10 Most Inspiring Young CXOs Special

INDIA EDITION

INSIGHTS. IDEAS. INSPIRATIONS

MOST INSPIRING

COVID-19 and Its Impact on Indian Economy

YOUNG CXOs

IN INDIA

Manjula Muthukrishnan Managing Director – India Avalara Technologies Private Limited

The Impact of COVID-19 on Fintech and the Future of Banking Solutions

The Risk Taker

Feroze Azeez Deputy CEO, AnandRathi

Bottling Nostalgia Neeraj Biyani Co-Founder and COO Hector Beverages

Harish Prasad Head – Banking Solutions APMEA, FIS

Delivering Care

Things to Do When You Lose Job Due to COVID-Outbreak

Rohit M. A. Co-Founder and MD Cloudnine Group of Hospitals

Tushar Chadha CEO, People Plus Advisors

Seizing the Opportunities

Leadership and Growth in Tough Times Mansingh Gadhvi Founder and Managing Partner GrowthCulture Consulting LLP

Sonia Notani Chief Marketing Officer IndiaFirst Life Insurance

ANANT GOENKA

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF CEAT LIMITED

SAFEST IN THE

MAY 2020

GAME OF ROADS HOW DID ANANT GOENKA TRANSFORM CEAT INTO ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING INDIAN TYRE MANUFACTURERS IN HIS 30s?

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

May 2020

Vol - 1 Issue - 1

Inspiring Young CXOs in India Special (Indian Edition) Editor in Chief

Dr. Manoj Varghese

Managing Editor Sarath Shyam

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Fighting for

Survival A

s the spread of COVID-19 brought economic activities a near standstill, businesses across the globe are fighting for survival. When I sit to write the editorial for this issue of CXO Outlook - with which we intend to bring insights and ideas from those people who have changed the world around us - there are 5,085,504 confirmed COVID-19 cases around the world. The official death toll is over 329,731. As per the data of the Ministry of Health and Family Affairs, India has 61, 149 active COVID positive cases so far, and as many as 3303 people have died due to the deadly virus.

In this COVID situation, which demands leaders from all walks of life to identify and address the most critical issues at each point, we understand the importance of an independent platform in digital space where the business community can share their stories, opinions and insights. However, as the makers, it was not an easy task for us. Many leaders we approached to be a part of our '10 Most Inspiring

Young CXOs in India' issue were busy recalibrating the way forward to hold their feet in the wave.

On the other side, many young leaders were happy to share their experience and strategies with us. Anant Goenka (Managing Director of CEAT Limited), Feroze Azeez (Deputy CEO, AnandRathi), Neeraj Biyani (Co-Founder and COO, Hector Beverages), Rohit M. A. (Co-Founder and MD, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals), and Sonia Notani (Chief Marketing Officer, IndiaFirst Life Insurance) are a selected few to name among them. We believe that India's future is safe in their hands. In this issue, we have also included some inspiring startup stories and opinions of business leaders to give our audience a comprehensive reading experience.

We sincerely hope that our efforts will help the business leaders to make informed decisions.

Enjoy Reading.

Sarath Shyam

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. Kuldeep Nagi, Ph.D, MBA, BSc. Program Director of Ph.D, Recipient of Fulbright Fellowship Award & Dan Evans Award for Excellence and Writer columnist.

Mr. Amulya Sah, PGD PM & IR, PG Diploma in PM&IR (XISS Ranchi) Senior Director HR. Former Head HR group Samsung R&D Institute India,Transformative HR Leader, Change agent, Digitization facilitator, Engagement architect, Trainer and Diversity champion.

May CXO2020 OUTLOOK

Dr.Varughese K.John, PhD, MBA, MPhil, MCom, LLB. Program Director, MS in Management Program, GSATM - AU

Dr. Ajay Shukla, Ph.D, MBA, BE. Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Higher Education UAE

Mamta Thakur CEO (ASEAN), Arc Skills

Mr. Sreedhar Bevara, MBA, B.Com Senior General Manager: Panasonic Middle East & Africa, Thought Leader, Speaker & Author of ‘Moment of Signal’ (Amazon’s International Bestseller)

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

CONTENTS ANANT GOENKA

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF CEAT LIMITED

SAFEST IN THE

GAME OF ROADS HOW DID ANANT GOENKA TRANSFORM CEAT INTO ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING INDIAN TYRE MANUFACTURERS IN HIS 30s?

RY

R E V O C

O T S

8

44 - 48

THE RISK TAKER

Feroze Azeez Deputy CEO, AnandRathi

82 - 88

DELIVERING CARE

Rohit M. A. Co-Founder and Managing Director, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals

64 - 69

102 - 107

SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITIES

Sonia Notani Chief Marketing Officer, IndiaFirst Life Insurance

BOTTLING NOSTALGIA

Neeraj Biyani Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Hector Beverages

INSPIRING

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16

16

54

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An Entrepreneur Elevating Living Standards of Urban Indians – The Story of Furlenco Ajith Mohan Karimpana, Founder & CEO, Furlenco

A Tale of How a Corporate Employee Was Nudged Towards NGOs Atul Satija, Founder of The/Nudge Foundation & Founder 2.0 of GiveIndia Foundation

How is SugarBox Networks Revolutionizing Digital India by Offering an Innovative Solution to Access Mobile Apps without Internet Rohit Paranjpe, Co-Founder and CEO, SugarBox Networks

120

How Did Dhruvam Thaker Offer Airline Hospitality and Star Hotel Features in the The SMART Taxi?

Dhruvam Thaker, Founder, The SMART Taxi

IDEAS

120

132

94 Why is Cloud the Most Essential Infrastructure Today?

Dr. Christopher Richard, MD & Chief Cloud Architect, G7CR Technologies India

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COVID-19 and Its Impact on Indian Economy Manjula Muthukrishnan, Managing Director – India, Avalara Technologies Private Limited

IN MY VIEW

132

58 116

20 EX PE ' RT S

108

O

36

PI N IO N

70 124 78

20 36 58 70 78

The Impact of COVID-19 on Fintech and the Future of Banking Solutions Harish Prasad, Head – Banking Solutions APMEA, FIS

98 90

How can Leaders Create a Productive Work Culture in Teams Working Remotely?

Khushboo Jain, Co-Founder and COO, ImpactGuru.com

COVID’s Impact on Technology Sector: The Most Important Things that Everyone Needs to Know Piyush Somani, MD & CEO, ESDS Solution Software

If Indian Exchanges Follow the Philippines Example, it will Only Erode Essential Wealth from the Country Tejas Khoday, CEO & Co-Founder, FYERS

COVID-19: A Critical Time to Embrace HR Technologies Subramanyam S, Founder, President and CEO, AscentHR

90 98 108 116 124

Leadership and Growth in Tough Times Mansingh Gadhvi, Founder and Managing Partner, GrowthCulture Consulting LLP

Things to Do When You Lose Job Due to COVID-Outbreak

Tushar Chadha, CEO, People Plus Advisors

Impact of COVID 19 on World Economy

Chandra Sivasubramaniam, Co-Founder & CEO, MatrixThread

Social Distancing: Ushering in the New Age of Digital Connect for Traditional Businesses Debprotim Roy, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Canvs

What CIOs Can Do to Minimize the Impact of COVID-19 on Their Businesses?

Neelesh Kripalani, Senior Vice President and Head - Center of Excellence (CoE), Clover Infotech

CONTENTS 32 50 74

Post COVID-19, Building Automation System Market is Poised to Witness Accelerated Growth Gaurav Burman, APAC & Vice President, 75F

COVID-19: One Good Reason to Invest Heavily in Smart Cities Saily Lad, Director, Volksara and Krystal Group of Companies

112 128

India Needs a World-Class Ecosystem to Nurture Startups Hemant Gupta, MD - BRTSIF – Zone Startups India, and MD & CEO - BSE Sammaan CSR

How is COVID 19 Redefining the Global Supply Chain Model?

Sunny Nandwani, Founder and Managing Partner, Acuver Consulting

Why is Cloud the Most Essential Infrastructure Today?

Dr. Christopher Richard, MD & Chief Cloud Architect, G7CR Technologies India

74 50 112 32

LEADER'S INSIGHTS

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May 2020

CXO O

IN MY VIEW

COVID-19 and Its Impact on Indian Economy

By Manjula Muthukrishnan, Managing Director – India, Avalara Technologies Private Limited

A seasoned leader with over 25 years of

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experience in IT and transformation projects, Manjula carries extensive global business management experience. She brings a unique combination of experience in business management, engineering, consulting, pre-sales and training. Her role as the Managing Director – India at Avalara Technologies Private Limited involves overseeing strategic operations in India with a special focus on strengthening the company’s end-to-end tax automation offerings in the market by enabling Indian Manjula Muthukrishnan

customers navigate the complexities of the local indirect tax system - Goods and Services Tax.

W

ith the number of COVID-19 cases leaning dangerously more than 200,000 and the worldwide death toll crossing more than 8,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the virus outbreak a pandemic in the second week of March 2020, four months after the novel virus first made headlines.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Every crisis serves as a learning opportunity for organizations, and this pandemic is proving to be quite the lesson

Nearly 162 countries are steadily going into lockdown, and businesses across the globe are operating in fear of an impending collapse of global financial markets.

This situation, clubbed with sluggish economic growth in the previous year, especially in a developing country like India, is leading to extremely volatile market conditions. Let’s understand how the coronavirus is impacting business and subsequent tax reforms in India.

With rising unemployment, interest rates, and fiscal deficit, the economy in India has seen better days. Adding fuel to this fire is the novel Coronavirus that is sending tremors down Indian trade markets dependent on China for imports.

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Raw materials and spare parts Nearly 55% of electronics imported by India originate from China. These imports have already slid down to 40% in light of the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent lockdown.

As a countermeasure, India is considering the promotion of indigenous production in a bid to reduce dependency on a single market. Additionally, China is India’s third largest export partner for export of raw materials like organic chemicals, mineral fuels, cotton, etc.; and a lockdown of the countries is likely to lead to a substantial trade deficit for India.

Pharmaceuticals The toll on the pharmaceutical industry is of significant concern for India, mainly as 70% of active pharmaceutical

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

ingredients (API) are imported from China. These active pharmaceutical ingredients are essential to a large number of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in the country. As COVID-19 is rapidly making its way through India, medication is going to be the number one consumer demand, and because there aren’t nearly enough APIs to manufacture drugs, the subsequent traders and the market are witnessing skyrocketing prices. The prices of vitamins and penicillin alone already see a 50% surge.

Tourism India is big on cultural and historical tourism, attracting domestic and foreign nationals throughout the year.

It does not come as a surprise that a large number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India include foreign tourists. But with visas being suspended and tourist attractions being shut indefinitely, the whole tourism value chain, which includes hotels, restaurants, attractions, agents, and operators is expected to face losses worth thousands of crores. Experts believe the tourism industry is likely to take a massive hit, and it could end up crippling the industry for the foreseeable future.

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Aviation After the Government of India indefinitely suspended tourist visas, airlines are said to be working under pressure. Nearly 600 international flights to and from India were canceled for varying periods. Around 90 domestic flights have been canceled, leading to a sharp drop in airline fares, even on popular local routes. Private airport operators have requested the Government to grant permission to impose a nominal passenger facilitation charge on airfares to cover the increased operating cost.

Will rationalizing tax rates or providing tax relief help curb the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian economy?

Speaking on measures to combat the economic impact from the rapidly spreading coronavirus, Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund, Gita Gopinath said that Government policymakers would need to implement a substantial targeted fiscal. She also advised on broader monetary stimulus and policy rate cuts to help normalize the economic situation.

India is already running short on its GST revenue collection, and the coronavirus scare could make matters worse. With less than 200 active COVID-19

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

More about

Manjula Muthukrishnan Prior

to

joining

Avalara,

she

served

leadership roles at renowned organizations like Infosys, HSBC and Socion Advisors. Having spent two decades with Infosys, Manjula helped restructure the pre-sales team for efficiency and develop the Learning Services offering for the organization. At HSBC, she was Head of Digital Engineering for Commercial Banking. Most recently, Manjula worked as a strategic consultant for Socion Advisors, an advisory firm that works with social initiatives committed to resolving large scale societal challenges.

Manjula Technology

has in

done

her

Computer

Bachelor

of

Science

&

Engineering from College of Engineering, Trivandrum and Master of Science in Software Systems from Birla Institute of Technology and Science. Manjula has been recognized by various internal and external forums for her contributions in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility.

cases in a 1.33 billion population, the Government of India is not in a rush to make any drastic changes in policy and offer tax relief (even though Indian enterprise leaders are calling for cuts in import duties). They have, however, announced an extension in filings of GST for FY 2018-19 until June 30, 2020. India has also rescheduled the introduction of mandatory e-invoicing until October 1, 2020.

The learning curve Every crisis serves as a learning opportunity for organizations, and this pandemic is proving to be quite the lesson. Here’s how organizations are figuring out their next moves.

As COVID-19 is rapidly making its way through India, medication is going to be the number one consumer demand

Remote working With major cities on lockdown, organizations have had no choice but to dig into their business continuity and contingency plans.

Ever since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in India, numerous companies have instituted a ‘work from home’ drill using critical resources to understand whether remote working conditions are feasible. That being said, remote working also has its limitations and cannot be carried out by other sectors like retail, hospitality, or manufacturing, leaving them no choice but to face business interruption.

Safety measures for employees Employee safety is the need of the hour. Still, with no experience of dealing with a virus that has the potential to spread rapidly, most companies are brushing off their hands by asking employees to stay home. Some organizations, however, are implementing measures like temperature screening, disinfection of office premises, setting up COVID-19 response teams, distribution of COVID-19 precautionary packages.

An open line of communication Even though the mortality rate of COVID-19 is lower than the 1918 influenza pandemic, it has caused a widespread panic due to unclear lines of communication. Organizations are stepping up and maintaining an open line of communication with all their stakeholders, including employees and customers.

Opportunity in a crisis Like India, several international economies are becoming cognizant of the risk they face by being overly dependent on one market. Making the current situation a learning opportunity, CXOs of Indian multinationals, who recently attended the annual meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), believe this is the time India can work on capturing potentially 40% of their competitor’s market share by looking at indigenous production of goods, furthering the country’s Make in India campaign.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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INSPIRING

IDEAS

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An Entrepreneur Elevating Living Standards of Urban Indians – The Story of Furlenco

efore returning to India in 2010, Ajith Mohan Karimpana was the Vice President of Goldman Sachs in the US. Relocating to India brought Ajith face-to-face with hassles like accepting a lousy deal where he was offered only $300 for furniture that he had spent thousands. “It annoyed me. Then, there was a lack of quality options and delays while getting new furniture. I wondered if I should consider this as an opportunity and offer a service that solves these problems and provides a superior consumer experience. That was the inception point for Furlenco,” recalls Ajith.

In the early 2010s, when Ajith established Kieraya Furnishing Solutions and adopted the brand name Furlenco, India was just getting familiarized with e-commerce platforms. Market penetration was low, and people were still apprehensive of sharing credit card details online.

Renting furniture without physical inspections was unthinkable. However, an aspirational shift had begun, especially among urban millennials.

“Hopping from one city to another for work, they were gradually adopting a more experiential lifestyle. It made financial sense to opt for a subscription rather than buying furniture,” says Ajith.

Furlenco tapped into this space and enabled the urban Indian to live better in their homes by giving them award-winning furniture and home decor on rent. The company has never looked back since. Today, a subscription-driven furniture company with two significant differentiators unique furniture pieces designed by in-house experts and the impeccable customer service experience - Furlenco has created a brand new vertical.

The Making of Different Furniture Company Not known to many, Furlenco was “RentUrDuniya” in its initial days. “After the business gained traction and I had some customers, I decided to incorporate a formal company. I was not sure of

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

We did not get funding easily because investors were wary of the business idea

Aj

ith

M

oh

an

Ka

rim

pa

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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the potential of a name like RentUrDuniya since it sounded amateurish,” shares Ajith. The ambitions of Ajith were big, and he wanted a name that would resonate for a long time.

He adds, “We eventually decided to choose a name which was not overly sophisticated or scientific, and that is how Furlenco came about.”

Entirely bootstrapped in the initial days, the future was quite uncertain for Furlenco. Ajith opines, “We did not get funding easily because investors were wary of the business idea. We are an asset-heavy business and were operating in a market that did not even exist previously.”

Ajith raised small amounts ranging from 25-30 lakhs from well-wishers. He adds,“ In 2014, I raised Rs. 1 Crore from a friend and that was the start. I had also been in discussion with Lightbox Ventures since February 2014, and eventually, in January 2015, they invested $6 million in Furlenco.”

Over the years, Furlenco has raised money through debt funding. “We have so far raised a cumulative total of Rs. 300 Crores in debt out of which we have repaid R. 200 Crores. Our most recent funding stands at $10 million, and we are now comfortably placed on the path to further growth and steady revenues,” shares Ajith. Furlenco has steadily grown at 130 per cent year on year, and the company has already furnished over 100,000 homes in India. “Many of our customers stay with us even when they relocate from one metro city to another. To have the support of such a loyal customer base has itself been a big achievement for me,” pinpoints Ajith.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Started with renting just ten products, Furlenco has now expanded its range that even includes home décor items, appliances, and kid’s furniture as well. Ajith adds, “We keep innovating continuously and plan to introduce more services and products as well as reach out to more cities in the coming years.”

Unlike other furniture brands, Furlenco is involved during the manufacturing process and has a multi-stage quality control process in place. Furlenco also provides various value-added services like Furniture Swap, Free Annual Deep Cleaning, and the option to move the furniture within their network cities for free. Also, Furlenco’s toprated app is one of the primary reasons for them to have acquired a sizable subscriber base so far.

“We aim to cater to the experiential lifestyles of millennial Indians by offering them an affordable way of life. Our subscribers no longer need to buy furniture, home appliances or spend on expensive décor items. With us, you do not get a typical bed, sofa, or table, but thoughtfully designed and high utility products which appeal to the urban millennial Indian.” opines Ajith.

Standing Tall Despite All Odds There is no doubt that the current pandemic has hit businesses all over the world. However, Ajith is optimistic about the situation. He says, “We work in the subscription sector, and our products are going to remain in demand.

The economic slump is likely to force people to cut down on their spending and adopt pocket-friendly practices

wherever possible.” Ajith believes that instead of investing a lot of money in acquiring necessary furniture, subscribing to it will become more viable to the dynamic millennials.

“Subscription is likely to become a key part of the ‘new normal’ that we will witness in the post-pandemic world,” adds Ajith.

Although there is a disruption in Furlenco’s operations, and their new business development is on hold, Ajith claims that their cash flow is not blocked. “We are financially steady, and our revenue generation has been consistent so far. Before the lockdown, we had been experiencing a surge in demand for our services across India. Once normalcy returns, we plan to expand our network to 15 cities from the current 8, and cater to more than a million subscribers,” shares Ajith.

Furlenco now aims to achieve a subscription revenue of over ₹2000 crore by the year 2023. “After becoming operationally profitable, we next plan to be EBITDA positive,” pinpoints Ajith. The overall goal of Furlenco is to make furniture subscription as usual as DTH or OTT services. Ajith adds, “We are also going to look into highincome Tier-II cities, and we will have a wider footprint as a customer-centric brand.”

Furlenco is also planning to take the average tenure of a subscriber up to 3-4 years in the future. “Some of our subscribers have spent more than five years with us, and we are focusing on creating a lifelong bond between them and us. We are also a highly responsible brand and integrate eco-sensitive practices into our services. So, we also look forward to further strengthening our commitment to sustainability,” explains Ajith.

Reaching for the Stars A BTech Graduate in Industrial Engineering from NIT, Jalandhar, Ajith started Furlenco when there was a general belief among entrepreneurs and investors that the furniture rental business had no future. “The e-commerce success stories of today were themselves early-stage startups at that time.

Hence there was nobody to look up to,” says Ajith, whose goal is to take Furleco’s subscriber base to over a million.

Furlenco targets to cross a net subscription revenue of over Rs. 2000 Crores by the year 2023. Today, the company’s office in the heart of Bangalore has a very flexible and inclusive work culture and a young workforce of over 400 employees. “Some features of our office include in-house design and photo studio. We are a close-knit team and function more like an extended family,” shares Ajith.

Furlenco is also a highly responsible brand and integrates eco-sensitive processes into its services. In future, the company plan to further emphasize sustainability in its operations.

