP, sit still and rest. We now know that pain can be “turned on” or “turned up” by anything that provides the brain with credible evidence that the body is in danger and needs protecting. All in your head? So is pain all about the brain and not at all about the body? No, these “danger detectors” are distributed across almost all of our body tissues and act as the eyes of the brain. When there is a sudden change in tissue environment—for example, it heats up, gets acidic (cyclists, imagine the lactic acid burn at the end of a sprint), is squashed, squeezed, pulled or pinched—these danger detectors are our first line of defence. They alert the brain and mobilise inflammatory mechanisms that increase blood flow and cause the release of healing molecules from nearby tissue, thus triggering the repair process. Local anesthetic renders these danger detectors useless, so danger messages are not triggered. As such, we can be pain-free despite

major tissue trauma, such as being cut into for an operation. Inflammation, on the other hand, renders these danger detectors more sensitive, so they respond to situations that are not actually dangerous. For example, when you move an inflamed joint, it hurts a long way before the tissues of the joint are actually stressed. Danger messages travel to the brain and are highly processed along the way, with the brain itself taking part in the processing. The danger transmission neurones that run up the spinal cord to the brain are under real-time control from the brain, increasing and decreasing their sensitivity according to what the brain suggests would be helpful.

local anesthetic, and we can also stimulate the body’s own danger-reduction pathways and mechanisms. This can be done by anything that is associated with safety—most obviously accurate understanding of how pain really works, exercise, active coping strategies, safe people and places. A very effective way to reduce pain is to make something else seem more important to the brain—this is called distraction. Only being unconscious or dead provides greater pain relief than distraction. In chronic pain the sensitivity of the hardware (the biological structures) increases so the relationship between pain and the true need for protection becomes distorted: we become over-protected by pain. This is one significant reason there is no quick fix for nearly all persistent pains. Recovery requires a journey of patience, persistence, courage and good coaching. The best interven-

PAIN IS NOT ACTUALLY COMING FROM THE WRIST YOU BROKE, OR THE ANKLE YOU SPRAINED. PAIN IS THE RESULT OF THE BRAIN EVALUATING INFORMATION, INCLUDING DANGER DATA FROM THE DANGER DETECTION SYSTEM, COGNITIVE DATA SUCH AS EXPECTATIONS, PREVIOUS EXPOSURE, CULTURAL AND SOCIAL NORMS AND BELIEFS, AND OTHER SENSORY DATA SUCH AS WHAT YOU SEE, HEAR AND OTHERWISE SENSE tions focus on slowly training our body and brain to be less protective. This article is part of a series focusing on Pain, written by Lorimer Moseley, Professor of Clinical Neurosciences and Foundation Chair in Physiotherapy, University of South Australia. This article was originally published on The Conversation So, if the brain’s evaluation of all available information leads it to conclude that things are truly dangerous, then the danger transmission system becomes more sensitive (called descending facilitation). If the brain concludes things are not truly dangerous, then the danger transmission system becomes less sensitive (called descending inhibition). Danger evaluation in the brain is mind-bogglingly complex. Many brain regions are involved, some more commonly than others, but the exact mix of brain regions varies between individuals and, in fact, between moments within individuals. To understand how pain emerges into consciousness requires us to understand how con-

sciousness itself emerges, and that is proving to be very tricky. To understand how pain works in real-life people with real-life pain, we can apply a reasonably easy principle: any credible evidence that the body is in danger and protective behaviour would be helpful, will increase the likelihood and intensity of pain. Any credible evidence that the body is safe will decrease the likelihood and intensity of pain. It is as simple and as difficult as that. Implications To reduce pain, we need to reduce credible evidence of danger and increase credible evidence of safety. Danger detectors can be turned off by

(Courtesy: www.downtoearth.org)

tadka

Salty statistic India is the third-largest salt-producing country in the world after China and USA with global annual production being about 230 million tonnes. It has attained complete self-sufficiency in production of salt, and also exports surplus salt to foreign countries.

April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 59

BEYOND THE BOTTOMLINE

A GOOD SLEEP FOR PRODUCTIVITY Studies indicate that the effects of sleeplessness in terms of diminished capacities are similar to drug use and drunkenness BY SUCHISMITA PAI

ould you let someone drink and drive? You certainly would want the people who drive your business fortunes to be sober while at work. People never boast about taking important decisions while drunk, but sleepless nights are worn as badges of honour. In fact, many see the long hours and all-nighters they put in as the reason to be lauded, promoted and pushed up the ladder of success. In a blog post titled ‘Change the world and go to bed by 10.00’ in Harvard Business Review, Editor Julia Kirby makes a case for corporate leaders to push for a culture that gives sleep the importance it deserves. She terms sleep as the third leg, along with nutrition and exercise, on which good health rests. Corporate bosses, she says, are just in the right position to encourage their employees to make good sleep habits a priority. It also makes good business sense as it will reap benefits in terms of higher productivity, lowered health care costs and happier employees.

60 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

In a blog post titled ‘Change the world and go to bed by 10.00’ in Harvard Business Review, Editor, Julia Kirby makes a case for corporate leaders to push for a culture that gives sleep the importance it deserves. She terms sleep as the third leg, along with nutrition and exercise health rests Studies indicate that the effects of sleeplessness in terms of diminished capacities are similar to drug use and drunkenness. Have you ever wrestled with a problem all evening; give it up to tiredness, only to come back the next morning with a great solution? Why we need to sleep may be a mystery yet, but a report in

the Science Magazine says that the metabolic waste products of the brain are cleared much faster during sleep than while awake. There are other studies that prove how sleep cements the fragile memories/ learning that happened prior to sleeping. Maybe a cleaner brain is like a newly washed windscreen of the car and just enables us to see everything more clearly, or once the waste is removed, the brain repairs itself much faster. We often talk of the importance of sleep vis-à-vis little children, but adults need enough sleep as well. While the number of hours per day varies from person to person, Dr Gregg Jacobs of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, in a piece in BBC, says that his research throws up seven as the magic number. Whatever your number, that sleep is important to function, is a given. With World Sleep Day on the 18th of March, it may be just the right time to start giving sleep its due in the corporate bottom-line. paisuchi@gmail.com

MOBILE APPS

The Best Smartphone Accessories for Photography The best camera is undoubtedly the one you have with you, and there’s a good chance nowadays that’s a smartphone. But, while your phone can almost certainly take good photographs, it might need a little help if you want to retire your trusty DSLR for good. Corporate Citizen presents the best accessories to turn your smartphone into a professional grade camera! By Neeraj Varty f LENSES With a couple of exceptions, smartphone cameras use fixed focal length wide angle (around a 28mm equivalent) lenses. This means zooming in on a subject involves using image-deteriorating digital zooms, or moving with your feet. Luckily for smartphone photographers who want to mix it up, add-on lenses can change your perspective.

in less than optimal conditions, you’ll have noticed they tend not to like shooting in low light conditions. This is partly due to the small sensors deployed in smartphone cameras, and that most lack the sort of powerful flash which is typical on a DSLR camera.

MANFROTTO PIXI (`1,200) The Manfrotto PIXI is a small tabletop tripod that stands at 13.5 cm (5.31 inches) tall and can double up as a useful video grip. Though it also works with dedicated cameras, the PIXI is great with smartphones via a tripod mount adapter. A push-button mechanism allows movement of the ball-head, or to lock it in place, and folded away it fits in most bags. The curve of the legs on the PIXI also means it’s easy and comfortable to hold steady when shooting video.

f CLICKING REMOTE PHOTOGRAPHS Sometimes it’s just not practical to be with your phone when you’re taking that all-important shot. It could be because you’re trying to get that perfect selfie, or maybe because you are taking a wildlife image where your direct presence would scare your subject. While smartphones are often used as remote triggers for other cameras, there are also a range of options available for triggering smartphone cameras too.