Believing in your ideas and working towards that to make it a reality should be something an entrepreneur strives for. “Quite often, it is the networking that helps you connect with the right people who could help further your business dreams. The most important advice that I would like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs is to network as much as possible,” concludes Ajith.

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Ajith Mohan Karimpana

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

EXPERT'S OPINION

The Impact of COVID-19 on Fintech and the Future of Banking Solutions Harish Prasad, Head – Banking Solutions APMEA, FIS

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Harish Prasad heads the Banking Solutions business for FIS in the AP-MEA region. He is actively involved with Financial Institutions across the region on adopting innovative new capabilities. He is a veteran of the Banking technology industry in India and has extensive experience working with building technology ground up for banks, as well as with establishing alternate delivery models such as SaaS. Harish Prasad

T

he COVID-19 pandemic has delivered an economic shock which is truly unprecedented. The connected world that we had become meant that the impacts of these shocks are being felt globally, irrespective of the state of infections on the ground, across every market.

Looking ahead and beyond the immediate crisis, B2C businesses globally will see the impact of changing consumer behaviour and it is widely expected that discretionary consumer spends will come under pressure, and in turn, impact many B2B businesses.

The impact to FinTech will be driven by the nature of the service they offer and the upstream and downstream impacts of COVID-19,

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Banking solutions will continue to evolve fast to leverage advances in technologies – be it Cloud, AI, IoT, or 5G

for example, COVID-19 has had a dramatic and adverse impact on Lending FinTech for instance as the stressed business environment puts their portfolio at risk while the moratoriums cause a huge liquidity crunch. Payment FinTechs have been a mixed bag as the drop-in overall business activity triggered has caused large drops in volumes, some have benefited by the move away from the use of currency. In general, Fintech whose revenue models depended on disrupting conventional operating models via digitization will see long term benefits as the world re-defines their choices.

Uncertain demand environment is also impacting many FinTech investment plans and is forcing a zero-base re-evaluation of these investments considering the realities of the new business environment. Their focus will likely be on preserving business viability in a reduced demand environment and forcing down operating costs to minimize damage and to get through these unprecedented times.

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Technological Disruptions in Banking It is quite evident from recent history that advances in infrastructure (exponential increase in computing power and capacity, mobile technology, data connectivity etc.) and new technologies drive the disruption of how banks engage with and service customers, as well improvements to internal processes and operating models. The spread and impact of these advances are very broad and affect most facets of financial services. Specifically, in the area of banking solutions, there has been tremendous disruption via the applications of analytics and AI (A), business model innovation (B), cloud technology capabilities (C) and digital engagement (D). Without getting into specifics, innovations in Banking can mostly be correlated to these ABCD factors,

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

and every banking institution is applying these across their enterprise to get and stay ahead of the competition.

Data is wealth waiting to be monetized for organizations today, and advances in Analytics and AI are driving innovations hitherto unseen across product processing cycles – be it in customer support, Compliance or Fraud detection. Secondly, banks see they can no longer sustain operating models that have them work in isolation and are evolving upstream and downstream partner business models, be it with FinTech or with service partners, and increasingly offering what we call as "Banking as a Service". Thirdly, Cloud platforms are today enabling easy access to a vast set of advanced technologies that were too far-fetched and expensive for organizations to adopt, and this is levelling the field today. Lastly, we are seeing a wave of digitization that has transformed how consumers access banking services, driven by the trend of convenience becoming paramount.

The advent of the Gen-Z who are so entrenched in the Social media ecosystem is leading Banks to re-look at their models of customer engagement and working on transforming customer experience and to make Banking becomes seamless and just another facet of “living”.

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Blockchain: Future of Financial Industry AI is a key factor of disruption having a broad-based impact on Financial Services. Blockchain, on the other hand, has had a bit of a bumpy ride through the hypecycle as financial institutions initially struggled to find meaningful applications of the technology. The biggest application of blockchain was, of course, crypto-currency and it has been a true roller-coaster ride for Crypto on the back of multiple headwinds across regulatory push-back to the more practical issues of lack of broad-based acceptance as a medium of value. But I believe we are reaching a point today where the applications of blockchain that continue to see investments and activity are those around a mature and well thought through set of use cases that cover Cryptocurrencies, Global real-time Payments, Trade and Supply Chain, Smart Contracts and Reg-tech. These seem to be where the most traction and to believe these will see increasing adoption of Blockchain-based innovation.

The premise of Blockchain has been its ability to drive better efficiency, speed up processes and lower risks across the various applications it has been used for. Blockchain technology can dramatically improve settlement processes through the universal and real-time nature of updates, speed up processes by eliminating the need for manual reconciliation and providing instantaneous global visibility, and lower risks through inherent immutability and transparency in its design. In effect, all of these go

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

towards enabling the overall Financial Services system work more efficiently and reduce the cost of products and services to customers and deliver a lot more value at lower price points and customers eventually will see the benefits of these innovations.

The Indian financial services industry has had a rather patchy record of adopting Blockchain. We are largely still in an experimental phase and adoption has evidently been mainly around a. Global payments (e.g. RippleNet or Stellar participation by a few banks) b. Some pilots around adopting Blockchain in Trade finance use-cases and c. Identity and KYC related experiments. Interestingly, the experimentation on Blockchain use in other sectors especially around the Government has been more promising. I believe adoption will improve gradually in the financial service area but will largely be led by global trends as opposed to India-specific trends. Large scale adoption will need industry-wide acceptance to establish Blockchain-based "rails" in specific areas.

Trends in Fintech to Look Out For Cloud, AI, IoT and 5G look very promising and while AI is already seeing widespread adoption as we discussed earlier, applications of IoT and 5G will pick up over the next few years as these technologies mature and see higher adoption and consumption. These are technologies that have the potential to drive significant change to customer engagement and experience, and I expect these will lead to transformative change in time in this area.

Your car reminding you via a voice message that your insurance renewal is due and giving you a visual comparison of insurance quotes on your car's entertainment unit screen, and you concluding the renewal with a verbal instruction to pay the insurer using a preferred credit-card – all while driving your car – that's the kind of transformative convenience that these technologies can drive, and we will see a lot more of these emerge!

A Piece of Advice Banking solutions will continue to evolve fast to leverage advances in technologies – be it Cloud, AI or IoT and 5G. Every solution provider needs to critically review and align their offerings to exploit these advances and build in the benefits that these can deliver, into their propositions.

Not doing so will soon make many of these providers irrelevant in an increasingly complex and competitive world. Fin-Techs that are looking to use the advantage of a level-playing technology field should press home their advantage and lead by innovation, and this will bring benefits to the industry overall and to end-consumers. (As told to the Editor)

Want to Sell or find Investor for your Business?

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

COVE R

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ANANT GOENKA

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF CEAT LIMITED

SAFEST IN THE

GAME OF ROADS HOW DID ANANT GOENKA TRANSFORM CEAT INTO ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING INDIAN TYRE MANUFACTURERS IN HIS 30s?

By Sarath Shyam CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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H

arsh Goenka, the fifth generation of a reputed Indian business family, was only 24 years old when he took over as the Managing Director of CEAT. It was back in 1983, and within six years, he became the Chairman of RPG Group, a conglomerate with a diversified portfolio in the areas of infrastructure, tyres, information technology, pharmaceuticals, energy, and plantations.

CEAT witnessed another next-gen induction when Harsh Goenka’s son, Anant Goenka took over as Managing Director in 2012. However, it was not a direct placement for the 30-year-old Anant. Since 2004, Anant has been working with CEAT, first as sales manager for Navi Mumbai and then as sales head for Maharashtra.

Though Anant always wanted to be a part CEAT, when he returned with an MBA from Kellog School of Management in 2007, his father Harsh Goenka had

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

another plan for him. He decided that Anant would not restart his career at the group’s flagship firm, CEAT, but in the group’s infrastructure company, KEC International.

Anant spent three years in KEC and learned the practical aspects of project planning, supply chain management and growing the US business. In 2010, Anant came back to CEAT as its Deputy Managing Director, reporting to the Managing Director, Paras K. Chowdhary, whose retirement paved the way for Anant’s promotion in 2012.

"When I became the MD of CEAT, I did not get any specific advice from my father. However, I had learned a lot from him by observing his leadership style," says Anant. Though CEAT was in a comfortable position when Anant took over the leadership, he had higher ambitions.

He wanted to make CEAT among the most profitable tyre companies in India in the next five years by strengthening the brand, improving operational efficiencies and by

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focusing on R&D and development of alternate materials.

That indeed marked the start of a transition time at CEAT. Finding a New Direction Under the leadership of Anant, CEAT framed a new vision statement, which gave the company a sense of direction. “We set a longer-term goal for the organization.

It is not something I did. The entire team worked to develop it,” says Anant. Till then, despite producing tyres for everything ranging from two-wheelers and cars to trucks and tractors, CEAT has never been the leader in any segment. “We identified together that we should be aiming at the two-wheeler space,” adds Anant.

With new leadership and newfound focus, CEAT worked on adding platforms and offer complete range of tyres for two-wheelers – “When we gathered customer insights, we understood that the biggest thing for a

customer is safety on the road. That is when we started developing the safest tyres on the road,” recalls Anant.

CEAT was the first to introduce tubeless tyres for tube-type bikes. The company has also launched 'puncture safe' tyres for motorcycles.

CEAT has invested heavily in the development of a state-of-the-art R&D centre enabling a funnel of innovative new products, be it Fuelsmarrt tyres for Passenger Cars, Win X3 Series tyres for Truck and Bus, Puncture Safe tyres for Two-Wheelers, Secura Drive tyres for Premium Hatch and Sedans or Milaze X3 tyres for consumers seeking higher mileage -SUV Taxi segment; This investment has yielded the results they were looking for – one of the top positions in tyre manufacturing in India. CEAT's R&D division rolled out over a hundred products between Sri Lanka and India across categories in FY 2013-14.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

“Distribution was another area that we had to focus on.

Nobody would travel more than two or three km to buy a tyre. So, we needed to ensure that our tyres are available at the closest location of our customers,” says Anant. Today, with 4,500+ dealers, 400+ exclusive franchisees, and 350+ multi-brand outlets covering 600+ districts, CEAT has one of the largest distribution networks in the country. With a strong presence in global markets, CEAT produces over 15 million tyres a year and offers the broadest range of tyres to all segment.

On the other side, Anant changed the way how CEAT used to operate. He is a strong advocate of Total quality management (TQM), is the continual process of detecting and reducing or eliminating errors in manufacturing, streamlining supply chain management, improving the customer experience, and ensuring that employees are up to

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

speed with training. “TQM has been a key driver for CEAT to achieve its goals in the last six years and has improved the health of the organization considerably,” opines Anant.

In 2017, CEAT became the first tire company in the world, outside of Japan, to be conferred the prestigious Deming Prize, which is one of the oldest and most respected quality awards in the world for companies that achieve business transformation through TQM. Fighting the Pandemic Be it a consumer or an employee, safety stands at the top for Anant. Sitting in Mumbai, which has become the centre COVID-19 outbreak in India, Anant worries about the well-being of the staff at CEAT. “In this pandemic, our priority is to make sure that our people are safe. We had taken all the safety measures including sanitization of

our offices even before we understood the gravity of the situation,� says Anant. Since the announcement of nationwide lockdown, CEAT has been taking all recommended precautions and preventive measures to ensure health and safety of its employees and to contain the spread of coronavirus, including implementation of the work-fromhome policy for all its offices.

It is not just the work-from-home option that makes CEAT different during the COVID-19. "We know that a crisis like this can become difficult for people, especially when they are working from home. At CEAT, we have a health consultant who is in touch with all the employees to check

Anant Goenka

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Under the leadership of Anant, CEAT framed a new vision statement, which gave the company a sense of direction

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

30 whether anyone has any symptoms,” shares Anant. To ensure the physical and mental well-being as well as skill development of its employees during this time, CEAT has begun an initiative called Cofit-20.

Now, CEAT employees can directly call and reach out to its recently appointed Chief Fitness Officer (CFO), Deepali Athawale for any health-related query. Connects with spouses and other family members of the CEAT employees on con-calls and the CFO will brief them on the necessary precautions to be taken to mitigate the virus threat. In addition to that, the company has also appointed renowned fitness trainer, Vani Pahwa, who conducts fitness exercise sessions of 30 minutes via YouTube for employees, including the shop-floor staff.

Anant adds, “We have also started online classes to leveraging this time for employee development.”

CEAT is utilizing its online learning platform as well as other web platforms to cater to the learning needs of employees. A variety of learning content such as online courses, TedTalks, e-books, case studies and articles are being hand-picked for the perusal of employees. Learning capsules, with a duration ranging 1-3 hours, are also being delivered through web platforms on functional topics or as refresher training.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

On the other side, CEAT along with RPG Foundation and other relevant authorities has undertaken various tasks with a commitment towards helping the society in every possible manner to fight COVID. One such initiative is sanitization of trucks that deliver food and essentials in Mumbai. The company has partnered with All India Truck Workers' Association (AITWA), Bombay Goods and Transport Association (BGTA) and Western Union LPG Association (WULA) to sanitize trucks at goods loading point.

Anant understands that the life of people will not reach normalcy for the next 10-12 months. However, he is positive about the future of the country and its industries. “Indian automobile industry is emerging as a manufacturing hub for many multinational companies.

I think, post-COVID, India has an opportunity to attract more business here, as people would start looking beyond China to establish their factories," says Anant. Even in this challenging time, when companies across the globe are struggling run their operations, Anant assures that all there will no job cuts or salary cuts at CEAT. “This is the time we need to support our people. Salary cuts and layoffs are not part of the thought process for us now,” concludes Anant.

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

LEADER’S INSIGHTS

Post COVID-19, Building Automation System Market is Poised to Witness Accelerated Growth The Building Automation System Market is expected to grow from USD 75.0 billion in 2019 to USD 121.5 billion by 2024—growing at a CAGR of 10.1 per cent. “The outbreak of COVID 19

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has impacted industries world over and the building automation industry too may see a temporary slowdown. However, there is soon going to be a bounce-back in terms of spending as businesses seek better efficiency, improved automation and remote manageability,” says Gaurav Burman, APAC & Vice President, 75F. In an email interaction with CXO Outlook, Gaurav points out that the new world after COVID is going to look for solutions that are more adaptable and versatile, and building automation Gaurav Burman, APAC & Vice President, 75F

solutions like 75F would fit that bill. Excerpts.

• What is the future scope of Building Automation System Market amidst COVID-19?

Every business, big and small, has been impacted by the global impact of COVID-19, and this has had a cascading effect on workplaces and facilities everywhere. As companies worldwide are gearing up to maintain business continuity through remote working, variable occupancy or social distancing and reduced travel commitments, their workplace needs, and expectations are evolving too.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

The outbreak of COVID 19 has impacted industries world over and the building automation industry too may see a temporary slowdown

The new world, when this pandemic is over, is going to look for solutions that are more adaptable and versatile, and building automation solutions like 75F fit that bill. Reduced occupancy in workplaces has facility managers and owners inclined towards technologies that enable building intelligence. They are seeking intelligent automation solutions that let allow them to remotely monitor and tweak building operations, especially for when facility personnel aren't available for their day-to-day onsite work.

We also see an increasing demand for solutions such as space management, occupancy-based control, and indoor air quality management. It helps them to enhance occupant comfort, health and well-being while reducing energy costs dramatically. There will be an overall cut in the amount of travel that is required for businesses, and we believe the world is going to be more accepting of remote management solutions.

Companies like 75F are better poised to embrace tech shifts.

We believe the building automation industry is poised to witness accelerated growth in the coming years as building owners and managers prioritize the need to do more with less and leaner building operations and are increasingly focused on occupant health and well-being.

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• Before the pandemic, the Building Automation System Industry were thriving, what do you see for the industry over the next 18 months?

The outbreak of COVID 19 has impacted industries world over and the building automation industry too may see a temporary

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

More About

Gaurav Burman Gaurav Burman, in his previous position was with Schneider Electric, as their Director – Marketing where he was also a part of the Management Team of Schneider Electric, South Asia. Gaurav has handled diverse portfolios in his career including product management,

34

alliances, channel sales, and enterprise sales.

Prior to Marketing, Gaurav spent 20 years of his life in Sales and worked with companies like PCL, IBM, L&T, APC, and Schneider Electric. He was recently recognized as one of the 50 Most Talented CMOs in India in 2013, and one of the 100 Most Talented CMOs in the World by the US-based CMO Council.

Gaurav obtained his Civil Engineering Degree from The Thapar Institute, Patiala.

He pursued his MBA in Marketing from XLRI, Jamshedpur.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

slowdown for a quarter or two as customers re-evaluate their operating expenses and priorities. But we believe, there is soon going to be a bounce-back in terms of spending as businesses seek better efficiency, improved automation and remote manageability.

While the demand before the pandemic was primarily driven by rising energy costs, rising level of construction activities, and growing awareness about the benefits of automation, here onwards factors such as need for remote manageability, operational efficiency, space management, enhanced indoor air quality and improved occupant health and productivity will also contribute to the growth. • Moving forward, what is Building Automation System Industry anticipating for, and how are you preparing for those challenges?

We believe 75F is well-positioned to take part in the recovery and recapture market share. We're calling this current quarter the Quarter of Leveling Up. We are auditing all our processes and doing spring cleaning on some of our systems that have been left unattended through our flurry of growth spurts. When the phoenix arises from the ashes, we are going to be much leaner and well-positioned for what we feel will be a perpetually changing business environment.

From a business perspective, we have been working with our customers to better our leverage our solution and adapt it to these trying times. Customers have been able to shut down buildings remotely to save energy, and others have increased indoor air quality by forcing in fresh air without having to send technicians to the site. Some of

Gaurav Burman

A predictive, proactive building controls and smart HVAC solution can improve comfort levels and indoor air quality

our customers have been able to leverage remote monitoring and control, making sure that energy costs are dramatically reduced because building occupancy is way down. 75F truly demonstrates the immense advantages of remote management.

We believe systems like ours allow buildings to be more flexible to uncertain conditions like the one we are in at the moment. When we come out of this, we are sure that more people will see our value and how well prepared they could be for various uncertainties.

• Air pollution is one of the major concerns in India cities. How is 75F contributing to delivering improved air quality?

The 75F building automation system pays attention to monitoring and maintaining indoor air quality. It’s enhanced by predictive analytics, cloud computing and processing power, 75F’s cuttingedge technology achieves the ideal level of Indoor Air Quality and mixed air temperatures, allowing for maximum comfort at all times. The 75F smart system detects levels of CO2, NO2 and other VOCs in the building and proactively adjusts outside air dampers to maintain air quality at appropriate levels. It reduces the carbon footprint while making the buildings comfortable, automated and extremely smart.

To top it all off, it can help you save up to 50% on your energy costs, with smart, predictive HVAC automation and outside air optimization.

• 75F claims that its improved IAQ can boost employee productivity up to 8% and can improve cognitive functioning by 61-101%. Could you please explain the role of 75F in increasing productivity?

Most commercial buildings need indoor air quality improvements.

High indoor CO2 and VOC levels are commonly caused by HVAC systems that aren't optimized as well as cutting-edge building management systems. A predictive, proactive building controls and smart HVAC solution can improve comfort levels and indoor air quality.

Our smart HVAC system can remove hot and cold spots throughout buildings by automatically balancing airflow according to building dynamics and usage patterns. We can predict environmental changes and adapt to their own and account for issues like large windows or varied office sizes.

Smart buildings can sense and manage many of these factors to assure a healthy environment for all occupants. Such a system will allow your building's system to use live weather feeds to obtain outdoor enthalpy (air energy) data rather than rely on the inaccurate readings produced by a traditional rooftop unit module. Furthermore, wireless sensors throughout your building will monitor CO2, NO2 and CO levels along with indoor enthalpy.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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EXPERT'S OPINION

How can Leaders Create a Productive Work Culture in Teams Working Remotely?

By Khushboo Jain, Co-Founder and COO, ImpactGuru.com

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Khushboo Jain co-founded crowdfunding platform ImpactGuru.com in July 2014 and has served as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. In addition, she heads ImpactGuru’s Communications, Design and Brand teams. Khushboo Jain is actively involved in the company’s marketing and communications strategies, community building activities, the ImpactGuru product users’ experience, and with Khushboo Jain

ImpactGuru’s work with non-profits.

A

midst the COVID-19 pandemic, all companies are slowly getting accustomed to their employees working from home. With the number of forced and unforeseen changes that have been happening, the entire corporate workspace has had to immediately adapt to a changed work methodology.