PHOTOJOJO’S POCKET SPOTLIGHT (`1,500) SONY QX 1 (`6,000) Sony wants to shake up the photography industry with the QX line of “smartphone partners”. The QX1’s price seems a little high until you realise what it is: an adapter with a large 20.1-megapixel APS-C sensor that effectively turns your smartphone into a mirrorless camera. Simply attach a variety of Sony E-mount lenses (optional, and it’ll add significantly more to the price), and you open up a new world of focal lengths and capabilities you only dreamt of, with your smartphone. It also boasts impressive features like a shooting speed of 10 frames per second and 1080p fullHD recording, giving your traditional camera a run for its money.

f FLASH If you’ve ever tried to use a smartphone camera

Photojojo’s Pocket Spotlight will leave you impressed, and your smartphone’s photographs will appear much brighter and extremely well-lit. The constant light (rather than a flash) attaches to the headphone socket of a phone, or can be used separately, and the device charges via USB to give an hour of light.

f TRIPODS AND STANDS

MUKU SHUTTR REMOTE (`2,000)

Depending on your subject, hand-holding your smartphone camera isn’t always the best option. If you are shooting at a slow shutter speed or need to shoot a series of shots from exactly the same point, you’ll need the support of a tripod. Equally, you might be trying to capture a shot from a unique angle that it’s just not going to be practical to contort yourself into. For these occasions a tripod or stand is going to offer you a much better result.

The Muku Shuttr Remote, for both iPhone and Android phones, uses Bluetooth to take pictures remotely from up to 30 feet away. Place your device on a tripod with a phone mount, set up a shot, and take a picture of your group—with you in the photo. There are quite a few shutter remotes for phones out there, but the Muku remote has zero lag and clicks pics effortlessly. We recommend you to consider it. neeraj.varty@corporatecitizen.com April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 61

CLAPS & SLAPS

Corporate Citizen claps for Guru Ramdas Langar Hall at Sri Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple), one of the world’s largest community kitchens that will soon serve organically grown food. The kitchen that feeds 1,00,000 people daily, 24/7 for free, raises its bar even further as the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which administers gurdwaras nationwide, has decided to adapt organic farming. Fresh produce of grains, fruits and vegetables like carrot, reddish, cauliflower, spinach and fenugreek (‘methi’) are now being grown at farms in Patiala and Gurudwara Gurusar Satlani Sahib near Amritsar. Organic farming is SGPC’s new sustainable drive to inspire farmers to cut down on the use of pesticides and chemicals and eventually switch over to more sustainable agricultural practices. Officials said that they have now started receiving supply of 10 quintals of organic produce every one-two days that is being used to prepare nourishing vegetarian meals for pilgrims. EcoSikh, a non-profit organisation working to raise awareness about environmental issues that also inspire farmers to focus on producing food through organic means, welcomed the move and said that they are now hoping that around 25,000-30,000 gurdwaras in Punjab will follow suit towards organic farming in all their ‘langar’ halls. Foods such as grains, fruits, carrots, cauliflower, fenugreek and spinach that are used to prepare vegetarian meals are being grown at farms near Amritsar and being delivered every day or every alternate day at the Golden Temple. Guru Ramdas Langar Hall at Sri Harmandir Sahib, otherwise known as the Golden Temple, is among the world’s largest community kitchens. The Golden Temple, located in the western Indian city of Amritsar, provides a hot meal to anyone who walks through their doors regardless of caste, creed or religion. The food kitchen, referred to as langar in Punjabi, was a concept started centuries ago by the founder of Sikh religion, Guru Nanak. The Golden Temple feeds people 24 hours a day and seven days a week for free. 62 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

Corporate Citizen slaps the societal ignorance that promotes mental maladies, deaths and suicides. Today, society not reaching out or, even recognising the state of “mental health” as a medical issue is quite worrying. It did need a Deepika Padukone to bring out the graveness of deep-rooted chronic maladies like depression. Alcohol addiction or mental disorders could be triggers that encourage more persistent drinking or other self-afflicted psychological damages leading to medical consequences such as liver damage. Families also live in denial because of an untimely death to a disease which is filled with guilt. A suicide is an indictment for the family and friends. Cirrhosis of the liver is not an overnight disease as the liver is one of our most resistant organs. So, it’s not the medical condition alone that jeopardises lives but the triggers that lead to humans with normal dispositions either to take their own lives or suffer medical side effects. It is a cry for help and quite sad for us not to ask ourselves whether the victim was trying to reach out or not? The situation moved from the arc lights to the media exposure of this societal blindness when prominent ‘stars’ in the Southern Indian entertainment industry lost their “lives”, perhaps hoping against all hope to get help ‘on time’. Rajesh Pillai, Malayalam film director, who paved the way for experimental films like Traffic, Mili and the more recent Vettah shortchanged his life at 41years. The fate of Tamil television actor Sai Prasanth was that of a human trying to cope with his depression which resulted in a suicide pact with his own self. Kalabhavan Mani, an auto-rickshaw driver who rose to become a star and brought music and cheer to people’s homes succumbed to alcoholism and liver cirrhosis. More tragically, gifted musician Mandolin Srinivas suffered multiple organ failure following a liver transplant despite being a teetotaller, a non-smoker and a vegetarian. These are celebrities but such situations are faced by millions who do not know how to cope with either mental health problems or other forms of addiction and then it gets tougher if their “signals” for help are not interpreted positively by immediate family or friends. So, do look, feel and hear the “silent” cries!