With everyone now operating remotely, team leaders have to learn a new form of leadership, one that requires them to lead a team that’s not physically near them. While this is a challenge,

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Organizations and leaders will have to find a work process that is effective and efficient

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this can be seen as an opportunity to develop a skillset. This will only be used extensively in the future, as more employers and employees will get to realize how working remotely can be used to their advantage.

7 tips for team leaders to get productivity from their team: 1. Set priorities One of the skills that leaders in any organization should develop is to decide which tasks are essential and which ones are not.

When the members of your team are not near you, this skill will become even more important as you will now have to completely reorganize your daily work schedule. Your time is your most valuable resource, and deciding which departments and team members will need more of it will help save time, smoothen the workflow and also help manage the use of other resources.

2. Identify processes that work with the team Once you’ve prioritized your tasks, you now need to find a way to get your team to execute it. The workflow that you used in an office environment may not be effective right now, as people will be dealing with a lot more distractions, as well as a lot of physical and psychological stress. Organizations and leaders will have to find a work process that is effective and efficient.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

More About

ImpactGuru.com and

Khushboo Jain ImpactGuru.com

is

India’s

leading

healthcare financing platform for patients, raises money online for medical expenses via crowdfunding. It aggregates a large number of online payments to allow any individual requiring financial assistance to raise funds for medical expenses - be it cancer, transplant, accident, or any medical emergency.

Co-Founder and COO of ImpactGuru.com, Khushboo Jain was recently featured amongst the Top 15 winning women entrepreneurs at NITI Aayog & United Nations, 2019 Women

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Transforming India Awards. Khushboo Jain began an entrepreneurial career and cofounded ImpactGuru.com with a mission to help India’s people find crowdfunding solutions for patients struggling to fund critical illnesses

3. Maintain communication Maintaining communication with your members is going to require you to be dynamic, where you may face the most number of changes. You will no longer have the advantage of face-to-face communication. Your means of communication will now be online. Know which mediums of communication can get you the best results.

Each member of your team will respond in a different manner to the different channels of communication. One may prefer answering to emails, another may respond to instant message services, while someone may need coaching through video calls. It will be up to you to decide which services to use, and how effectively you can pass on important information to your team members, and help them communicate with each other.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

4. Look for progress, not perfection While having high expectations from your team may be a useful strategy under normal circumstances, in the current scenario it will only build stress. For now, focus more on getting work done than having a very high standard. Have a realistic standard that your team can achieve. If your team has any additional time at their disposal after the task is done, then you may revisit it and make improvements.

During this testing time, follow the Facebook motto - ‘Done is better than perfect.’

5. Keep a positive attitude With the tension mounting due to COVID-19 crisis, it is now that you will have to maintain a positive attitude. If you are able to lead with a positive attitude, then your team will also respond positively to their tasks. Having a quick chat with them that’s not work-related once in a while will help them get into the right headspace. During this phase, it is also important that you take good care of yourself because maintaining a positive attitude while you are not in the best shape is difficult and stressful.

6. Respect boundaries Your team will be working from home, where they will have to deal with their families, friends, pets and household chores along with work. While ideally, you would expect them to be as responsive as they were in a normal office situation, but at home, they may have limitations as to how much contact they would like. You yourself may have work limitations that you may not like to enforce. Remember that not everyone is alike and that you should treat them as they would want to be, not what you would think is appropriate.

7. Address issues, give and take feedback As most organizations are still in the beginning phase of their adjustment to these changes, it is important to be patient and observe how things work. Find issues and hassles in your team’s workflow and address them. If you have built trust with your team, then you should be able to give them constructive feedback as to what they can improve upon. At the same time, you should be receptive to feedback from the other members, and be able to use it as a way to improve the work process.

While the COVID-19 outbreak is not to be taken lightly, this could be a great opportunity to show how adaptable you are as an organization or as a team leader. Being able to execute as a leader during a time of crisis is a true sign that you are ready to be able to shoulder bigger responsibilities.

The skills that you develop during this period may be the ones that help you navigate the next few years after the pandemic scare has passed.

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

W

ho is a leader? There can be many definitions.

In simple terms, we can say that a leader is someone who does more than lead people.

Driven by the right motivation, leaders make a positive impact on the people around them.

However, we now live in a different time. The so-called definitions that we have been using since ages may not be valid today —an unprecedented situation like COVID-19 demands leadership that goes beyond the textbook definitions.

By mid of May 2020, the world has over 5,085,504 confirmed COVID-19 cases by the deadly virus has claimed over 329, 731 lives. Governments have instituted travel bans and quarantine requirements, which are essential for safeguarding public health. In India and around the world, most of the business leaders, especially the young ones, have responded well. For many, keeping employees and their families safe and free from contagion has been the top priority.

We know that we will get through this crisis. When we do, we are sure that history will show how the world’s young leaders helped to build a bridge from fear to hope and from confusion to understanding. In this issue of CXO Outlook, we celebrate the success of young leaders in India. Most of the young chiefs on our list of ‘10 Most Inspiring Young CXOs in India’ have become household names, by running dynamic and high-growth businesses with bright prospects for the future. We hope our efforts to feature their stories would inspire the next generation of leaders in India.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Name

Designation

Company

Anant Goenka

Managing Director

CEAT Limited

Arjun Juneja

Chief Operating Officer

Mankind Pharma

Founder and CEO

BYJU's

Deputy CEO

AnandRathi

Founder and CEO

The Bohri Kitchen

Neeraj Biyani

Co-Founder and COO

Hector Beverages

Neha Bagaria

Founder and CEO

JobsForHer

Ritesh Agarwal

Founder and CEO

OYO Rooms

Rohit M. A.

Co-Founder and MD

Cloudnine Group of Hospitals

Sonia Notani

Chief Marketing Officer

IndiaFirst Life Insurance

Byju Raveendran

Feroze Azeez

Munaf Kapadia

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

MOST INSPIRING

YOUNG CXOs

IN INDIA

Feroze Azeez Deputy CEO, AnandRathi

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The Risk Taker F

eroze’s association with risk started when he was 17-years-old and stood in front of the Editor of the Star of Mysore – an Indian English language evening daily newspaper published in Mysore. With nervous energy, passion in his eyes and fearless determination, Feroze proposed what many would call an unusual proposal - a free half-page advertisement for a tuition centre that he was about to open in the town.

A proposal coming from an inexperienced 17-year old young engineering student was rejected instantly.

But, Feroze was unperturbed by the rejection, because he kept knocking the doors of the Editor repeatedly. Finally, the Editor caved but with a condition of his own - Feroze must teach students for free in its starting stage.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

With the help of that half-page advertisement, Feroze enrolled 28 students and started the MESCO tuition centre in the city of Mysore. The Academy flourished, and Feroze’s risk paid off. He was teaching over 300 students and earned about Rs. 80, 000 a month. An engineering degree and an enterprise in his hometown would have made for a prosperous future for most of us! But, Feroze was way ahead of his time! He understood the concept of calculated risk and applied it to his own life!

First, the teacher turned into a student - Feroze spent a large sum of his savings to do an MBA from one of the reputed management institutions in Mysore. And, then he chose to take his second big risk in life - to leave well-paid teaching profession in lieu of a private banking job that was going to

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Feroze Azeez

One of the youngest deputy CEO in the wealth management industry, Feroze Azeez’s journey has been a series of calculated risks which has resulted in continuous success over a span of 17 years. His meteoric rise has seen him build a reputation of being the most successful architect of Structured Products since 2007. At Anand Rathi Wealth alone, in the last one year, he has ideated over 1,000 Structured Products, of which, half of them have matured and generated an alpha of over 8% p.a. with half the risk of Nifty.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

There is no second way to motivate people to do something than doing that job by yourself

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Feroze Azeez

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

pay him only Rs. 9,200 per month initially. While his friends and family felt this decision was incongruous, Feroze was certain of the risk he was taking. He knew that his threshold limit as a teacher would be Rs. 2.5 lakh a month and that too, at the peak of his career.

But, as a private banker, the potential was unlimited.

The best teacher in those days had a salary of Rs 2.5 lakhs, but he calculated that the best private banker made 100 times of that! The way ahead was clear for him!

Feroze’s entry into the banking and finance industry was a huge risk, but he was determined to succeed. He started advising clients on Mutual Funds from the lobby of ABN Amro and soon transitioned into doing R&D for innovating new products. In 2007, he started designing Structured Products which came as a huge comfort for investors who lost their savings during the 2008 market crash. From then on, there was no turning back and the rest, as they say, is now history.

“People become stuck up with what they want to do in their life. They will not change with the change in time and will compromise their long-term goals for their short-term achievements,” says Feroze reminiscing those days of hard work. The testament of taking this risk is that at Anand Rathi Wealth, Feroze has been instrumental in scaling the asset under management to Rs. 20,000 crore from Rs. 4,500 crore in the last seven years.

“We have done a few things that nobody in our industry has been doing. For instance, transparency was something that lacked in the wealth management industry. At Anand Rathi Wealth, our portfolios get audited, we measure risks numerically, and we develop and execute on what customers value.” As an innovator who believes that mathematical logic will always prevail over opinions, Feroze has redefined the concept of wealth management by standardising the company’s wealth advisory to over 5,000 clients, in India and globally.

Feroze’s analytical agility and ability to bring in a new perspective through data has enabled him to mathematically construct Anand Rathi Wealth’s Model Portfolio, which has been developed after using various research tools and running it through the simulation of mathematical methodologies. “More people are trying to get sales and marketing to a money management job. But we brought more finance people and mathematics to our tables. It has helped us immensely in improving our revenue,” shares Feroze.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a dark cloud over the investor sentiments, but Feroze opines that there is a silver lining. “Our clients have completely come to terms with virtual meetings. Before this, if I wanted to do a meeting with a client in Kolkata, I will always think about taking a flight to Kolkata. It will not be the case anymore,” he adds. While this unprecedented global crisis has stressed the financial markets, Feroze says, “There are no challenges, and there are only situations. If you do not act properly in those situations, then it becomes a challenge. Today, we are in a bad situation. We can convert it into a challenge or turn it into an opportunity. It all depends on your action,” opines Feroze.

Volatility in the financial markets and uncertainty in the economy arising from the COVID-19 outbreak has impacted every sector, including investment banking activities. But, tactical decision making has opened windows of opportunities. “April 2020 is going to be the best month ever in the history of AnandRathi. Compared to April 2019, my revenue would go up to 50 per cent this month,” claims Feroze.

While his team is adapting quickly to the pandemic’s new normal, Feroze believes that being positive and motivating your team is crucial to get the best productivity. “If you are a relationship manager of 900 people, and have 300 private bankers under you, then to motivate this group of 300, you must be a private banker yourself. I am one of the top private bankers of the Anand Rathi Wealth, not just a Deputy CEO. There is no second way to motivate people to do something than doing that job by yourself,” explains Feroze. However, like any individual, Feroze is not immune to mistakes.

“Extensive innovation is one mistake I did. We did several products about 8-10 years back, and we realized that only 3-4 were relevant. Innovate in smaller canvas, that too when it is necessary. Do not innovate to simulate your mind,” says Feroze. With over a decade of experience in the capital market, Feroze has learnt many lessons. He adds, “Assuming that a person will behave similarly at different points of time is wrong. During a good time, they will listen to you completely. They may stop listening to you in bad times.”

Despite his successes and challenges, Feroze’s passion has continued to show him the way forward.

He says, “I think about work when I am not working.”

He is the sole advisor for many of his clients, who have

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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Feroze Azeez

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traversed the journey of over 17 years with him. “You need to have a good heart to manage someone else’s money. If you cannot feel for that money, then you cannot manage it. Every rupee that you manage has a story behind it,” believes Feroze.

In his entire career of wealth management, the one aspiration that Feroze continues to achieve is educating investors and creating financial awareness. He may be the deputy CEO of one of the fastest growing wealth

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

management firms in India, but, he still carries his roots with him. ‘Investors must be able to clearly understand and make prudent investment decisions about their hard-earned money and it can only happen if we take the time out to explain it to them,” says Feroze. He has actively partaken in over 1,000 investor educative shows in the last few years to demystify the concepts of the financial markets, which has benefitted investors across a large spectrum.

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

LEADER'S INSIGHTS

COVID-19: One Good Reason to Invest Heavily in Smart Cities

India’s major cities are now designated as coronavirus red-zones and experts say our fight against COVID-19 now rely on the successful use of

50

the smart city investments. “Through tech-powered war rooms, dashboards, and surveillance systems, smart cities have been able to provide constant updates on movements during the lockdown, as well as data of those affected by COVID-19,” says Saily Lad, Director of Volksara and Krystal Group of

Companies. A prominent name in technology-led

securities in India, Saily, in an email interaction with CXO Outlook, talks about barriers in deploying smart Saily Lad, Director, Volksara and Krystal Group of Companies

technologies Indian in cities, the impact of 5G can make in India’s Smart City Mission, the future smart cities in India, and many more.

In India, how is smart city infrastructure helping us in the fight against COVID-19?

When the Smart City initiative was first launched across the country, its development and influx of technology in various operations has today proven to be a huge boon in the fight against COVID-19. At the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, for example, the whole region is

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Budget allocations are one of the biggest challenges in deploying smart technologies

being closely monitored through a war room, using the latest Smart City software and technology. Using GIS overlapping on Google Maps, the PCMC is able to monitor containment areas. They are also employing automated dashboards with real-time updates on positive cases, as well as monitoring the region through additional CCTV cameras which have been set up.

In Bengaluru too, a Smart City COVID War Room has been set up with a data dashboard of patients, their contacts, city and taluka-wise data, which is compiled through a host of software. Vadodara too has deployed surveillance systems through helium balloons fitted with cameras and PA systems to monitor the on-ground situation. A dashboard monitoring system has also been set up in Kakinada.

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What do you think are currently the main barriers in deploying smart technologies in cities and towns?

Budget allocations are one of the biggest challenges in deploying smart technologies.

Without the right funds available, it can greatly limit the development of cities. Besides this, connectivity is another challenge, as some of the smart cities announced are based in areas with limited connectivity. As a result, building a standalone connection becomes a costly affair, without a 100% guarantee of reliability. Having said that, it would be wrong to entirely blame the government and allied services for the slow pace of development of smart cities. We need to create much more awareness on the benefits and maintenance of infrastructure around us. Indifferent attitudes towards anything that is for our benefit, undermines the government’s attempt to bring us at par with international entities. This can be changed though, through stricter laws and their implementation, especially in the social segment, to better use the smart city infrastructure.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

More about

Saily Lad Saily Lad, along with her team at Volksara work on providing comprehensive security and safety solutions, along with integration of products, systems and services that are backed by a highly skilled software R&D team adept in software application development in advance technology domain of Security Surveillance. Under her knowledgeable and competitive guidance, Volksara was awarded the Best Safe City in India (Nasik, Kumbh Mela) for their services provided in the securities space. A goal-oriented, fast decision maker, Saily’s efforts were also honored through

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the 1st Young Women Entrepreneur in IT Industry award.

With a BA in Strategic Management and Consulting from Nottingham Trent University and a Msc in business consulting from Royal Holloway University of London, under her belt, Saily has developed the skills and knowhow to become one of India’s leading tech entrepreneurs. Through her work on the Smart City project in India, she has been recognized for her efforts, and awarded the Best Safe City in India (Nasik, Kumbh Mela). Apart from work, Saily is a voracious reader, who loves indulging in a vast variety of genres like fiction, autobiographies, religious, non-fiction, and many more.

Saily Lad

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

What are the key infrastructure issues when it comes to transforming Indian cities? How do you foresee these issues evolving in the coming five to ten years?

I think when it comes to transforming our cities, we need to be focused and have a clear definition of where we are, and what we want to achieve. Just as London focused on easing traffic congestion, and Madrid invested in technology, India too needs to define one core focus area in terms of infrastructure, and start here, rather than attempt multiple projects at the same time. In a city like Mumbai, for example, it is no secret that our roads are chocking, but simultaneously, there are multiple metro projects underway. Over the next few years, we can expect these to become functional, easing the pressure on the roads, reducing pollution, and cutting down travel time. If a similar approach is taken when developing smart cities, I believe we can see development peak across the country, and smarter approaches being taken to meet the problems of the future.

Where do you think governance stands in terms of priority when we want to achieve sustainable smart cities?

The government is on the right track with its smart city mission, but for us to truly call ourselves smart, our cities need to be developed with foresight. We need to have foresight into the understandings and requirements of the future. Most of the development plans are created in collaboration with academia, governments, industries, and civil society who come together to envision and implement the same. If we are to truly see these plans materialise, our priority focus areas should be engaging with denizens to address their needs, while simultaneously moving towards e-governance. In addition, holistic city plans, with a vision for of achieving zero waste can become a reality, only if we are to address current problems at a grassroots level, and work our way up.

In India, what would you list as the biggest challenges in deciding on what technology to invest in and what strategy to adopt?

With respect to smart cities, one of the biggest challenges in adopting the technology will be that of network connectivity. For any smart city, its management is heavily dependent on cameras, sensors, and other newage technologies. As these gather large amounts of data, processing it too should ideally happen in real-time, for which a high-speed internet connection is mandatory.

Unfortunately, most places in India are yet to have this in place, which should definitely be considered

before investing in technology. The government should also consider the very real possibility of a breach of cybersecurity, and sensitive data falling into the wrong hands, when setting up data centres. Besides, they should also ensure that they have hired efficient technical support to handle the backend operations.

What will be the impact of 5G in India’s Smart City Mission? What are the major challenges for the country to introduce 5G networks? How can we overcome those challenges?

A large number of elements in a smart city rely on internet connectivity, making it integral to adopt technology that promotes uninterrupted connectivity in a seamless manner.

5G technology, for example, offers higher bandwidth, performance guarantees, and delivery, besides reducing the time taken to carry out a function. As a result of their higher data rates (1-20 Gbit/s), consumers can download content faster. Besides this, it also has a much lower latency (1 ms). This ensures users experience fewer delays when requesting data from the network. Taking this into consideration 5G has the potential to be a great support to smart cities, especially with regards to security systems. It can significantly reduce the time taken to combat attacks and resolve potential threats.

What does the future of Smart Cities in India look like? What are developments and trends that will dominate the Smart City initiative in the coming year?

The year 2020 has not gone the way anyone could have envisioned. What has however been a saving grace is the way smart cities have led the way in the fight against the current pandemic. When the initiative was launched, it was poised to house 40 per cent of India’s population, as well as contribute 75 per cent of India’s GDP, over the course of the decade. This year though, there is a larger sense of uncertainty in the economy, but what we can say is that smart cities will be defined by their use of technology to monitor regions in real-time. Through tech-powered war rooms, dashboards, and surveillance systems, smart cities have been able to provide constant updates on movements during the lockdown, as well as data of those affected by COVID-19. Also known as the nerve centres for city managers, smart solutions are able to create situations awareness, coordinate activities, disseminate information, as well as provide predictive analysis. Smart cities this year have also stood out for their use of tracker applications in monitoring isolation cases, logistics, and creating telemedicine opportunities, using the latest software and technology.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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INSPIRING

IDEAS

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A Tale of How a Corporate Employee Was Nudged Towards NGOs

ith a few organizations, India’s non-profit sector is still embryonic. The scale of challenges we face today requires top talent.

However, non-profits sit at the very bottom of the aspiration hierarchy when it comes to choosing a sector for entrepreneurs, which has been one of the primary reasons for this sector not moving to its fullest potential.

Despite having a significant amount of change in our society, not even 1 per cent of the energy we have has been tapped to bring about a change in our country itself. “Ten years from now, children of this generation grow up saying 'I want to be in the non-profit sector or developing sector doing good work for India.' Hopefully, by sharing the collective, and with the right kind of mentorship and government support, there will be more room to work in the non-profit sector,” opines Atul Satija, Founder of The/Nudge Foundation and Founder 2.0 of GiveIndia Foundation.

Atul is a classic startup man who was born and brought up in a lower-middle-class family of Chandigarh. He had seen his father, a government employee, and mother, a school teacher, provide for their family from his childhood days. “One of my uncles was an auto driver, and another was running a tea stall. My father stepped in to take care of my cousins as they did not make enough money to ensure quality education and healthcare for my cousins,” says Atul.

Atul’s father played a huge role in his life, inspiring him to walk down the non-profit sector path. “While our financial framework at home made me want to make more money. It was my father’s outlook to like that inspired me to help people,” adds Atul. But he went on to work in the corporate sector for a few years. “I had planned my stay in my corporate career, make money till retirement, and then venture into the journey of social work. But things did not go as planned,” says Atul.