FEATHERLITE

TWITTERATI Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s vision is to create a violence-free, stress-free society. The Art of Living is a humanitarian organisation which focuses on developing human. A three-day World Culture Festival organised by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living was held on the banks of Yamuna in Delhi, after days of controversy and uncertainty. This is what the our leaders had to say about the event

LAUGH ALOUD LEADERSHIP HUMOUR Whether you’re an entry-level employee, business founder, or corporate executive, sometimes you just need a bit of leadership inspiration. But sometimes situations call for humour rather than the stiffness of a good quote. If you’re looking for a great quotation on leadership that gives you a chance to laugh, look no further. `

“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” - George S. Patton

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.” –Dwight Eisenhower

thekiranbedi In times of widespread negativity and cynicism this festival is refreshing @ArtofLiving. It’s harmonious as a rainbow..

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” -Theodore Roosevelt

“First rule of leadership: everything is your fault.” – A Bug’s Life

Dev_Fadnavis I congratulate @SriSri ji & wish all the success to team @ArtofLiving for the the journey of social,spiritual & national integration.

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.” – Lao-Tzu

“Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” –Lewis Grizzard

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” – Theodore M. Hesburgh

“Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.” – Sloan Wilson

“When I finally got a management position, I found out how hard it is to lead and manage people.” – Guy Kawasaki

“It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead — and find no one there.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“A leader must have the courage to act against an expert’s advice.” – James Callaghan

BJPRajnathSingh WorldCultureFestival is true example of the Diversity of this country!

narendramodi I congratulate @SriSri ji & the @ArtofLiving family for their stupendous efforts, which bring the world closer. MVenkaiahNaidu World Culture Festival by Art of Living will bring glory to India. let’s not politicise this

sardesairajdeep Roads clogged because of Art of Living cultural ‘Olympics’! Guess we all need deep breathing on long drive home! kavita_krishnan SriSriRavishankar says privatise all schools, Govt schools produce ‘Naxals’ and so hand schools over to ‘some... DrShobha ‘Ecosystem of unholy has ruined India’s fortune in 10 yrs of UPA regime. An eye opener article by @agenthunt; sri-sri-ravishankar-ecosystemthough-fragile-never-forgets-never-forgives/...

SUCCESSION PLANNING A new manager spends a week at his new office with the manager he is replacing. On the last day, the departing manager tells him, “I have left three numbered envelopes in the desk drawer. Open an envelope if you encounter a crisis you can’t solve.” Three months down the road there is major drama in the office and the manager feels very threatened by it all. He remembers the parting words of his predecessor and opens the first envelope. The message inside says “Blame your predecessor!” He does this and gets off the hook. About half a year later, the company is experiencing a dip in sales, combined with serious product problems. The manager quickly opens the second envelope. The message read, “Reorganize!” He starts to reorganise and the company quickly rebounds. Three months later, at his next crisis, he opens the third envelope. The message inside says “Prepare three envelopes.” April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 63

ASTROTURF after. Craniosacral therapy will be better if you feel under weather. Health and energy improves after the 19th.

ARIES

Mar 21- April 20

Last month you entered one of your yearly personal pleasure peaks. So you got an opportunity to concentrate on your personal transformation, giving yourself an entire personal physical make over.

TAURUS

April 21 - May 20

The Planetary power is now moving towards you. This indicates that you would be in your personal high, you will feel powerful and project success. This is the apt time for you to create your personal space and happiness.