A New Phase During his time in Google and InMobi, Atul realized that he could not focus on social and non-profit work due to his day jobs. After resigning

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

At u

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We just knew we had a problem, and we knew we have to solve it

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

from inMobi, Atul started his non-profit organization, The/Nudge Foundation in 2015. With a broad theme of alleviating poverty, Atul along with Saurabh Adeeb, who heads the corporate and partner engagement at The/Nudge, visited slums to understand who they were going to cater to, as the idea was not just to give an economic foundation, but go beyond that.

Atul remembers, “We visited upwards of 100 such settlements — spending time with the community just to speak with people on what they are doing and their aspirations. This gave us a lot of insights.” Within two years, the foundation set up eight gurukuls, and so far, 612 students have graduated from those. "The good thing was, we did not know how NGOs are built. We just knew we had a problem, and we knew we have to solve it. It was like any other business. We wanted to solve a problem, and we needed 'customers'," says Atul.

Having the 2nd largest population of the world’s extreme poor, India houses over 10 per cent of the entire global impoverished population. People living in extreme poverty are confronted with severe deprivation across multiple dimensions such as lack of any productive assets, shortage of food to eat every day, lack of essential

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

services. Most importantly, they are excluded socially, culturally, and geographically. Atul opines, “We deliver India’s most effective and cost-efficient skill development programs. Having students from 10 states, we provide them with a place to stay along with a promise of work once the programs are done. Our programs strongly focus on life skills and learnability. Every year we have 3500+ students, 20+ corporate partners, 25+ admission partners, and 50+ employers.” Through the Gurukul framework, the poor and unemployed youth are provided with skill training courses, enabling them to get jobs with employers like Starbucks, PVR, Sobha, and many more.

Another part of the work done at the foundation, N/ Core, aims to nudge and nurture top talent and solve their most pressing problems, through the incubator, accelerator, and other such programs. If one were to solve the most pressing social issues of today in this generation, it would require an entire generation to come forward and take up the challenge. With this belief, N/Core was started to kickstart a new breed of non-profits, by bringing

GiveIndia aspires to change inequality which is pretty evident in our country

of civilization and every human being must have the same chance to succeed in life, irrespective of the circumstances they were born into. GiveIndia aspires to change inequality which is pretty evident in our country. "To achieve it, we bring together the people who what to give and the organizations that work to make a difference,” says Atul.

After being formally launched in 2004, GiveIndia’s retail giving crossed 20,000 individual donors and reached the Rs. 2 Crores mark with payroll giving doubled. In 2009, GiveIndia launched the “India Giving Challenge,” India’s first online giving event, which raised Rs. 91 Lacs, courtesy to over 5,000 donors.

In 2017, GiveIndia got a new and revamped brand identity, also marking Atul’s journey with the organization.

Currently, GiveIndia focuses on helping India fight the Pandemic outbreak. With their first mission going live on 22 March, they now have six fundraisers and respond funds set up. Along with this, GiveIndia hosted an All-Star Fundraiser Concert on Facebook on 3 May, which raised more than Rs. 52 Crores donations.

together top talent, resources, and a nurturing environment.

The/Nudge Foundation also conducts The/Nudge Ultra Poor Program, an integrated microentrepreneurship program that is designed along the lines of the globally renowned ‘Graduation Approach.’ Atul adds, “This program aims to help the destitute families achieve sustained incomes over a designated time".

A Feather to the Cap – GiveIndia Atul’s journey with GiveIndia happened by chance. In 2017, he got an opportunity to meet Venkat Krishna, Founder of GiveIndia, at an event in Seattle and discuss his desire to raise large-scale capital for non-profit and social work through a digital platform. Atul opines, “Venkat’s founding vision for GiveIndia aligned very well with mine. I decided to come on board as Founder 2.0, board member and CEO, as our model at GiveIndia takes me closer to my ultimate goal of poverty alleviation.”

Established on 28 April 2000, GiveIndia was started with the belief that equal opportunity is the cornerstone

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Atul opines, “We are now serving 1,250+ charities and helping them with an online fundraiser to change the world a little faster.” With a mission to promote effective and efficient giving, GiveIndia plans to scale subscription giving, crowdfunding, and workplace giving. Following his passion and never backing down, Atul has been giving back to society, not just for the sake of it. Aspiring to alleviate and eradicate poverty to the fullest, Atul aims to provide opportunities for succeeding in life to everyone and wants to bring equality in our country, which he is accomplishing every day!

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

EXPERT'S OPINION

COVID’s Impact on Technology Sector: The Most Important Things that Everyone Needs to Know

Piyush Somani, MD & CEO, ESDS Solution Software

Piyush started ESDS in 2005, making him a first-generation entrepreneur, through his experience

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in a variety of roles across ESDS. He has built a reputation in the IT industry for his exceptional ability to build and grow business and nurture longterm relationships.

Piyush Somani

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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he COVID-19 crisis is undeniably one of the worst crises in this decade. Many have mentioned this in the same breath as the Lehman brother crisis. Globally, there is a high-crisis situation, be it the stock exchanges of the world, industries such as travel and hospitality, logistics and supply chain, manufacturing, telecom, auto, drugs and pharmaceuticals, MSMEs and retail. According to Dunn & Bradstreet, the pandemic has a massive impact on human lives, and a severe demand shock will be seen throughout the year. In India, the same report estimates that we will see a fall of 0.2 per cent in its GDP in terms of points in the fiscal year 2020 sending it down- spiralling to 4.8 per cent.

However, as per a recent Deloitte Global report, the IT spending continues to be positive and forecasts indicate continued demand for cloud infrastructure services and a potential increase in spending on software. Companies such as Microsoft, Cognizant, Amazon Web

Due to enhanced remote work scenarios, IT service providers will play a more important role in future Business Continuity Plans

Services have jumped almost 500-800 per cent increase in their cloud data services. The same report also forecasts increased demand for communication equipment, telecom services as organizations such as Cisco and Aviva have seen an increase in their products and services portfolio due to the Work from Home being the norm now.

Another aspect which will boost IT sales and services is the fact that most organizations lack a substantial Business Continuity Plan (BCP). Due to enhanced remote work scenarios, IT service providers will play a more important role in future BCPs. Services such as setting up a resilient, flexible and secure work network, disaster recovery systems, corporate security will only create more demand for IT services going forward in 2020. The telecom industry will also see a sharp spike in demand due to COVID-19. The need for faster data transfer at homes, automation and enhanced connectivity will ensure 5G arrives in India faster than anticipated.

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Opportunities for Cloud Solution Providers During this time, more and more companies are looking to invest in hands-on technology.

Technology that focuses on connecting individuals seamlessly is the need of the hour.

Our patented eNlight Cloud services also have seen a drastic uptick in terms of demand.

We have seen significant growth for our enterprise eNlight Cloud solutions. There are some serious opportunities created for Cloud providers in the market, however, there are some shortcomings too.

For Instance, operating a large-scale data centre amidst these crises is not an easy task. Maintenance, governance and handling sensitive data is difficult especially when the whole country is in lockdown. An interesting aspect about data centres is that though,

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

in technological terms, the government considers Cloud providers as core and essential services and therefore have levied special exemptions on data centre providers.

We, on a large-scale work with several governments such as Maharashtra, Smart city projects across the country. Our servers maintain up-time 24X7 and that has its own set of challenges with logistics, supply chain amongst other things.

Security, data protection and maintaining the highest standards in terms of disaster recovery, backupsupport and helping our clients to migrate workfrom-home efficiently is another major challenge which we faced. While the initial days of the lockdown were a bit challenging, we managed to run our systems and servers seamlessly and help all our clients work from home and ensure 24X7 up-time.

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Importance of a Secure Cloud Infrastructure Cloud security solutions safeguard data, networks and access by securing connections between cloudbased SaaS offerings and users. Notwithstanding the size of your business, whether a small enterprise or a large corporation, provided you have access to the internet, you remain susceptible to cyberattacks. While Cloud service providers ensure you get maximum protection and security features, an additional safeguard is required to ensure data protection.

Some of the ways companies can ensure utmost cloud safety is by: • Companies should ensure that the Cloud provider incorporates intense security features by improving the monitoring and tracking of various attacks such as DDoS, Malware, ransomware, data breaches etc. Additionally, they should make sure the real-time firewall updates are strong enough to block unsafe traffic.

• Secondly, companies need to make it imperative that their Cloud providers offer 24/7 live tracking and security of websites through tech support and multilayered encryption of data and communication.

• Apart from securing data, networks need to be careful about tracking cookies and other malware. A tracking cookie is an attachment which latches itself to a host computer and prompts advertisers to pop up advertisements basis of your search and results.

Tracking cookies not just slow down your computer, but also attract other tracking cookies in bundles and some of them are malware which might damage or corrupt your data.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

• Apart from these, companies need to ensure all of their data is being backed-up real-time on a secure server and the company’s IT personnel should always have the administrator rights to be able to modify, alter and back-up data on the core Cloud drive in times of emergency. This speed up the process of decision making and recovery management in case the cloud provider gets compromised or under attack.

Cyber Security During COVID-19 With the onset of a pandemic, financial crisis or a global recession, we have witnessed over the years that cybersecurity also faces a threat. The same stands true in the wake of COVID-19. Now is the time when a lot of DDOS attacks, malware, and ransomware will make its way to the corporate networks to inflict mayhem.

While cybersecurity rules are consistent for domestic and corporate users, it is important to have separate rules and policies for domestic users and corporate users. Today when everyone is working from home, it is quite easy to click on an unknown site or open an unsolicited email and next thing you know is you are a victim of ransomware or a malware attack. As per a recent report, the threats pertaining to corporate cybersecurity attacks have increased by up to 22 per cent. The need of the hour is for IT companies to anticipate the vulnerabilities and already create patches and updates, so the vulnerabilities don’t stay there for long. In these trying times, companies are looking for IT partners and consultants as compared to a product concept.

Another concern which companies face is using third party free software that has no encryption of data, for example, being a video conferencing or presenting an important project or merely connecting over a video call. Secured VPN network and encrypted video channels are something that very selective companies are offering to their clients.

But going forward, this is more of a necessity than a luxury and should be necessitated by most of the companies from their technology partners.

Digital Transformation in India With large scale organizations, not just governments, the processes and the kind of approvals that are required to implement new technology are intense.

While large scale, PSUs and government agencies are well-versed with what boost in tech can do to their productivity, it takes a while to implement these technologies. For this to work out to the best

advantage, companies regardless of their size need to be agile and quick in decision making.

Digital transformation is a multi-fold process where recognizing the need for new technology is just the start. The implementation part is where companies need to expedite their processes.

Compared to some large-scale companies, we have had better output time in terms of implementation with major Smart City projects and multi-city district commissions.

The Future of Cloud Computing The concept of Cloud computing has been around since the 90s and now has significantly evolved to an estimated size of $210 Bn globally. As per Nasscom, the consolidated Global Cloud computing is almost 10percent of the global IT Spend in 2019 and estimated to grow at CAGR 16.5 per cent and will touch $370 Bn by 2022.

There are three types of popular Cloud services which are popular today: Private Cloud, Public Cloud and Hybrid Cloud technology. While Private and Public Clouds are great to work with and have their benefits, overall Hybrid cloud is here to stay. Major companies today such as Starbucks, Walmart, Flipkart are opting in for Hybrid Cloud technology which is a composition of two or more Cloud Service providers and are unique and act independently. Consider this as a mutual fund investment with a diversified portfolio. You mitigate your risk and spread it across the system.

Going forward up to 80 per cent of large businesses will be opting for a Hybrid-Cloud portfolio as the need of the hour is to maintain 24x7 up-time.

Having discussed the serious disruptor, some other trends which we shall see in the Cloud in the years to come are: • Edge Computing will be the new wave of disruption: Governments and companies are opting for the local and regional Cloud service providers. Edge Computing refers to essentially setting up a data centre or providing Cloud at the source of the data. This helps in boosting the potential, privacy, security and compliance to policies.

• Machine learning and Real-time analytics will play the role of Tech consultant: How much Cloud data does my company require? Many global Cloud providers have dedicated Machine learning bots, Real-time analytics tools which map

each company’s usage in the past year. Feeding this data into their algorithm and then generating a report on user’s utilization, bandwidth and other aspects helps to answer the above relevant question. Machine learning is one of the crucial roles going forward for prescribing the Data need of a company.

• Use of multi-immersive technologies and storytelling to demonstrate Cloud data requirements: Companies such as Microsoft, Amazon AWS are utilizing AR (Augmented reality), Virtual reality, Mixed reality to story-tell and break down the hardcore technology services that they are offering. Visual storytelling through AR, VR is an exciting way to engage CXOs, CTOs and demonstrate the utilization of Cloud and its benefits for their company.

What Should CIOs and IT Executives Keep in Mind?

In recent times, the trend of SAAS (Software as a service), PaaS (Product as a service) has been interchanged with new-age thinking of CaaS (consultation as a service). Today, companies in the advanced markets such as the UK, Germany, South Korea, and the US are outsourcing Cloud data decisions to third part technology professionals. These third-party consultants act as technical support and provide- real-time hands-on support to companies in terms of their data needs, troubleshooting, disaster recovery and backup, Managed Cloud services amongst others.

CIOs, CXOs and CTOs in India are migrating to Cloud computing and seeing the benefits that it brings to their companies. But to cash in on the extra competitive edge, key decision-makers also need to move to the trend of outsourcing and investing in the CaaS model. The right technology partner will assess the company’s needs, recommend the right Cloud partners and manage to efficiently save thousands in operational costs. Basis the next 5 to 10 years of requirements, a company should either scale up and increase data spends or viceversa. This same model is relevant across other technology offerings as well.

Finally, increase the focus on the kind of customized services/ consultation your technology partner and data service provider offers. A one glove fits all approach doesn’t seem to fend well in the long run as each enterprise is unique in its way.

(As told to the Editor)

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

MOST INSPIRING

YOUNG CXOs

IN INDIA

Neeraj Biyani

Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Hector Beverages

Bottling

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Nostalgia T

he world has come to a standstill fighting an invisible enemy. But, at Hector Beverages - better known as the producer of Paper Boat Drink Neeraj Biyani is super busy. Hector Beverages being a responsible ‘essential service’ business cannot halt its operations. Being its Chief Operating Officer, Neeraj needs to ensure that everything runs without any major complications. The challenges are many in this process. “The first challenge that we face is to ensure the safety of all our employees and their families.

Our COVID-19 response team has remotely trained all employees on ways to practice social distancing and the importance of staying at home,” says Neeraj.

Hector Beverages has a hotline number for employees to call if they experience COVID symptoms so that the company can coordinate required medical assistance.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

The team has also helped employees to transition into ‘work-from-home’ environment. However, not everyone at Hector Beverages can afford to work-from-home. As a food products company, Hector Beverages needs to continue its operations practising social distancing, which is both challenging and expensive. Neeraj shares, “We have procured passes for a limited number of people who work in our manufacturing facilities, depots and retail outlets to ensure continuity of supplies in these challenging times.

It is humbling to see how our front-end employees are risking their own lives in dedication to provide service to our nation.”

In a Black Swan event like COVID-19, even businesses that appear to be in good financial shape may not be immune. “Like any other business, in these trying times, we are super-conscious about preserving cash. We

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Neeraj Biyani

Neeraj has spent over 10 years building the company from the ground up to become one of the fastest growing CPG companies in India. At Hector Beverages, Neeraj leads a team of CXOs handling several functions including manufacturing, finance, supply chain, human resources, quality, legal compliance, and information technology.

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Neeraj Biyani

No one thinks about the odds of failing, which numerically speaking, is pretty high. But then, who says entrepreneurs are logical people?

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

have revised our business plans to suit the most probable economic recovery path,” states Neeraj. Unlike many in the business, Neeraj has been very transparent with their changed plans, and he shares revised business priorities with everyone in the company. He pinpoints, “My approach to leadership has always been to foster a relationship of trust and honesty. In today’s situation, people must trust in one another.”

Too often we say, trust is the glue that binds the leader to her/his followers and provides the capacity for organizational and leadership success. Neeraj says, “We have been successful to work with most of our vendor partners and distribution partners to alter our plans in light of COVID-19 and disrupted operations. Our focus is to ensure that no one loses in this pandemic unfairly. We have a long-standing relationship based on trust with all our partners, and they have been most forthcoming to come up with innovative solutions to tide over these trying times.”

A Sugar-Soda Seller who Bottled Indian Childhood Memories “I don’t consider any job as safe. If one stops adding value to a job, that job will soon become unsafe. Being an entrepreneur is a matter of personal choice often driven by risk-preference of an individual,” opines Neeraj.

No one would have thought that by bottling traditional Indian drinks such as Aam Panna, Jaljeera and Aam Ras, an ex-employee of Coca-Cola would make them run for their money. Interestingly, three of the four co-founders of Hector Beverages share a common background - a stint with Coca-Cola.

Neeraj recounts, “I thoroughly enjoyed my job at Coca-Cola. In about six years with the company, I encountered four different roles in which I learnt very distinct skills.” Neeraj would agree that his success at Coca-Cola led him to distort the risk-perception of starting something on his own. For him, the journey from a large corporation to a startup was quite transformative.

He adds, “It is much easier in the world to perform when you have a visiting card with a brand such as Coca-Cola printed on it.”

When Neeraj left Coca-Cola, he underplayed the risk of a startup, significantly making the path look lessriskier rather than meticulous evaluation between the choices. “Being successful at Coke gave me the selfconfidence to take the risk. And then, there is always a selection bias,” shares Neeraj. All aspiring entrepreneurs read about successful entrepreneurs, and everything about them seems logical in retrospect. “Transitioning from a job to entrepreneurship is a biased decision. No

one thinks about the odds of failing, which numerically speaking, is pretty high. But then, who says entrepreneurs are logical people?” asks Neeraj.

Start-up gives Neeraj a different kind of pleasure. He says, “First, there is a feeling of creating something from the start, which gives an adrenaline rush that is difficult to explain in words. Second, the startup allows working on something close to your heart.” Entrepreneurs are indeed a different breed of problem-solvers. “Even though most of the entrepreneurs pivot their initial idea multiple times before finding product-market fit, the exploration of pivots itself is intellectually stimulating. Lastly, there is always hope for delayed financial gratification and leaving a legacy which increases an entrepreneurs’ resolve and grit,” explains Neeraj.

Overcoming the Initial Hiccups Before Paper Boat, Hector Beverages had launched ‘Frissia’, a protein drink, followed by the energy drink ‘Tzinga’ in 2011. Though both drinks failed to create waves, Paper Boat that was launched in 2013 became one of the fastest-growing consumer brands in India. “We did not know if Paper Boat will take-off the way it did. It was more of a trial launch for us to test the depth of the market. However, once we saw its velocity on the shelf, we knew that we should just focus on Paper Boat. We stopped everything else that we were doing in the company,” shares Neeraj. Today Paper Boat offers a range of fruitbased ethnic drinks such as Jal Jeera, Aam Panna, Aam Ras, Alphonso Aam, Jamun Kala Khatta, Chilli Guava, Nimbu Pani, Kokum, Kanji, Sugarcane juice, Lychee Ras, Apple and Orange. It also has a range of milk-based beverages including Neer More, Butter Milk, Badam Milk and Thandai.

However, doing something that nobody has done before comes with its own set of challenges. Sourcing the right raw material was one of the first problems Neeraj and his team faced for Paper Boat launch. Till they started making ‘Aam Panna’, no pulp company processed raw mango pulp at an industrial scale. The company had to develop a complete back-end supply chain for it. “Apart from backend supply chain issues, another challenge we faced was front-end distribution. We found it very challenging to scale distribution to keep up with the pace of consumer demand,” recounts Neeraj. Hector Beverages presently has seven manufacturing facilities. “Our immediate plan is to scale distribution. Paper Boat should not be restricted only to the consumers residing in Metros. The brand has a much larger appeal, and we need to go deeper into India,” shares Neeraj.

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Learning from Mistakes Like any entrepreneur, Neeraj has made his share of mistake and errors in judgements while solving many challenging problems throughout his journey. “Hiring the wrong talent to catch up with the speed of scaleup is one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made while scaling Hector. Not only that had an impact on us financially, but also it started to change our culture,” says Neeraj. It was a painful reminder to Neeraj that degradation of the company’s culture is always a gradual event. It is often missed or overlooked - the biggest blind-spot for any company. He adds, “We need to guard the company’s culture at all times. For want of execution speed or shorttermism, we cannot compromise on that.”