GEMINI May 21 - June 21 Last month on the 5th the planetary power began its shift from the Social sector to the sector of self which means West to East. This indicates a psychological shift within you. The power focus itself and moves towards you than away from you. This increases your personal power and independence.

CANCER

Jun 22 - July 23

Health did become delicate on the 20th of last month and remains so till the 19th. You are stressing yourself by working hard and overlooking the success. Rest and relax take intermittent breaks, no point in breaking your back, as more strength breaks your stamina and work production reduces. Keep your focus on the real essential things and let go off trivia.

LEO

FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BOLD AND THE LUCKY Your attitude is your altitude, says Dolly Mangat, our renowned Astrological Expert, who believes she helps people create their own prophecies rather than live predictions

in clarity the world around you. You will feel and project optimism, nothing will get you down, and you will project the ability to overcome any kind of obstacles.

VIRGO

Aug 24 - Sept 23

Health needs watching though its much better than last month. Last month was critical and if you have got through it with your health and sanity intact then rest assured the rest of the year will pass off peacefully. The eclipses are over and the dust has died down, even though lingering effects can be sometimes felt.

LIBRA

Sept 24 - Oct 22

Last month on the 20th the Sun entered your 7th house of love and you entered a yearly love & social peak. For a Libra this is saying a lot. Your love planet Mars also changes signs last month. So there are lot of changes happening. Your love life will be complicated but basically happy.

July 24 - Aug 23

You can heave a sigh of relief as the month ahead heralds happiness and success. Health right now looks excellent, the dust of the eclipses settles down bringing

AQUARIUS

(www.dollymangat.com)

SCORPIO

Oct 23 - Nov 22 March 20th witnesses how your 6th house of health & work be-

64 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

comes strong and remains strong till the 9th. Job seekers will get plenty opportunities for a job or career change. The only problem is the retrograde of Mars ruler of this house which begins on the 17th this means that these opportunities need more study and research before making any kind of commitments.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov 23 - Dec 22

Last month the planets started their shift from the eastern sector towards the social west. This means that the planetary power is moving away from you towards others. Your independence needs to now change into interdependence as you should start considering the needs of others parallel to your own .Your good comes through others and not necessarily from your personal abilities or personal initiative.

CAPRICORN

Dec 23 - Jan 20

Be aware of your energy levels and health as it does need attention from March 20th to April 19th. The most important thing is to maintain high energy levels, do not over work or over tire yourself. Enhance your health through head and face massages until the 6th and neck massage

Jan 21 - Feb19

The 3rd house of communication and intellectual interests became very powerful last month and carries on in the month ahead. You are bound to feel comfortable in whatever you do. Take care of your communication let not the excitement of talking over whelm you. You could experience some kind of family drama on the 7th or 8th. Hence focusing on family can sort out issues amicably. You will feel more nostalgic as past memories will spontaneously arise. As you review your past from the present state and present understanding history gets re interpreted differently.

PISCES Feb 20 - Mar 20 You have entered the peak of your financial year on march 20th and this goes on for another month or so. Prosperity starts to happen, your financial intuition always good is even better now. There would be job opportunities happening too. If you are already employed there would be opportunities to expand in the existing scene or you may land a better job. The family remains supportive of your plans until the 6th on the 5th Venus enters your money house, this suggests earnings from trading, buying selling from sales marketing and PR. Mars your financial planet spends the month on your 10th house of career. This shows that money is high on your priorities and that you are focused here.

Address: 143, St Patrick’s Town, Gate# 3, Hadapsar IE, Pune-411 013. Tel.: 020-26872677 / 020-32905748 Email: connect@dollymanghat.com/ info.dollymanghat@gmail.com

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January 1-15, 2016 / `50

CORPORATE CULTURE

Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank on women in leadership and gender diversity

INTERVIEW

An in-depth interview with Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director India with Kingston Technology and Rajeev Bhadauria, Director, Group HR, at Jindal Steel & Power

Dynamic Duo 21 MEERA SHANKAR AND AJAY SHANKAR

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April 1-15, 2016 / Corporate Citizen / 65