However, a true leader is someone who learns from his mistakes. Neeraj, from his mistakes, has developed some principles that now help him in problem-solving.

They are, he explains, “Build a team with A players. It is humanly not possible for an entrepreneur to solve all the problems by themselves. Then, metricize the decisionchoice between persevering and pivot. It means we need to have a pre-determined picture of success, which will help us in taking decisions unemotionally. Finally, have a bias towards action. Decisions at startups are not intellectual debates.”

Neeraj believes that innovation largely depends on the culture of the organization. Today, the team at Hector

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Beverages are the real heroes. They have been able to create products that are loved by millions of consumers.

Neeraj proudly claims, “It is difficult to create the portfolio that we have. For many of our products, we had to develop the supply chain right from scratch. We have also redesigned many manufacturing processes to suit our unique products.” When it comes to taste preferences of consumers, Hector Beverages has set high standards. “To deliver on those yet remain committed to our promise of no colours, no artificial flavours and no preservatives, is just hard and requires a lot of innovation – in recipe development, sourcing and manufacturing,” explains Neeraj.

The team at Hector Beverages is tightly knit with communities. The company works with farmers, fruit processors, and waste collection agencies to move towards a sustainable ecosystem. Neeraj proudly says, “We have directly and positively impacted thousands of farmers towards bettering their lives, and to me, that is the biggest achievement since inception.” In 2016, Hector Beverages ventured into ethnic Indian snacks.

They launched Paper Boat chikki, which is a Fair-Trade product. This certification ensures that everyone involved in the making of a product is reasonably employed and paid. The company procures its groundnuts directly from a farmers’ collective near Rajkot in Gujarat at the Fair-trade minimum price.

Neeraj Biyani

Education that Shaped the Entrepreneur Talking about his life as a student, Neeraj says, “I grew up in a small town in East India. There were no good colleges in my town, so for my graduation, I moved to Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi.

Staying at SRCC hostel, I made some of my deepest friendships. I was also involved in some of the student committees that honed my leadership skills.”

After completing B. Com from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Neeraj joined for MBA at MDI, Gurgaon.

“At MDI, I was part of the founding team of India’s first student-managed mutual fund – my first stab at entrepreneurship and raising money. We raised money from students and professors to start a mutual fund with Rs. 1 lakh corpus.”

After ten years as the Co-Founder and COO of Hector Beverages, Neeraj did one more course, this time at the prestigious Stanford Graduate School of Business. To study a one-year program called The Stanford MSx, which is specially designed for mid-career professionals who are motivated to lead change and seek personal and professional growth.

Neeraj shares, “During my time at Stanford GSB, living in one of the most stimulating environments in the world, I developed the ability to seek a broader perspective on issues. Each one of my class members brought a unique perspective that always led to better discussions and better outcomes.”

All through his life, Neeraj’s father has been a significant influence on him professionally. It was from him Neeraj learnt the value of hard work, calculated risk-taking, grit and determination. As a kid, Neeraj witnessed his father building his business. “During summers, my work at his office - tallying invoices, running to the bank and entering vouchers – used to be my crash course in business operations. Some of my deepest values – caring about others, having a longterm perspective, having empathy, entrepreneurial spirit of problem-solving - reflect my father’s values,” recounts Neeraj.

From Neeraj’s success as an entrepreneur and leader, we can learn one thing for sure – mistakes may happen, but, the one who learns from his mistakes will win the game at the end. Great leaders have shown us how success looks like and have proved that education and growth in our personal life are the secrets to longterm success in our professional life. That is what Neeraj advises to the people who want to become an expert in their chosen field: “Never be over-confident about your abilities. Never stop learning and always be inquisitive.”

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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EXPERT'S OPINION

If Indian Exchanges Follow the Philippines Example, it will Only Erode Essential Wealth from the Country

By Tejas Khoday, CEO & Co-Founder, FYERS

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Tejas Khoday is the Co-Founder & CEO at FYERS and is counted among the youngest professionals to get the NSE’s broker license. He has over 10 years of experience in proprietary trading, risk management, and broking. Tejas and his team started FYERS, a technology-focused brokerage in 2014 with an aim to transform the trading/investment ecosystem in India.

Tejas Khoday

O

ff late, in the backdrop of the Corona Virus Pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns across many countries, we are hearing a growing clamor to completely shut stock market operations world-wide. There are two reasons backing the shutdown – adherence to the guidelines initiated by respective governments’ over the pandemic and to arrest the precipitous fall in prices of stocks and indices.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Moratorium on loans is possible, not on stock prices or stock markets

Based on this notion, the Philippine stock market initiated a 2-day shut down and the result? As trading resumed on 3rd day, the index opened with a 24% loss and posted its biggest intraday loss in 33 years, one of the worst performers among Asian countries. Finally, the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission informed that all stock trading activities will be conducted remotely, while extending 100% support to the lock-down.

Let’s take a look back at what is the function of a stock market in its simplest term. It is an exchange that enables buyers and sellers to negotiate prices and conclude trades according to their perception and underlying value of a financial asset. Hence, shutting down an exchange would defeat the purpose of its establishment, prohibit the investors from completing these transactions and hinder the price discovery of the financial assets being held, which could lead to harsh losses. While the value of each human life is immeasurable and irreplaceable, with technological advances and a wide array of communication channels, the transactions could still be facilitated, under the safety of remote locations/operations.

To control the spread of Corona Virus, our honorable Prime Minister after careful consideration and in coordination with various institutions decided to put the country under a 21-day lock down of ordinary services and activities. This is an excellent and much required directive to safeguard the health of the people in India. At the same time, this directive also provides for certain exemptions, like essential commodities, health services and continuation of banks and stock exchanges, albeit, through a skeletal staff. I am sure that the wise men, in government administration and from other quarters, would have advised what is appropriate for India and can be safely concluded that, shutting down stock exchanges was definitely not one of them.

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

More about FYERS and

Tejas Khoday FYERS, a technology focused stock broking firm, is the pioneer of leading trading platforms in India. With a strong community of traders and investors, FYERS is currently powering more than 30,000 customers to trade seamlessly, across all major Indian exchanges including NSE, BSE & MCX. In a span of 6 years, FYERS has emerged as a leading tech enabled trading platform in India.

Tejas’s deep domain knowledge has gone a long way in transforming the trading/investment landscape for investors by developing and

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scaling a world class trading platform at FYERS. Along with his team, Tejas has played a crucial role in setting up and developing unique trading opportunities such as FYERS Free Investment Zone, FYERS 30-day challenge, FYERS Web and thematic investment.

Tejas holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Management with a major in Finance from Bhagavan Mahaveer Jain College, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Finance from Indian School of Business and Finance. He also holds a level 1 finance and investments Grade A certificate from CFA (Expand the acronym) Institute.

Besides his work, Tejas invests his time in a strict fitness regimen and also loves to spend his time with pets.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

The reduction of trading hours for Commodities Exchange MCX between March 30 and April 14 will have an effect on exporters, importers, traders in the physical markets as well as banks. Normally, activity on MCX is higher post 7 pm each day, coinciding with the trading hours in the US which commences after 7 PM. Closing the exchange at 5 PM is akin to exposing investors to an overnight risk and seizing their ability to hedge positions efficiently. This move will also result in reduced volumes and liquidity, which cannot be considered helpful.

What are the issues that can arise due to shut down of stock exchanges / financial markets?

Free flow of capital is essential and in distress times, investors do look to safeguard their capital by reducing risky assets by opting for safer or alternate investment avenues. The issues are different for different stakeholders. For retail investors who have invested their monthly savings through mutual funds, to promoters who have raised capital through Loan Against Shares (LAS) facility, to lenders whose margin limits are being breached, to new promoters who want to raise capital through an IPO/FPO – liquidity and flow of capital will be denied completely, which is against the ethos and the true objective of a stock exchange.

In the current globalized world, stock markets and investors worldwide are interconnected and any negative trigger in a stock market of a country could have a domino effect on other exchanges throughout the world and plunge global markets into an unwarranted and serious financial distress. The closure of Philippine stock market and the ensuing losses proved that shutting stock markets is not a credible or an affordable solution, not just for India but for any stock exchange across the world. FII/FPIs have a total investment of around 30 lakh crores in India. These institutional investors have been selling continuously over the last three months and it has been a steady and composed exit. Any whiff of closure of markets may trigger an uncontrolled panic selling, which could hurt market capitalizations of blue-chip companies, decimate smaller companies and extinguish the net worth of many investors, mainly retail investors.

Bottomline - Moratorium on loans is possible, not on stock prices or stock markets. They are the lifeline of any country’s financial system and must go on, but from the confines of a safe environment. In conclusion, I would differ with the view of shutting the stock markets, not only in India but anywhere in the world, but echo the words of RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das: “Stay safe, stay clean and go digital!”

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

LEADER'S INSIGHTS

Why is Cloud the Most Essential Infrastructure Today?

During this COVID pandemic, cloud servicing providers are emerging as one of the few corporate winners, as

more online activities are happening around the world than ever before. “Our team is working continuously 24/7 and tirelessly just to ensure that

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we move workforces to cloud as quickly as possible because, for most of the people, its simply lights off,” says Dr. Christopher Richard, MD & Chief Cloud Architect, G7CR Technologies India, which is

Asia’s fastest-growing innovative technology and services company with over 800+ businesses across India. In an email interaction with CXO Outlook, Dr. Christopher Richard talks about the impact of COVID on global economy and businesses in India, how to keep Cloud Infrastructure secure while Dr. Christopher Richard, MD & Chief Cloud Architect, G7CR Technologies India

employees work-from-home, and many more. Here are the excerpts.

Impact of COVID 19 on the Global Economy and the Businesses in India COVID-19 will have a devastating effect on the global economy and will certainly be more intense and distinct than those felt during the 2008-09 global financial crisis. However, based on what steps are taken by the governments as well as the businesses, the recovery process will

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Cloud has enough already in place to work with any scenario and keep things as secure as possible

be either short or prolonged. It is a little too early at this stage to throw numbers but based on various studies, the impact could be a 195million+ job losses globally and almost 12% contraction from Jan to March in the global economy. The impact on India is going to be significant as India depends a lot on global consumption. Our country having lots of population is unfortunately not high on consumption. Indian exports of goods and services contribute to a total of 19.74% of our GDP. So, most of our revenues come from the consumption of developed countries. This means the Indian economy will be impacted significantly with any global catastrophe. Any global reduction in spending and consumption will anytime affect our economy.

Hence, this COVID-19 pandemic is going to affect Indian businesses pointedly. They are going to struggle especially some sectors that are going to get hit directly. However, in terms of economics, there is always going to be an increase in something as well as a decrease in something. So, there are going to be some businesses who are going to grow because of the crisis and there will be some who may completely get wiped out during this period. So overall, it is a struggle for Indian businessmen, especially ones who will be negatively impacted. But hopefully, the ones that will be positively impacted will be able to compensate it and keep the economy growing. It is projected that though our growth will slow down, still we will be able to grow at 1-1.5% by the end of this fiscal year. Hence let’s hope that once the crisis is through, we will be able to go back to better economy figures.

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

The tools to adapt to the cloud have existed for a long time. The problem has been with people adapting to them

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Leadership Challenges During the Time of Social Distancing Leadership, at least in terms of our approach is being twofold, caring for people who work for G7 and made it to where we are. We have to ensure their safety and economic stability. The second fold decision that we made is to go out there and reach out to businesses who need support to sustain and be able to keep the resources productive.

So, we have gone out and selflessly, without involving commercials or money, are helping businesses move their workforces to cloud to be able to be productive from home. We believe here, it is not about only making your business survive but its also basically important that all the businesses survive. Because for you to survive today at where we are, it is important that others also survive and sustain and fight the current crisis. Hence, for us yes, leadership is going to be challenging and difficult, but our focus is only to ensure safety and economic stability and do everything that we can to ensure that every other business will be able to sustain.

Microsoft reports a 775% spike in cloud services demand from COVID-19. What are the Opportunities and Challenges for Cloud Services Companies?

The growth of cloud that we are talking here is in terms of consumption but not sure how much can be sustainable.

Because Microsoft is also giving a lot of cloud services

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

today for free to support in the current crisis because of COVID-19. But having said that, we do see some of this churning into revenue in the future. So, it is been all good for the cloud companies I would say. There are a lot of opportunities. The stress here is going to be about how long this is going to last and the biggest challenges faced is the speed at which we have to move to the cloud. Our team is working continuously 24/7 and tirelessly just to ensure that we move workforces to cloud as quickly as possible because, for most of the people, its simply lights off. They had to do everything afresh to ensure they continue to stay in business and keep running and sustain their workforces as well as their customers.

How to Keep Cloud Infrastructure as Secure as Possible, While Employees Work-from-Home Cloud always had a set of tools available to keep workloads as secure as possible and what companies need to do is to plan their deployments of security, understand the security posture and ensure they use the best specialists who understand their security needs and accordingly design and implement. Here, I would say the challenge that we are facing today is the randomness of this COVID-19 situation where there is not enough time to plan this out. But rest assured, Cloud has enough already in place to work with any scenario and keep things as secure as possible on the cloud.

More About Dr. Christopher Richard and G7CR Technologies India Dr. Christopher Richard is a Managing Director & Chief Software Architect at G7 CR Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. Also, he is a President Karnataka State Small and Medium Business Owners Association along with the Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Consultant and Specialist. He specializes in Microsoft BI, Hyperion Essbase, Business Objects XI, Informatica.

G7CR Technologies India is Asia’s fastest growing innovative technology and services company.

Currently

touching

over

800+

businesses across India. Some of the disruptive offers of G7CR are free support, monitoring & governance services for Cloud deployment, Hardware

buyback

program.

G7CR

has

been recognized globally for its technical capabilities.

The Most Mature Cloud Tools Right Now The tools to adapt to the cloud have existed for a long time. The problem has been with people adapting to them.

However, with the current crisis, people are going to move away from their comfort zones and will be looking for how to leverage these tools to make the best out of the current situation. Some of the tools that already existed, and we see now a lot of people adapting to them are Virtual desktop VDI tools and technologies to ensure that the desktops that traditionally are on a desk in the offices are now moving to the cloud. We will also see a lot of work on keeping these desktops secure. Ensuring correct encryption, right password protection and right tracking of work by ensuring policies are created and in place, ensuring desktops are controlled centrally etc. are the things that we will be seeing as a part of this adaption. Again, these tools existed from long back, but it is only now that people are going to use them and not to forget, are going to use them more frequently from now on.

Factors Companies Need to Consider While Migrating Their Business to the Cloud One of the major factors today I would say, though there are rummaging situations that things need to happen now, businesses need to look at this strategically because we have seen customers not worrying about the cost and just want to move to the cloud at the fastest possible way to keep the businesses running and we have also seen companies who spend a lot of time in strategy. I think, there should be a balancing act here. But the major factor that needs to be considered while migrating these people is to pause, understand and plan. We have to understand what the need is, what are the dependencies etc. because any lack of this will make the project longer and also make the experience terrible for the customers and end-users. Hence, rolling these out with a set of experienced people is important.

Advice to CIOs and IT Executives Who are Ready to Embark on the Cloud Migration Journey The first and foremost advice will be to hang around where we learn to disrupt and change thinking. The most important thing right now is to be able to have the ability to look at reason and logic in terms of the company policies, in terms of what is necessary and what policies are most probably questionable. So right now, most of the policies in use would have traditionally been there and are being followed by the book but it is really a good time to revisit them, recheck those policies and understand what the need of the hour is.

Check which ones are relevant to what we do and if it makes sense to have them anymore. Hence, for CIOs, it is time to disrupt and become more adaptive to the current times.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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EXPERT'S OPINION

COVID-19:

A Critical Time to Embrace HR Technologies

Subramanyam S, Founder, President and CEO, AscentHR Subramanyam is an entrepreneur with immense experience in finance, legal and business management. He is a corporate lawyer

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and a fellow member of “The Institute of Company Secretaries of India”. A finance and business management specialist, it was Subramanyam’s quest for bringing innovative solutions and services in the HR industry that led him to build AscentHR. His experience includes exposures in Advani Oerlikon group, Shonk Technologies in finance, HR and corporate legal services.

Subramanyam S

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

C

ompanies are navigating unchartered territories in the times of COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has taken the world by storm and brought forth a new norm as to how organizations manage the business. Organizations worldwide are tackling immediate issues of keeping employees safe, ensuring optimal utilization of staff, and maintaining the continuity of business operations.

These are the major challenges faced by HR Executives in this COVID situation: • Crisis Management or Business Continuity Planning • Manage flexible work arrangements • Manage employee communication

The rise of HR technology, in general, is not only changing how we work but the work itself

• Address employee concerns on workplace policies • Engage employees in such situations and keep them motivated • Implementation of preventive measures • Review of current welfare policies • Ensuring maximum employee productivity during WFH In conclusion, HR leaders had not envisioned that providing HR services to a distributed workforce with dozens or hundreds of remote workers and doing so quickly would become the need of the hour.

But digital HR is soon going to be the norm with companies and HR heads embracing technology paving the way for a new way of working.

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Can We Expect a Change in Work-Culture After COVID in India?

This is a period of uncertainty and demoralizes employees as a team contributor when his personal care/well-being becomes a priority. Many organizations do not have proper tools such as collaboration tools, videoconferencing solutions, and access to critical documents that will allow employees to work from home seamlessly. While social distancing becomes a necessity, the new work ways create distance in team bonding and need time to build upon.

The Coronavirus pandemic will change workplace practices, dynamics and the nature of jobs. Digital-first approach could be adopted by companies, but they will also need to invest in it accordingly. There are many predictions

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

about a permanent shift in the work culture, as the tech firms will benefit, but some companies could find employees who don’t want to return to the office.

Employers will continue to operate as they did before, once the situation returns to normalcy. The reason is the cost of operation in this way is much lesser than the remote working way. You will need a highly motivated employee, who is fully trained, will work independently without any assistance or support to work remotely to be able to make this a full-time option.

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HR Technologies: Changing the Way People Work The rise of HR technology, in general, is not only changing how we work but the work itself. We are beginning to see how new technologies such as robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning are impacting the workplace.

With the help of technology, HR professionals are not just processing the candidate application but are connecting with them and developing relationships with new talent sources and gaining insights from sourcing the data. The use and application of analytics have improved the hiring process and employee efficiency.

Today these new HR technologies are helping to improve hiring processes, reduce the amount of rote work, and focus on employee experience—providing employees with proactive advice on performance, how to align their aspirations with opportunities, and how to get actionable feedback from managers.

Most of the companies that have embraced HR technologies as a part of their strategic management tools are finding that much of the frustration of work can be reduced through direct access between the data and decision-makers. Now managers have people data on their fingertips which will enable them to offer the right opportunities to the right employees at the right time.

India, as a technology hub has contributed towards the development of many tech innovations across the globe directly or indirectly. With a diverse workforce, different regulatory practices and cultural practices in India, it was always a great opportunity to develop a competitive product that could meet multi-country or culture needs. While it was slow in adopting technology initially, India has seen a significant scale in the adoption of HR technology and mat be a pioneer in the digital transformation of HR processes. With remote working becoming a reality, HR would don

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

additional roles of business in managing workforce productivity as well. At AscentHR, we see not just India and but the whole of Asia as an opportunity in the explosive growth of HR technology while challenges would remain in addressing geo concerns on regulatory/cultural practices.

The Relevance of HR Technology in Today’s Operations Human capital management is an often exorbitantly expensive, time-consuming and complicated challenge. However, it allows the company to improve its internal processes, core competencies, relevant markets and organizational structure as a whole.

Experts believe that Human Capital management technologies can improve productivity which will drive greater business growth and leave a positive impact on the companies.

HR Tech began its journey as more of a recordkeeping and time/payroll systems which were driven more from a regulatory obligation. Over the last decade, HR tech recognized the need for employee engagement, employee learning and performance management as key contributors in its digital journey.

Besides, it has been trying to add new ways of enhancing employee experience for Hiring, Onboarding and Rewards and Recognition. These remained focused on Talent sourcing and Talent Management. With the opportunity of the multi-location workforce coming into play into last decade which is further enlarged with work from home scenarios emerging now, HR will join Business Managers in managing Productivity, Culture management and ensuring it impacts P&L more on the profit side as opposed to being on the cost side so far. That is a new role and we will see HR Leaders becoming Managing Directors or CEOs in the coming years.

The Future of HR Tech We are in the middle of the Information Revolution, facing fundamental changes to the way we live and work. Automation is revolutionizing how we work, and companies are taking note that next-gen Human Capital Management is the way to go to stay relevant and sustainable and provide worklife balance for its employees. The HR function is required to continuously evolve by adapting to the latest technology in the present fast-changing corporate ecosystem.

In the past years, digital HR management systems have become highly functional, making

We are in the middle of the Information Revolution, facing fundamental changes to the way we live and work

the HR management experience seamless and more productive. We believe that every domain within the HR function is undergoing significant changes based on the application of new digital and technologies such as: • HR Analytics/ Artificial Intelligence: AI can be used to solve real problems that HR and talent professionals are facing today. HR Analytics/ Artificial Intelligence has a wide range of impact on the HR that is from improving employee healthcare to streamlining recruitment, from better employee engagement to removing unconscious bias; AI has a vast array of application areas. With all the advancements taking place, AI-driven technologies will continue to improve and increase throughout the HR sector.

• Voice of the Employee (VoE): Personalized engagement of employees will be an HR buzzword in 2020, which means being more personalized and employee-centric than before. Facilities such as flexible in-time, WFH (work from home), organizing seminars and workshops to ensure employees feel valued are some of the responsibilities HR management should offer for the employee. Such practices not only lead to higher productivity and better prospects for all stakeholders but also provide better experiences for employees and organizations.

• Software: Many companies rely on HR software because they help generate impactful ROL. HR departments can manage talent easily, keep employees happy, and drive productivity by selecting the best HR software solutions. HR software will become more potent in 2020 as HR departments see immense value in such software. This software is also used to predict which employees are considering leaving their organization. When data reveals, it will inform managers of the likelihood of an employee leaving their job is significant.

Advice to the HR Executives We have seen the evolution of HR Professionals from Time/Payroll functions to new ways of Hiring, managing employee, managing their learning needs which have moved HR executives from an6 admin role to a more meaningful function. Adoption of HR Technology and new age practices will take them to the next level of active business management together with the core operations in any enterprise. This was a change that was due but is now pushed ahead with new ways of working coming into play. This is an opportunity to elevate their roles and contribute towards the business which gives them much better recognition than the industry so far identified the function with. (As told to the Editor)

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MOST INSPIRING

YOUNG CXOs

IN INDIA

Rohit M. A.

Co-Founder and Managing Director, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals

Delivering 82

E

Care

ven at the best of times, pregnancy comes with risks, anxieties and worries. Then, think about being pregnant during a pandemic? Expectant parents must be experiencing a lot of stress now, barring the ones who have consulted Cloudnine Group of Hospitals, a chain of maternity, fertility and childcare hospitals headquartered in Bangalore. Under the leadership of Rohit M.A, Cloudnine Hospitals have taken some critical measures to help pregnant women, new mothers and babies during this time of social distancing and nationwide lockdown.

“Many restrictions make it difficult for us to provide the entire Cloudnine experience. However, with our ability to harness technology, and innovate during the need of the hour have held us in good stead and we should be able to engage with our consumers in entirety,” says Rohit. Claimed to be the first-of-its-kind services in maternal and child

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

healthcare, Cloudnine has announced Teleconsultation.

Available across Gurgaon, Noida, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Chennai units of Cloudnine, Teleconsultation is an excellent help for customers to consult doctors from their homes via video thereby avoiding all the non- essential travel to the hospital. For this purpose, Cloudnine has a mobile app called ‘It’s our Baby,’ which has over one lakh users now.

On the other side, in collaboration with the ride-hailing company OLA Cabs, Cloudnine is offering mobility services to its customers during the lockdown. In Bangalore, where Cloudnine has six hospitals, women who need urgent medical assistance can now book OLA Cabs through Cloudnine call centres or through their app. The hospitals have designated areas for pick-ups and drop-offs where Cloudnine staff will help customers in and out of vehicles.

"Every day is an evolving situation, and at times like these,

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Rohit M. A. Rohit co-founded Cloudnine in 2006 and expanded operations from a single hospital in South Bangalore to other locations across the country.

Cloudnine has now 19 hospitals and clinics in Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurugram, Pune, Mumbai and Chandigarh. Rohit has led and managed the entire gambit of professionalizing the company. He has attracted top talents who form the core team of Cloudnine and also been responsible for leading the whole journey with private equity investors with the likes of Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital and TrueNorth.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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every company big or small has to learn to adapt fast and rise above. At Cloudnine, as an essential service across our locations in the country, our primary challenge is to ensure the safety of our staff, clinicians and customers,” shares Rohit.

The Ideas that Changed India’s Maternity Healthcare Concepts The inception of Cloudnine in 2006 changed a few things in the Indian healthcare system. India lacked a specialized mother and childcare hospital before Cloudnine. Rohit recounts, “The

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

With dedicated in-house facilities including a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit with advanced technology as well as a comprehensive range of pregnancy support classes and complementary therapies, Cloudnine’s range of maternity services are unrivalled.

biggest issue was that we were creating a sector in healthcare for the first time in the country and that came with its challenges through naysayers, and that took a lot of determination, passion and conviction to stay on the path to unlocking value.

Once customers started appreciating the effort, the validation was an indication that we were on to something important and necessary, the rest, as they say, is history.” In addition to maternal care, today Cloudnine also provides Fertility, Gynecology, Pediatrics and Neonatal Intensive Care services.

Having celebrated over 85,000 births across regions, the ‘Cloudnine Experience’ is more than an international standard of healthcare service. The hospitals have heavily invested in clinical and business innovation with technology, as it believes that technology would change the way mothers experience pregnancy with informed decisions on healthcare and medicine. “Future of healthcare revolves around the consumer and the ones who cater to the demand of the consumer wins.

Technology no doubt will play a crucial role in bringing consistency across the touchpoints but will have to be positioned on the consumer,” pinpoints Rohit.

At Cloudnine, Rohit actively involves in several core areas including strategy, the digital revolution, public relations and stakeholder management with a critical focus on the expansion of presence and development of new business models for the company.

While most of the hospitals in India spend less amount of their revenue on technologies, Rohit’s effort to invest in technology partnerships to get innovation going has helped Cloudnine to deliver its global standard healthcare services even in

the toughest of times. Rohit shares, “The current COVID situation has been a major influence on technology coming to the rescue of delivering care where possible and the ecosystem adoption has been largely gratifying. We are not far away from creating personalized health plans with which we can digitally monitor and manage care to cure whenever needed.”

Being able to set up a digitalfirst healthcare service organization to credited with being the leaders to create a sector in healthcare that was far too long not considered worthy, Rohit has covered many significant milestones during his journey till now. "None of these would have been possible without the ability to attract the highest quality of team members across and is perhaps our most cherished accomplishment,” explains Rohit.

A True Leader Who is A Team Player Rohit does not consider leadership as easy job on any day. He opines, "At times of pandemic like this, never has been the word manager been so important to showcase the traits of working with one's teams, no matter the size. An important aspect for all

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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Rohit M. A.

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of us as leaders has been to demonstrate the values that we have all created in the company's culture mechanism and wholeheartedly be available for every one of them to help arrive at solutions.� Rohit sees the current COVID-19 situation as a huge opportunity to understand and appreciate an individual’s ability to contribute beyond their respective cadres, which perhaps in the familiar working environment would have first gone unnoticed. He adds, "Working with the team to help innovate, cultivate, nourish, replenish and rejuvenate cultural impact and continuously increase customer engagement is a key approach for all of us as leaders."

Coming from a very enterprising family based in Bangalore, leadership and an entrepreneurial mindset are Rohit’s inborn strengths. However, he has also worked in a few Multinational technology companies before co-founding Cloundnine. "Every job helped me understand the various challenges that an individual goes through in developing skill sets and particularly in stakeholder management. While the jobs were technically challenging and helped me grow immensely, my calling was always to take a lot more responsibility and innovate creatively, and that's what I tried to do in every task I took up," says Rohit.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Cloudnine’s Maternity Unit includes spacious and comfortable LDRs – Labour, Delivery and Recovery rooms and state-of-the-art Operation Theatres.

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Rohit’s school life was a regular hustle where consistency far outweighed creativity. “Perhaps that was the way of education at that time, and I played par for that course,” recounts Rohit, who later graduated through the Management Programme for Entrepreneurs and Family Businesses (MPEFB) in 2010, specializing in Entrepreneurship. He explains, “Far closer to this century where my management sessions at IIMB were a lot more interactive and encouraging of individualistic pursuance, which helped me largely in thinking bold. As much as classroom sessions would have helped shape the curiosity, the numerous discussions with the stalwart professors of various statures and peer learning helped deliver the edge."

Rohit now has over 18 years of entrepreneurial management experience. Rohit states, “It has been a very enriching journey, and I continue to learn through various amazing entrepreneurs and professionals that I have had the privilege of being able to work alongside closely. Quite often, as a team of people solving for a situation, the process of finding a solution is far more refreshing than the solution in itself and probably gives the best learning opportunity.” As a leader, Rohit's motivation has always been towards team management, encouraging innovation and culture development, which become critical challenges as companies grow beyond the initial cluster of reach while taking the entire brood together in the belief of the vision set out for the organization.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

88 Rohit M. A.

"My goal has always been to aim for the super team and nothing else. It always starts with knowing ones' weakness more than strength, and that gives a chance to bring in a complementary team with skillsets which will together be very effective. The simplest way to earn a team's support is through clear, transparent and consistent communication of intended outcome," explains Rohit. The leadership style of Rohit has always been to look for entrepreneurial traits within the team. He then cultivates them by an adequate demonstration of such values and gives enough room for them to make their route plans for performance. Rohit adds, "Appreciation, big or small helps in creating a healthy atmosphere which they can percolate to as many levels in the organization there may be. Creating a sense of ownership is the most crucial aspect to help bring in a culture of innovation, and we all will do our innovative best when we believe that it is our own.”

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Today, Rohit gives credit to his entire CXO team of past and present for always being able to deliver more than he asked for and helping him grow individually. Indeed, Rohit’s constant pursuance has always been to surround himself with individuals smarter than him. He believes that an expert at anything is not an easy accomplishment to achieve and more importantly, to be consistently recognized as one. “No effort other than a repeated practice of your trait to become constantly better is probably the most important aspect. Investing time and energy to staying updated and researching is very critical, and the single most important aspect is perhaps never to stop learning,” pinpoints Rohit.

Perhaps, being a life-long learner is the reason why Rohit wants Cloudnine - despite being the leader in the sector - to continue growing while innovating to take their offering beyond the conventional infrastructure constraints.

Want to find Investor for your Startup?

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

EXPERT'S OPINION

Leadership and Growth in Tough Times

By Mansingh Gadhvi, Founder and Managing Partner, GrowthCulture Consulting LLP

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Mansingh Gadhvi is an author, seasoned business leader, strategic advisor and management consultant with close to two decades of corporate experience in different roles. He has worked with world's top companies in the past like Salesforce, Oracle, SAP and DELL before starting GrowthCulture Consulting, focused on helping companies drive faster business growth.

Mansingh Gadhvi

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s the world still tries to come to terms with COVID-19 pandemic, it is becoming increasingly clear that this virus is here to stay and is in no hurry to leave. Slowly the world, countries and businesses are now learning to adjust to the new way of living and working.

Adapting to the new normal is not easy. Most of the businesses were not prepared and couldn't see what's coming their way. When the crises started unfolding, the reactions to it were stiff, and decisions were made in a hurry, there was a flurry of measures taken by companies to respond to the crises to ensure business continuity and survival in the tough period.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

The current crisis has put Leaders right in the middle of the battleground

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Most of the leaders are using the word ‘unprecedented' in their conversation quite often.

Yes, we are living in unprecedented times, the world has never seen anything like this before, it has seen recessions, depressions, financial meltdowns, dot-com busts, but what's currently going on has no comparison. The current crisis has made life extremely difficult for many businesses and has already forced many to shut down, leaving hordes of people jobless. The jobless claims in the US have hit a record high, even higher than the depression period, indicating that it is the worst period that the modern world is witnessing.

The COVID-19 has affected different industries and businesses unevenly. Some are struck with practically no or little income due to the lockdown measures, some have seen moderate drying up of the revenue, while some businesses have seen a surge in demand for their products and services and are trying to keep up with it, but there aren't many such companies.

The current crisis has put Leaders right in the middle of the battleground; leadership role has become challenging and tricky, as the navigation between employee safety, driving business activities and managing growth aspirations are turning out to be a litmus test. There are many questions but not many answers, and we are witnessing businesses responding to the current situation differently.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

More About

Mansingh Gadhvi and GrowthCulture Consulting Mansingh is passionate about business growth. With almost like missionary zeal, he pursues this subject and devotes a lot of time studying different businesses to understand what it takes to grow the company; why some companies grow faster versus some companies that are not able to achieve that feat.

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He is author of The Growth Company. The book talks about 17 Growth Commandments, when applied to any business could help drive faster business growth.

Mansingh's vision is a world full of high growth companies with motivated, inspired and happy employees. He founded GrowthCulture Consulting LLP to fulfil this vision and help companies and its employees become the best version of themselves. GrowthCulture Consulting focuses on enabling companies to drive faster business growth through Culture Transformation, Leadership, Sales and Digital Solutions.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Hard hit companies like Uber, Airbnb, Oyo are announcing major layoffs to stay afloat, along with some raising the capital to survive this tough period. Companies like Disney have to retort furloughing its employees as it had to lock down its core business amid the uncertainty. From India, there is a mixed and varied response. Some companies have announced pay cuts to stay in the fight while unusual yet rare move came in from Asian Paints, announcing salary hikes!

When leaders are asked how they are responding to the current crises, most of them have a common yet predictable answer .i.e they are ensuring employee safety, business continuity policies include work from home, they are using masks and sanitisers at work places, they are keeping their employees engaged by organising virtual sessions around wellbeing, health & fitness, learning, skilling and so on.

Yes, these are quite necessary and important measures to address the immediate needs of the business. Still, at the same time, to do more than what they are doing currently, leaders need to capitalise on this opportunity. The world has seen some companies coming out loud from the recession period, many companies were born during tough periods, and they went on to become part of the Fortune 500 list. To capitalise on this opportunity, leaders have to Re-imagine, Re-wire and Re-Energise their business.

Let us look at these closely: Re-imagine Let's agree that the world of business has changed. It wouldn't be same like before.

Hence businesses and leaders must go back to the drawing board. It is time to ReImagine the business, look at its roadmap and vision again, and align it to the new normal world. Many companies have already seized the immediate opportunities, e.g. some are manufacturing sanitisers, masks, PPE kits, ventilators and so on, as they had the un-utilised capacity and acquired requisite know-how for producing those items. This is just a small example of re-imagining the

Effective Digital strategy would ensure smooth re-wiring and aligning the company to the new normal and the re-imagined organisation

93 business, but companies need to think around the mid and long term solutions, how their business would look like, how would their business stay relevant, they need to chase right opportunities in the new normal world that is emerging faster by pivoting in the right direction.

The strategy would play an important role in shaping the future of the organisation.

Re-wire Once the strategy is in place then its crucial for leaders to align the company and its resources towards attaining those objectives, it might call for re-wiring the company, it’s systems, processes, structure etc. Re-wiring might mean taking a fresh and different approach than the current one; it might call for removing inefficiencies in the systems and processes to bring in required agility to support the business. It also calls for having the right Digital Strategy in place. Today, many companies survived and are operational by deploying the right Digital Technologies and tools. Effective Digital strategy would ensure smooth re-wiring and aligning the company to the new normal and the re-imagined organisation.

Re-energise COVID-19 has pushed a lot of employees to work from their home confines, and most of the homes are not designed to function optimally, whereas the earlier office and work environment had a different feel and energy. Due to working in isolation and online environment, dealing with the COVID-19 related uncertainties have taken a toll on both physical and mental health of many employees.

Companies are doing their best to keep employees engaged, but it is still a challenging task to keep up the morale.

Hence, the leaders also have to focus on their people strategy, around how they would keep their workforce motivated, inspired and happy working in this new normal.

It calls for re-energising, that should build confidence and new momentum, which is required to steer the company towards an original path, where all are aligned and equally excited to become part of the new journey.

Unprecedented times call for the unprecedented response, leaders now have this quite crucial responsibility to ensure the business is back on track, growth and profits numbers look promising, employees are safe, and the industry continues to create value for all its stakeholders.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

INSPIRING

IDEAS

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How is SugarBox Networks Revolutionizing Digital India by Offering an Innovative Solution to Access Mobile Apps without Internet

ince India announced nationwide lockdown to control the spread of COVID-19, internet consumption all over the country has been steadily rising. Daily active user (DAU) base across online streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime video shot up by 122 per cent and 72 per cent month-on-month, respectively, between February and April, said a report by research firm KalaGato Pte Ltd. However, many people in India still struggle to access their favourite mobile applications due to inadequate or no network. So, what if there is a technology that can help users without an active internet connection to access mobile apps? A technology startup cofounded by Rohit Paranjpe and Ripunjay Bararia in August 2016, Margo Networks has developed and patented technology under its brand SugarBox, which enables users to access mobile apps and other digital services seamlessly without requiring internet connectivity.

“At SugarBox, the problem that we are trying to solve is somewhat becoming a basic need for everyone – affordable and reliable access to digital services. We are reimagining the way data delivery on the internet works making internet services more available, reliable, affordable, and contextual,” says Rohit Paranjpe, Co-Founder and CEO, SugarBox Networks. The startup uses a technology called Hyperlocal Content Distribution Network (CDN) that enables services to deliver high-speed content anywhere without users requiring any internet or data connectivity. Rohit adds, “The CDN and the entire internet infrastructure market worldwide have a bright future ahead. After COVID-19, everyone has experienced how fragile the internet networks are, and this provides a lot of opportunities in this space, as all aspects of the internet infrastructure go into their next phase of growth. CDNs and internet infrastructure services, in general, will also witness faster adoption across digital services and Apps.”

The Story of SugarBox SugarBox started at the back of Rohit’s experience in running an over-the-top service and the problems that people faced for data reliability and affordability. “Jio for a brief

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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The problem that we are trying to solve is somewhat becoming a basic need for everyone – affordable and reliable access to digital services

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

On April 2020, Indian media firm, Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE) announced that they would invest Rs. 522 Crores in SugarBox

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period solved that problem. But we inherently knew that something needed to fundamentally change to solve this global issue, in an economically viable and sustainable model,” pinpoints Rohit.

In 2016, inspired by Jet Airways’ in-flight content feature, Rohit and his team built a prototype and carried out a pilot project at Goregaon station.

The statistics were beyond imagination with people consuming 21 GB data per week, and some users ran through all 200 movies on the platform within 15 days! “This was when we knew we were onto something exciting and the next logical step was to approach a large content house to bring on board and launch this platform at scale,” says Rohit.

Indian media firm, Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE) was quick to realize the potential of SugarBox. “Zee saw the opportunity that we were trying to tap in to, and the Zee leadership team saw larger synergies in what we were doing.

They acquired SugarBox in April 2017,” states Rohit. After the acquisition, the focus of SugarBox

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

was to integrate Zee5 and make it work using the platform, rather than creating a separate service with a limited use case. Once they started the Zee5 integration, Rohit and his team fully understood the mammoth task at hand.

“Delivering content using a hyperlocal CDN server is simple. Making a Digital service work without internet connectivity is a whole another topic altogether. This meant addressing user registration, personalization, security, payments, and ads – all of which requires sustained internet connectivity to function,” pinpoints Rohit. On April 2020, ZEE announced that it would invest Rs 522 crore in SugarBox. As per the reports, with the new investment, SugarBox will commence commercial operations across existing contracts like L&T Metro, Chennai Metro, NMMT, Kolkata Metro, and Indian Railways, and will also forge new partnerships to scale up its network.

“With the current investment, we will commence commercial services and scale up the network across public transport, revolutionizing the digital experience for over 300 million monthly unique users over the next 2 to 3 years. The shortterm objective is to unlock over 2.5 bn hours of digital consumption monthly for consumers in a near captive environment, where access is otherwise limited due to patchy connectivity,”

says Rohit. In the medium term, SugarBox will empower the next billion users worldwide to start using digital services in an affordable & reliable fashion, without having to purchase a data pack or an internet connection. “The long-term goal is to optimize the way data is transacted on the internet globally, making the internet over 30 per cent cheaper and 200 per cent faster,” concludes Rohit.