THE LAST WORD

Difference between Education and Learning Ganesh Natarajan

here is an old saying that it takes five women to see a man successfully through life – most of us have our grandmother, mother, sister, wife and daughter to thank for what we become but in my case, I also have five educational institutions that shaped my thinking and learning over forty years. School at Bishop Westcott, Ranchi, Mechanical Engineering at the Birla Institute of Technology and then Industrial Engineering at NITIE Mumbai, Advanced Management at the Harvard Business School and finally a PhD at IIT Bombay – quite a total but truly beneficial! An interesting thought that crosses my mind is that with all these fountainheads of learning at one’s disposal, where does education result in real learning? The modern generation could well argue that their learning comes more from what they pull down from the internet rather than what is pushed at them by their teachers but each and every one will have favourite moments from the education years that have shaped our thinking and made us better human beings. In my own case, I can think of many deep learnings that have shaped the way I think and react to day-to-day incidents and occurrences. At Westcott, it was my Vice Principal Fitzi who advised me to focus on English language and literature, which, he said, would serve me well in anything I chose to do. To this day, communicating – with customers, shareholders, colleagues and society has been my biggest strength. In college in the seventies during the complex environment in Bihar at the time of the Jayprakash Narayan movement, with classes being derailed very often, our institute Director H C Pande with, his

An interesting thought that crosses my mind is that with all these fountainheads of learning at one’s disposal, where does education result in real learning? iron sense of discipline, made us imbibe the values of restraint and focus on our own agenda, in spite of the disturbances around us. The camaraderie I experienced with both faculty and students in my post graduate years in NITIE and the outstanding case discussions at the Harvard Business School would surely have made me learn the value of team work and reflection on the experiences across cultures and finally the PhD process at IIT instilled the sense of humility and the respect for diverse approaches and

obvious, for the nuggets of learning that make every education process worthwhile. Why is it that today’s students are unable to derive as much learning from their education institutions as we did in our generation? Not that they are any less bright, on the contrary every young person one interacts with demonstrates a thirst for knowledge and world awareness that is always encouraging. What we may have lost in our education processes is the ability to instill a sense of agency and urgency

Ganesh with Zensar colleague and NITIE alumnus Shubham Garg

At Westcott, it was my Vice Principal Fitzi who advised me to focus on English. To this day, communicating with customers, shareholders, colleagues and society has been my biggest strength viewpoints that are so essential for success in both academic research and leading business in today’s complex world! Let me call out Professors Rajen Mehrotra of NITIE, David Garvin and Mike Tushman of HBS and Anand Patwardhan and Deepak Phatak of IIT – all academicians extraordinaire but with the sagacity and experience that made is easy to relate theory with practice and look beyond the

66 / Corporate Citizen / April 1-15, 2016

in the student community and with an agenda of skilling and making worthy citizens of 300 million and more young people in our country, encouraging young people to take responsibility for their learning and aspiration to make their place in the world is a must. The Pune Lighthouse initiative is one major experiment that we hope will contain all the elements that hold the key to transformation

– agency building to life skills development, counseling to mentoring and coaching and finally the imparting of “just in time” skills in areas chosen by each individual students rather than being decided by a parent or teacher as a “must-learn” curriculum! Today the abundant availability of content on virtually every topic under the sun makes it possible to build a programme of learning that is optimised to the interest as well as the learning ability and speed of the individual and educators must take advantage of technology, integrate that into the learning curriculum and build a path the encourages every student to learn! And beyond the brick walls of institutions surely the real learning occurs from people. Apart from the five women who have taught me most of what I know, I can credit numerous bosses, friends, colleagues and friends with whatever wisdom gleaned from mountains of data and information and career experiences. All of us go through these experiences and what we are able to learn and apply to become better inhabitants of this planet is really what makes the difference! Each one of us reading this magazine have within us the ability to positively influence at least a dozen people each year. Formal learning, except for the lucky few ceases at an early age and those who have developed the ability to learn continuously and are privileged to have good L&D processes in their organisations and mentoring and coaching facilities to hone their technical, business and life skills are always more likely to climb the ladder of success faster. Dr Ganesh Natarajan is Chairman of Pune City Connect and NASSCOM Foundation and Vice Chairman of Zensar.

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