How does it work?

A Content distribution network (CDN) is a network of servers spread across areas that cache relevant data across internet services based on what gets consumed in each area. A traditional CDN installs servers in datacenters at an area/city/region level based on user density and demand. On the other hand, a hyperlocal CDN goes a little further and installs servers at places where consumers are present and where services are used (Transport, Rural & Public Areas, Residential & Commercial complexes, Retail & Hospitality, and many more).

A traditional CDN server requires a user to have an internet connection to access the data from the server. “A hyperlocal CDN server is installed in a place where a user is already present. It can deliver data over a local area network, without requiring an internet connection. This enables digital services to work seamlessly, even in areas with bad or no network and empowers users without an active internet connection to use Apps.

Smooth right?” shares Rohit.

For a country like India, this facilitates three essential ideas. Rohit explains, “It provides seamless high-speed access to consumers. As the user is accessing data over LAN, the cost of access reduces dramatically for the user, and this is amazingly helpful, as we all know that India is a highly price-sensitive market. Most importantly, anybody with a smartphone will be able to start using digital services without an active data plan or bothering about data cost or data limit.”

Being a Serial Entrepreneur As an entrepreneur, Rohit has tried to solve a varied set of problems. The consistent part of all of them, however, has been to resolve issues that exist at scale, only to be sure of what he does can potentially impact billions worldwide. “In my first venture, Essence, I was trying to solve the problem of easy access to trusted and verified mentors. So,

I set out on a journey to create a network of fitness, wellness, and professional coaches in India, as early as 2010,” recalls Rohit.

At his second venture, Mobie Infotainment, Rohit was trying to address the pain point of everincreasing travel time and the sheer frustration/ boredom that a person consequently faces during such time. “I intended to make their ride more productive, informative, and entertaining,” adds Rohit. Digitainment, his third venture, was trying to address the retail availability of content in the post-DVD era, along with access to content on user devices in the Edge and 3G era. Rohit explains, “We set up a unique distribution platform to buy digital movies at retail stores and started one of the first OTT services in India that could support video streaming, even on a 2G network.”

Over these years, Rohit’s most treasured milestone remains the first time he launched a product to consumers. “This was with Mobie Infotainment back in 2012, when we launched incab infotainment services. Everything that could go wrong happened at the time – our shipment got delayed; then got stuck at customs; finally, after we received it, our software malfunctioned; there was a power outage at the depot where we were installing the systems in the cabs the night before the launch!” recounts Rohit. The whole team of Mobie Infotainment was shuttling between the office and the installation depot for three days.

Rohit adds, “All of us went 70 hours without sleep.

The quality of the installation was a disaster, and I got two earfuls from the MD of the cab company the next day. But our system worked like a charm and put a smile on the face of the first consumer who got into the cab.”

During his life, there have been a lot of people, books and companies that have influenced Rohit professionally. The most significant impact on him has been of Gautam Sinha, CEO of CBREX. “I met Gautam back in 2010 – 11 when he had just sold his start-up and was angel investing. Those were the formative years for me as a professional.

A lot of who I am as today comes from him. But probably, one of the most profound influences, which continues to be a guiding principle for me was Gautam’s clarity of thought and his focus on fundamentals – if unit economics don’t make sense, whatever the engagement metrics are, the business still doesn’t make sense,” concludes Rohit.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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EXPERT'S OPINION

Things to Do

When You Lose Job Due to COVIDOutbreak

By Tushar Chadha, CEO, People Plus Advisors

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Tushar Chadha is a proactive professional with diversified recruitment experience into IT, BFSI, Retail and Consumer Internet industry. He has a unique experience of building the business from scratch in a start-up, small and medium enterprise and large multi-national corporations.

Tushar Chadha

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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andling the emotional reaction after losing a job is not easy and not everyone’s cup of tea because it takes you in pity funk for a bit and expert note that losing a job equates to the grief of losing a loved one. But, remember that millions of people around the world have lost their jobs amid the current COVID-19 crisis as it has become “global pandemic of unemployment” The world is not only experiencing the symptoms of COVID-19 but also experiencing the symptoms of economic downfall which have shaken the ruling economies like the US wherein millions of people are laid of and has created the layer of crisis within a crisis.

But the question is how to handle this feeling and what to do to overcome from the grief of being jobless. After you take a deep breath,

The stress of job loss and unemployment can take a toll on your well-being

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consider the following tips to help you navigate your next steps in embarking on a new job search in the middle of an unprecedented crisis.

Acknowledge the fact that you are jobless for some time and move on from the emotions Its very human to experience a range of emotions such as saying goodbye to the morning routine, late working hours, enjoying with a colleague, accepting the fact that there will be no more paychecks and salary credit messages and the list goes on and I completely understand that it is always easy to be said than to be done but one has to bring back the sunk spoon from the trifle bowl.

Get a check of your finances and create a budget of your own to manage your expenses Create an expense sheet and try to figure out what are your must to have expenses and what are your luxurious expenses. This will help you to cut down on your unnecessary expenses. Don’t deplete your savings or increase your debt. For example-Read the books and magazines at home or online instead of going out to the library or Meditate and exercise at home rather than going to a gym or nearby studio. This will help you to follow your hobbies and passion without any expenses.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Tushar Chadha

Boost up your skill if you find any gap in it, there are thousands of online videos available on youtube

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Re-evaluate your choices and invest in your personal development There is a famous quote in English "it takes money to make money". This time is a blessing and disguise as it has given a lot of time to re-evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. Enrol yourself in classes which you can afford for your personal development. Work more on polishing your skills, making your resume more interesting so that you can get a good job sooner. Boost up your skill if you find any gap in it, there are thousands

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

of online videos available on youtube. Take help from it and work more to fill the gaps.

The last and the most important – take care of yourself Lastly, the very important things over and above all is take care of yourself. The stress of job loss and unemployment can take a toll on your well-being and leave you more vulnerable to mental health problems. Just believe in yourself and trust that this time shall too pass.

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

MOST INSPIRING

YOUNG CXOs

IN INDIA

Sonia Notani

Chief Marketing Officer, IndiaFirst Life Insurance

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Seizing the Opportunities

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ndiaFirst Life Insurance began its operations in November 2009 as the 23rd entrant in the life insurance market in India where one company is the well-known, household brand LIC, which is publicly owned. The same year, Sonia Notani joined IndiaFirst Life as its eighth employee. Now the Chief Marketing Officer of IndiaFirst Life, she handles a wide range of functions such as Marketing and PR, Products, Customer Experience, Strategic Alliances and Direct and Digital Sales. “It has been fascinating and fulfilling to launch a whole range of products across multiple channels besides a multitude of brand awareness campaigns that bring a paradigm shift from 'fear to confidence' in the

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

conversation. It certainly has been a decade of many Firsts!” says Sonia.

As a founder-member of IndiaFirst Life, Sonia started on a clean slate. She led her team and ventured along with them into unchartered territories, with award-winning outcomes.

Sonia recalls, “Back then, the entire set-up was like a start-up – a lot of scope to experiment new ideas, limited resources yet so much space and acceptance for innovation, with employees enthused and driven with a purpose to make IndiaFirst Life a preferred insurance company in India.” Headquartered in Mumbai with a paid-up share capital of Rs. 663 Crores, IndiaFirst Life ranks 12th in the private sector in Individual NB APE for FY 2020.

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Sonia Notani Sonia Notani is a founder member at IndiaFirst Life, with wide-ranging expertise in the BFSI space. In her decade-long stint at IndiaFirst Life, she has handled a well-rounded portfolio across functions and verticals. Currently, she spearheads the company’s Marketing, Products, Customer Experience, PR, Strategic Alliances, Direct & Digital Sales functions. As a thought leader, Sonia continues to carry the "forthright substance" baton through her enthusiastic participation in panel discussions and authored pieces, to be part of a dialogue-based ecosystem while raising awareness around life insurance as an essential risk protection tool.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

“We were keen to make ‘Insurance for All’ a sustainable reality. To do that, we had to quickly ramp up and build critical mass to ensure operational efficiency and economies of scale,” shares Sonia. The company had the advantage of not having legacy systems pulling them down. It could adapt to a lean and agile way of working, leveraging technology and offering simple products and solutions across touchpoints of sales and service. “From setting up the founding processes to balancing innovative thinking with business decisions that are profitable and scalable, while creating value for every stakeholder including our distributors, shareholders, employees and most importantly customers, the focus has always been on delivering an optimum outcome,” adds Sonia.

104 For two consecutive years (2019 & 2020), IndiaFirst Life Insurance has been recognised among the top 25 Great Place to Work in the BFSI segment.

Scaling New Heights In the beginning, IndiaFirst Life had the privilege of an illustrious parentage which included two eminent banks Bank of Baroda and Andhra Bank (now, Union Bank of India) - and access to promote insurance to their customers.

"We, however, needed to gear up and provide best in class, value-adding products to these customers. We needed to scale quickly, gain critical mass, enable economies of scale and become relevant in a market with dominant players who had been there for over a decade," says Sonia.

The critical challenges for Sonia and her team started at brand recognition and recall, as they had limited marketing budgets for a small company. Sonia remembers, "We did a lot of focused marketing to our customers who visited bank branches and ensured brand recall. We launched need-based products that the customer understood."

Further, the company moved applications quickly and cut down operations costs by focusing on digital processing of applications while reducing any physical branches or infrastructure. "At that time, each salesperson was like a mobile branch. We enabled self-service and centralised operations to support customers wherever they are. We broke even in 5 full years of operation, and then focused on retail growth and rose through the ranks!” states Sonia.

IndiaFirst Life has come a long way and has had a fantastic journey. The company is now ranked in the top 10 private insurers in terms of gross new business premium and the top 12 private insurers in terms of retail new business premium. Sonia claims, "Our retail CAGR in last five years is around 40 per cent, and we continue with the same fervour and passion, to make a difference while keeping the CustomerFirst!”

The Success of the Customer First Approach While the category narrative in insurance always plays on fear, IndiaFirst Life took the most off-beat approach

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“Together, we ensure, we innovate, take calculated risks, go beyond the norm and enjoy the recognition that comes with achievement and the learning that comes with any setback.�

- Sonia Notani

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

IndiaFirst Life believes in keeping its employees happy , passionate and connected at the work place

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ever made by an insurance company. “We simply decided to, ‘Talk Life, Not death.’ From here was born the brand campaign, ‘Because Life is Full of Certainties,’ which reflects in our communication across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and our website,” says Sonia.

Today, the product portfolio of IndiaFirst Life is enabled to cater to the needs of every customer segment from wealth accumulation to retirement planning to even assurance of returns in current challenging times. “We put our ‘CustomerFirst’ not just in beliefs but also in practice.

Our underlying principle is to have products, which can be customised to suit the needs of all type of customers.

Such customisation has not just benefitted our customers but has also made selling simpler for our distributors as our products slowly progress towards pull purchase,” opines Sonia. Today, IndiaFirst Life offers 34 products to its customers that include 22 individual plans and 12 group plans. The company also intends to continue providing relevant, need-based and feature-laden products to our stakeholders even in the times to come.

IndiaFirst Life can service customer requests through traditional as well as digital touchpoints, such as intelligent IVR, Chatbots, WhatsApp and Mobile Apps. “We have capabilities to integrate and interact with different ecosystems based on business and data needs.

Our infrastructure and system architecture are based on

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microservices. It provides reusability and flexibility to integrate and scale on-demand,” shares Sonia. With the help of technology and advanced customer analytics, IndiaFirst Life offers customised services, that too in a preferred mode of delivery. The company is also able to optimise communication for precise messaging and are moving towards multi-lingual conversations as well.

Fighting the Pandemic As India fights back COVID-19 through governmentrun measures and with the support of citizens of India, IndiaFirst Life ensures the safety of its employees and customers. The #CustomerFirst and #EmployeeFirst ideologies, together, form the nucleus of IndiaFirst Life Insurance. “In testing times like these, the safety and well-being of our customers and employees is our top priority. We have moved to a complete Work from Home (WFH) policy, yet we are fully operational and serving our customers across channels electronically and digitally,” pinpoints Sonia. The infrastructure readiness coupled with the adoption of some of the best industry practices enabled IndiaFirst Life to take proactive measures at the right time.

“I connect with my team regularly via digital mediums.

We do weekly meetings like we used to. Nothing has changed much except that the presence is digital instead of physical. We are in the business of protecting people.

We cannot rest; the business must go on,” opines Sonia.

The teams at IndiaFirst Life are confident of complete support from the organisation to keep their well-being as a priority. The same trust is passed on by every employee to the customer directly or indirectly. It spreads a strong message that we are all in this together!

“During the COVID-19 phase, we have set-up processes to enable faster claim settlements electronically, especially in the affected areas. Our official website is updated with information related to arrangements made for alternate modes to pay premiums, renew policies, settle claims, and lodge requests among others regularly," says Sonia.

Now, IndiaFirst Life is communicating regular updates to customers and policyholders via e-mails, SMSs, and calls (if necessary). The company is also urging its customers to use the self-service options and digital modes – IVR, Chatbot IRIS, WhatsApp Bot, Customer Portal, Pull SMS – to their advantage and avoid in-person meetings.

The Cornerstone of Success Sonia has been brought up in a way where she was taught to believe in herself. Born and raised in Mumbai, she was always free to make her own choices that were also respected by her family. That also meant that Sonia was responsible for the consequences – good or bad.

She understood the concept of risk and reward, along with complete accountability, early in life. Sonia says, “Education has always been crucial in our family – no compromises there. I have always been ambitious and wanted to make a difference.”

Sonia desired not just an excellent education but a good institute that could foster her abilities. So, she chose to pursue a Bachelor's in Economics from St. Xavier's

College. This experience was central in shaping a large part of her personality as it gave her tremendous exposure to different possible vocations. “The college made me strong and taught me humility. As I started to understand the world a little better, I realised that to make a difference, one must stay relevant. High on ambition and keen to make a difference, I chose to do an MBA from NMIMS,” shares Sonia.

While Sonia had the ammunition of academic degrees from credible and reputed institutions that paved her future course, she has worked hard to reach where she is today.

“The best learning through these years included being extremely persistent, agile and hardworking – all leading to my mantra of ‘success favours the prepared mind’!” pinpoints Sonia.

On the other hand, Sonia had the privilege of learning and growing with the company, IndiaFirst Life. “We, naturally, attempted some projects that were ahead of their time, hence had limited success. We also had to let go of a few opportunities while we waited for a more opportune moment to pursue them,” recalls Sonia. Today, if asked to pick and mention her most significant learning, she would say, “to seize opportunities after evaluating the downside.”

In most cases, one must take calculated risks and quick actions. Inaction is often a bigger threat than the risk of failure. “We, at IndiaFirst Life, have learned to innovate, move quickly and adapt to change swiftly. This has helped us stay ahead of the curve, rise to the top 10 in gross business and 12th rank in individual APE despite being the 22nd entrant among private-sector insurers,” adds Sonia.

Sonia has been in the workforce for 16 years now. At different stages of her career, there have been quite a few people who have influenced her professionally. However, she believes that one’s professional ethos is usually formed through personal influences. “It may be clichéd, a key influencer has been my mother whose advice to me has been to be responsible for myself – the outcome of all my decisions and choices will be mine – be it good or bad, rich or poor, happy or unhappy! I believe this learning I received at an early age laid the foundation for me to have complete clarity of thought, enabling quick decision making and high accountability,” explains Sonia.

Over the years, Sonia has learned that the right attitude is the single most critical success factor. Knowledge and skills are more external and can be learned formally.

However, attitude is a personal choice. “Good attitude exudes through initiative or a “can-do” approach to work, and perseverance. If you have the right attitude to learn, to contribute and to succeed, you do not get constrained by context, function, company, or industry in the longer term,” concludes Sonia.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

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EXPERT'S OPINION

Impact of COVID 19 on World Economy

By Chandra Sivasubramaniam, Co-Founder & CEO, MatrixThread Chandra is an experienced technology leader and

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entrepreneur with corporate, start up and financial industry experience across a 20 years career. He is a successful practitioner in the digital and technology domain and has an experience in solution definition, architecture and implementation leveraging Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Blockchain. Having launched multiple SaaS products in the global market, including HRAPP and Flowboard, he is now focusing on enabling employers to manage their remote workforce using technology.

Chandra Sivasubramaniam

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OVID-19, which first emerged in late 2019 in Hubei Province fast spread to more than 210 countries and territories. Total infections had gone beyond 2 million so far, with tens and thousands of people lost their life. Beyond that, we have a complete lockdown across many countries to contain the impact of the virus. Scientists in research labs across the globe are working on finding a treatment and a vaccine, and we are another twelve to eighteen months away for seeing its result.

COVID-19 outbreak is one of the biggest threats to the global economy and financial markets.

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Lockdown will create an irrecoverable loss of wealth for businesses and individuals

Growth downgrade Stay at home, travel bans, and closure of public places created a massive gap between supply and demand. Major growth economies are forecasted to decline due to factory closures, cutbacks in service provisions, and supply chain disruption. The situation is very dynamic, and it is evolving every day. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) forecasted global GDP to slow from 2.9% from the previous year to 2.4% this year, and this will further get downgraded in the coming days. Lockdown will create an irrecoverable loss of wealth for businesses and individuals. Though the individual’s mortgages and other financial commitments are in the moratorium, still every citizen is responsible for paying it back when the situation gets back to normal. International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates the economic impact to be worst since the great depression in 1930.

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Lockdown and its impact on employment Social distancing and temporary closure of factories have a significant impact on the working class. Though the governments across the world are supporting with direct cash benefit and other measures to keep them staying at home, job losses and longterm impacts on their livelihood are immeasurable. Keeping the working-class unproductive for a long time will create social impact and increases the gap between rich and poor.

Unemployment rates are quickly rising to a level we have not

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

seen for decades. In India, the unemployment rate is more than 23%. In the United States of America, more than 20 million Americans claimed unemployment benefits since the start of the shutdown. Every country is trying to feed the poor and provide direct cash benefits, but it is not a sustainable option for the most part of the world.

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Fully funded startups that are having optimal operational costs can sustain longer than the less privileged ones with no funding

Lower consumer demand People no longer can go to work, and there are widespread unemployment claims across the world. Countries announced various measures to protect the businesses and also employees until the COVID-19 contained.

Companies are cutting their spending and holding off new investments due to the uncertain business environment. Lowering demand will impact the supply side as well. We already see the oil price going down to a level where the majority of the shale oil producers in the United States of America cannot sustain for long and may go into administration.

OPEC+ oil production cut announced recently did not help to contain the price fall as the travel industry is a complete halt, and storage across the globe are running out of capacity.

Impact on Startups Startups are already feeling the pinch. Fully funded startups that are having optimal operational costs can sustain longer than the less privileged ones with no funding. A higher rate of customer attrition in subscription-based SaaS (Software as a Service) model will introduce a cash flow problem. Lower IT investments from businesses during an

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uncertain environment will impact the growth of the startups. In these uncertain times, startups should work on optimizing the operational cost by reducing the working hours, reducing the workforce, or cutting back on salaries for employees to extend their lifeline. The future is uncertain but planning the path will not only increase the chance of survival, but it also creates a strong foundation for future growth post the pandemic.

Shining sectors during the pandemic Essential services such as food delivery, farming, healthcare, and cargo charters are in high demand. Some of the sectors are now doing catch up to meet the market demand across the world. The workforce is staying at home and connecting remotely for work. Technology vendors such as remote monitoring, web conference, collaboration, and activity tracking software are having a higher number of subscriptions in the past few months, and it is growing.

At this moment, we need a coordinated economic policy across the globe to fight the life and the livelihood of the people. Governments across the world should increase their resources to the health sector and support the most vulnerable.

As we are fighting an invisible enemy where we have so many unknowns, each country needs to be transparent in its research findings and supporting each other on a humanitarian basis to win this pandemic together. History would speak how the current world managed this pandemic and recovered it successfully.

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CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

LEADER'S INSIGHTS

India Needs a World-Class Ecosystem to Nurture Startups

Hemant Gupta is the Managing Director at BRTSIF (BIL Ryerson Technology Startup Incubator Foundation) and the MD & CEO of BSE Sammaan CSR Ltd. a fully owned Subsidiary of BSE Ltd. After

26 years at Citi, one of the largest Global Financial

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Powerhouses, where he worked in a wide variety of functions including Product Management, Technology, Operations and Internal Audit, in India and New York, Hemant decided to swap a large Corporate role for a more socially impactful role with BSE Sammaan, which helps Companies do more effective CSR. Hemant holds a Management degree from IIM Kolkata and an Engineering degree from IIT Chennai. In an exclusive interaction with Hemant Gupta, MD - BRTSIF – Zone Startups India, and MD & CEO - BSE Sammaan CSR

the CXO Outlook, Hemant talks about Indian startup ecosystem, advantages of global incubators and accelerators, impact of COVID 19, and many more.

Nasscom says that India’s start-up ecosystem has the potential to create up to 12.5 lakh direct jobs by 2025, from 3.9-4.3 lakh direct jobs in 2019. What is your take on the Indian startup ecosystem and its potential?

The start-up ecosystem in India, which is already the 3rd largest in the world, has been growing at a healthy clip of 12-15% per annum for the

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To become an internationally recognized startup nation, we not only need great quality startups, but equally importantly, a world class ecosystem to nurture them

last few years. This growth rate has been a result of a very healthy support system in India both at the public and private levels.

Did you know that apart from the fillip being provided by the Central Government through various schemes through Startup India, DST and NITI Aayog, over 26 states also have Startup policies in place and have allocated funds for the same? Incubators and Accelerators have also been growing at a healthy clip of 11-12%.

However, a growth rate of 12-15% will result in doubling of the ecosystem, not the 4X growth that is presumed in going to 12.5 lakh direct jobs by 2025. For that level of growth, some of the following will need to be implemented – 1. Expand the size of the market with support for access to global markets. We at ZSI have been doing this through our Next Big Idea program for the last 7 years, by providing access to the North American markets for Indian Startups.

2. Increase collaboration amongst Incubators and Accelerators to enhance their capabilities. We should not be viewing each other as competitors, but as catalysts for scaling up the size and enhancing the quality of the startup ecosystem. This needs to be institutionalized rather than being left to individuals.

3. Increase the incentives for setting up of Innovation labs to drive the creation of disruptive startups. This will need to happen both in the academic system and the corporate system.

These are only some of the ideas we have there are many more relating to funding support and other areas that can also be worked upon.

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Apparently, Indian start-up ecosystem has the potential to grow about four times by 2025.

However, what work needs to be done to turn India into an internationally recognized startup nation?

Our experience at Zone Startups India has been that there is tremendous amount of interest being shown by countries in North America, Europe and Australia in the Indian Startup ecosystem. A lot of times this interest is focused on specific sectors that are of interest to the country. We’ve had delegations from several countries who have evinced great interest in our startups and the programs we run.

Additionally, historically, almost all of the global investors have Indian investments as a significant part of their portfolio, including, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Tiger Global Management, and SoftBank Capital.

However, to become “an internationally recognized startup nation�, we not only need great quality startups, but equally importantly, a world class ecosystem to nurture them. We must partner with global startup eco-system players, adopt best practices from around the world, create a strong community of mentors/coaches and experts. This along with favorable policy initiatives, funding support and a supportive ecosystem we should become internationally recognized very soon.

In your opinion, what are the major challenges young entrepreneurs in India face? How Zone Startups helps them in overcoming those challenges?

The four key pillars of support any startup needs are infrastructure, mentoring, market connect and investors, in that order mostly. We support our incubatees in all the four pillars to help them scale and become sustainable.

Our experience has been that in the Indian context, the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face relate to the right mentoring and market connect.

So, for example, mentoring essentially exists at a tactical level and at a strategic level. Most mentors I have come across tend to be in the former category and most startups also are looking for problem solvers rather than coaches. We are actively working on building a pool of strategic mentors in addition to the tactical ones we have and educating our incubatees on the value a strategic mentor can bring.

The second is giving startups the ability to truly market test their product or service. In most cases what is crucial here is to have a network of Corporates who can not only offer their services for carrying out a proof of concept but are also willing to invest resources in conducting the

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

Agriculture, Healthcare and Education seem to be sectors where has seen the largest uptick in activity

same. Being a part of the Stock Exchange with the largest number of companies listed and a brand name Corporates can trust, it helps us in building such a network.

Global incubators and accelerators in India are seeing frenzied growth. How will it help the Indian startup ecosystem?

Their high level of activity and business growth shows that they see great opportunity in the Indian startup segment which is fast-growing and one that has started creating a global impact. We at Zone Startups have also been witnessing this trend and keep receiving proposals for collaboration. This is good development for India.

This would help the Indian startup eco-system to inculcate best practices from program structure, curriculum design and content point of view. This will also help in providing channels of international mentors, market connects and investors much more easily than for a pure domestic incubator or accelerator.

At present, what are the sectors in which you see an increase in activity by startups? How will it evolve in the future?

Agriculture, Healthcare and Education seem to be sectors where has seen the largest uptick in activity. It will evolve with the plug-in of technology-based solutions which increases operational efficiencies along with enhancing reach and enabling faster-decisioning. The old favorite, FinTech is also seeing some activity, but nowhere near the levels that were there even 2 years ago.

There are a lot of ventures which are working on IOT / AI / ML / Blockchain / Data & Cyber Security / Robotics serving multiple sectors.

These are likely to remain attractive sectors for startups in India although operational efficiency and profitability will be a lot in focus leading to some churn within the sectors and the stronger ones will grow to corner market share.

Government has been focusing on supporting startups that are providing solutions for the masses, those that are helping create a sustainable lifestyle and help in the delivery of citizen services - which will help grow these sectors too.

What will be the impact of this ongoing coronavirus lockdown? How will it affect Indian economy in the coming months?

From the first world to the third world countries, globally we are grappling with an unprecedented economic slowdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I strongly

believe that that it will have far-reaching consequences in the way we live, work and interact going forward.

Startups will also not remain untouched and will get severely impacted.

The Indian economy was already suffering over the past few quarters due to a variety of reasons, including a liquidity crunch and a demand slowdown. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought both social and economic activities to a complete halt. We in India and the whole world is rightfully focused on the health of its citizens and in saving lives. I don’t know as to when the situation will normalize, it is unwise to make any predictions.

Having said that, there is a lot of action already happening in the HealthTech and in the online and digital technology space. HealthTech sector is starting to contribute significantly in the Testing, Preventing and Treating regimes for dealing with the pandemic, while gaming, online education and entertainment have seen an ever-increasing consumer demand. There is a surge in the usage of audio-video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Teams and Skype as well and Food delivery platforms where they are allowed to operate.

What advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are starting out?

There are so many moving parts at present, hence my advice to them will be to hold-on, watch the social and business trends and wait for the pandemic to come under control first. This is also a good time to introspect on your business model and network with peers and seek validation.

The changes that have taken place on the social and economic fronts may not be permanent but will definitely alter the current fabric. And hence, business models, target segments and go to market strategies may have to be altered thereby necessitating a business pivot.

In case a startup is working on raising external funding, then a lot more work has to be done to remain in touch with their prospective and current investors, keep them informed on your business plans and changes that you foresee and seek their guidance. Most importantly since overall economic activity will be down, it’s of extreme importance that the operations are run very frugally and only critical expenses are undertaken at least in the near future.

Many a great business have been built in such disruptive times and we need to be positive and continue to work hard to survive and succeed in these tough times.

As the situation improves, we need to be ready to grasp the opportunities with both hands.

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EXPERT’S OPINION

Social Distancing: Ushering in the New Age of Digital Connect for Traditional Businesses

By Debprotim Roy, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Canvs

An entrepreneur, strategist and a creative, fact-based thinker, Debprotim Roy is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Canvs. In his role,

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Debprotim leads a young and growing team at Canvs, providing all aspects of leadership, and in doing so is continually analysing business models, building new processes, and systemizing structures to develop a holistic service for his client and partners.

Debprotim Roy

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

W

e are currently living through a time that we didn’t foresee or expect in our lifetimes. The pandemic has affected our health, wellbeing and our pockets. During these times of social isolation, all companies trying to make it work have pivoted to working remotely.

Sure, as we all expected, the ones that were preparing themselves for this mode of work in advance, have adjusted better than the others.

Across industries, experts have suggested that this shift isn’t temporary, and companies shouldn’t build makeshift plans to work remotely. Companies should brace themselves for a more sustainable remote working environment to truly prepare for the coming years. And that’s how it should anyway be. Put simply, if you can get something done from where you are and want to get that done, you shouldn’t have

Companies should brace themselves for a more sustainable remote working environment to truly prepare for the coming years

to travel to a mutually agreeable place every day along with others to do that. Conflating work with the workplace doesn’t make sense. Meeting with your co-workers isn’t the same as compulsively going to the same desk to work from 5kms away.

Let us shed some light on how some of the highest revenue-generating sectors in India have gone digital.

Real estate: Developers in large numbers, have resorted to digital launches to avoid open house meetings. They are also setting up online site visit schedulers through these launches. However, the agents are finding it difficult to follow the new norms, which are unlike their traditional business practices. While obvious modes of communication such as phone, email and WhatsApp are critical to this remote mode of sales and servicing; video conferencing is generally becoming a go-to method for client sales presentations. 3D presentations are super handy, which can be viewed remotely from mobile devices or laptops by the customers. VR headsets can also prove handy but lack of setup outside of experience centres is a major impediment for users.

Education: E-learning has taken over the education sector amidst this lockdown. Schools and colleges across the world are conducting online sessions for students in order to complete their curriculum and access any course related material. This has largely been enabled by technological companies that offer a variety of tools and softwares for efficient online learning.

As a result, educational institutions are able to use e-books, simulations, quizzes, games, and e-notes to make learning more accessible, engaging, and contextualized.

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Sports/Fitness: To put things in perspective, 46-yr-old- Krishnan Padmakumar ran a full marathon inside his house. Krishnan clocked an impressive 4 hours and 26 minutes to cover 42.2km, probably something never seen before in India. It is a challenging time for smaller as well as franchisee led fitness centres. Gyms and other fitness hubs have started giving online training sessions and fitness consultations for its members. Just like in other cases, the fitness trainers are doing their best to instruct their clients on how to stay fit and healthy. Lot of innovation can be seen when it comes to ‘no equipment workout’ or working out with whatever equipment is available at home. This is achieved by a mix of pre-recorded and live sessions for its clients.

Additionally, two of the largest technical consultancies of India, TCS and Infosys have recently announced that they shall continue to keep the majority of their tech workforces remote. This clearly showed exactly how much could have been done to prevent the unnecessary hassle of moving around for work especially for people whose job is from desk.

A recent study (from before the pandemic) conducted by AND CO and Remote Year shows the most interesting aspects of working from home. People have been working remotely for a while. According to the study, 73% of remote workers are new to it, having gone in the last 4 years. The growth is observable in remote working, yet, there are some factors that cause disillusionment.

Accepting the New Norm While it has been difficult, every firm is trying to move its business online or is being forced to stay relevant online at this hour. Event firms have generally pivoted to webinars, schools and colleges have turned to online education, town halls are being held over Zoom and companies are slowly accepting that remote work could become a norm in the future.

Some larger firms that Canvs works with have been majorly non-remote for all their lives. They are now realizing the need to build a sustainable digital infrastructure around their people. This is augmented with the need to do more activities online to stay engaged with their customers. All in all, remote work has ushered

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More About

Debprotim Roy and Canvs With a hands-on approach to solving problems, Debprotim has numerous credits to his name in developing complex fintech products. As a Physics graduate from IITBombay, he employs his Engineering & Applied Physics knowledge to ensure flawless execution

and

meet

client

and

partner

satisfaction. Debprotim's profound interest in machine learning, coupled with his deep insight into product design and emerging technologies is a powerful combination poised to take Canvs to greater heights.

Canvs is an online community of over 10,000 designers that offers Design-as-aservice to firms looking to fulfill their product design needs. This solution by Canvs called Canvs Club comprises of a smaller community of managed, vetted, distributed design teams of a variety of skills and domain experience.

While providing access to a varied ensemble of skills via virtual teams, Canvs also provides a real touch point to companies via product managers leading the teams, who work with the client-side product and development teams on one side, while managing the entire design pipeline from Canvs’ end on the other side.

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Debprotim Roy

in an era of forced digitization that companies had been sluggish about while going about their digital transformation journeys which paradoxically had started to age as a concept.

Firms are now being forced to build digital teams, hire product experts, remote facilitators, and people management experts to figure out the way ahead sustainably. They have now started looking into digital transformation and design and tech investments as the BCP instead of an ostentatious way to demonstrate change.

Considering the intensity of the current crisis it would not be wrong to say that companies will have to work remotely for several weeks or even months at length.

The change management process of going remote may seem simple, but if not managed properly can result in a failure. Hence, it is imperative that companies figure out the key steps needed to achieve efficiency in these newer environments.

Necessity, as usual, will breed invention.

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INSPIRING

IDEAS

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How Did Dhruvam Thaker Offer Airline Hospitality and Star Hotel Features in the The SMART Taxi?

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

driver with lousy behaviour coming late in his poor-quality car is an everyday ordeal for many commuters who use ride-hailing services. Dhruvam Thaker was one among those commuters. He says, “During my corporate tenure, I used to travel a lot for business purpose, in cabs. Often I found the service quality levels were not up to the mark.” However, Dhruvam was not among those majority of riders who would try changing the cab service provider with an expectation of a better ride next time. “It is said that you always want to improve things which you had a bad experience. That is true in my case as well,” recounts Dhruvam.

From the thought of ‘a cab offering hospitalities like airways and features like a well-starred hotel’ was borne The SMART Taxi. Started with a single cab purchased with the money gathered from friends and family, The SMART Taxi now runs in 17 cities across the country. Dhruvam is planning to expand its presence in 40 cities by 31 December 2020. “Never start something to gain fame, success or valuation. Always start something to solve reallife problems and make individuals’ life easy.

I was not afraid of trying something new and getting fail. I knew, it will give me learning which no one could give, and if I could succeed, then I will have something which no one will have,” states Dhruvam.

A Roller-coaster Ride to Success Dhruvam was a dedicated and target-oriented employee in an organization, with a strong belief in ethics, process and a passion for doing things differently than others, in whatever he does. After nine years of working, on a Friday, precisely on 10 June 2016, Dhruvam left his job to work for himself. Then, comes the first resistance every entrepreneur in India has to face – the society.

Dhruvam recalls, “My inner circle - family, friends and relatives – resisted first. They were not happy with this decision and tried to convince me to go back to the job. But I had made my mind to go ahead.”

Two days after leaving the job, from 13 June 2016 onwards, Dhruvam was on the streets

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It took almost three months for me to get my first customer

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of Ahmedabad, researching about the market with a survey that drafted by himself. He did not have enough fund to hire an external agency to do a market survey before starting a venture. “I completed 163 surveys and got a result of 4.6 out of 5, which had boosted my confidence. It indicated that there is a need for such a concept, where people will love to ride in a cab which offers a professional, reliable and unique experience.”

Now, Dhruvam had the idea, and he knew that people would love to use what he is going to give them. But he did not have that one thing he wanted the most – money. “I approached eight banks, but none of them was ready to give me a loan. Finally, I gathered money from my friends and family members and purchased a cab,” shares Dhruvam, who would drive that cab for some time, as he could not afford to pay a driver. The SMART Taxi was officially started on 5 September 2016 with the founder himself giving the customers the real cab experience they were looking for.

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Scaling New Heights Getting the first customer is the toughest part of any start-up. “It took almost three months for me to get my first customer. He paid Rs. 600, and it was our first invoice values,” recalls Dhruvam. The first customer gave that little push The SMART Taxi needed to get going. Dhruvam adds, “He was impressed with the concept so much. He referred our services to many of his friends, family and apartment residents and things started rolling well for us.”

The word of mouth marketing worked quicker than expected. Dhruvam, who was handling everything from answering customer query and driving them to their destinations day and night to making invoices and promoting about the brand, considered a small expansion. “I approached a few guys whom I knew and were driving cabs earlier. I selected them one by one, and I trained them. That is how our cab number started increasing,” says Dhruvam.

In no time, The SMART Taxi had seven cabs running all over Ahmedabad. “When we thought that we had enough cabs, we decided to start approaching corporate companies for business. We got our first corporate order in Feb 2017. From there on, by considering our consistent service quality and performance, we got referred to a few more organizations, and businesses started increasing,” shares Dhruvam.

It was with the customers’ feedback that Druvam decided to widen the operations of The SMART

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Taxi outside Ahmadabad. He explains, “Many of our customers wanted us to introduce our services in multiple cities. It would become easy for them to manage things from a single source, and the same was our plan too. We started connecting with local fleet operators present in different cities, shortlisted them, trained them and started operating services in other cities. Different Cities, One Experience - this became our motto.”

The SMART Taxi’s gross revenue has been growing by an average of 73 per cent, consistently from the past two years. Dhruvam adds, “With 97.3 per cent of total rides having zero complaints reported, we have had 61.7 per cent of repeat booking ratio. Over 84.2 per cent of our rides come through word of mouth itself.”

Since its inception, the work-culture at The SMART Taxi has always been customer-centric and filled with the highest ethics. Be it a deal with customer or fleet partners, it reflects everywhere. “We always give freehand to our fleet partners and team to bring innovative ideas, which we can incorporate to make our service even more special. We work on that idea, execute trials and roll out. That is the culture what we follow now and will follow in future too,” pinpoints Dhruvam.

Lessons Learnt Living in a country where parents would encourage their children to pursue a monotonous 9 to 5 job with a fixed income, entrepreneurship has not gained the importance it deserves. Our neighbours and society add further hurdles into it, by quoting examples of some well paid corporate jobs, which increase fear of failure in the minds of wannabe entrepreneurs.

Dhruvam says, “There should be a better acceptance from family and society. When someone decides to do something on his/ her own, we must extend all the possible help.”

The excitement of starting from scratch is one of the first buzzes of being an entrepreneur. Being a successful entrepreneur himself, Dhruvam knows that success doesn’t come overnight. “You have to keep on trying and must have patience. There is no alternative to hard work,” says Dhruvam.

Entrepreneurship is most certainly not for everyone.

At the same time, there are many ways to become an entrepreneur, and one could be the right path for you. But always keep in mind this one thing - as Druvam puts it, “Whatever you do, always do it for your customers.”

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EXPERT'S OPINION

What CIOs Can Do to Minimize the Impact of COVID-19 on Their Businesses?

Neelesh Kripalani, Senior Vice President and Head - Center of Excellence (CoE), Clover Infotech

Neelesh Kripalani has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry. At Clover Infotech,

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is responsible for research and analysis of disruptive technologies and leveraging it for the digital transformation of the customers. Prior to his current role, Neelesh was the head of operations in India for Agile Financial Technologies. He has also served as an Associate Vice President – Technology at Tech Process Solutions Ltd, Mumbai.

Neelesh Kripalani

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s the Novel Coronavirus continues to spread around the world, the economic symptoms are emerging. As per recent reports, more than a dozen global firms have announced they will miss their financial goals for the upcoming quarter. This period of social distancing and lockdown has raised significant concerns for CIOs to enable an ecosystem where employees can access, collaborate and work remotely. At the same time, they need to ensure a robust cyber security system to not let hackers take advantage of current working situations. CIOs need to create comprehensive IT infrastructure to safely and reliably handle a vast increase in remote workers and digital fulfillment of market demand.

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It is critical that CIOs introduce strong cybersecurity policies along with providing secure corporate network

Looking at the current scenario, CIOs should immediately focus on two high-priority areas building virtual workplaces and integrating digital technologies to serve customers demand. This is a wake-up call for organizations that have placed too much focus on daily operational needs at the expense of investing in digital infrastructure.

Businesses need to shift technology capacity and investments to digital platform to mitigate the impact of the outbreak and keep their companies running smoothly now, and over the long term.

CIOs should review existing security infrastructure and assess what people will need to work safely. They must take into consideration important factors such as the hardware employees will use while working remotely (company-issued or personal devices), and the networks they’ll be on (public or private). CIOs should also consider endpoint security for devices and robust identity and access management to allow secure sign-in to corporate systems.

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Importance of Introducing Strong Cyber-Security Policies Remote working environment is apt for hackers to exploit security loopholes in the system. Hence, establishing robust cyber security practices across the organization in such a scenario shouldn’t be undermined. It is critical that CIOs introduce strong cybersecurity policies along with providing secure corporate network. Needless to say, when any employee is working remotely, they must access corporate network or any softwareas-a-service (SaaS) resource via a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN is a piece of software that creates a safe, encrypted “tunnel” from the user network, whether public or private Wi-Fi, across the public internet, and into the organization’s network. Further, CIOs need to review existing security infrastructure and consider endpoint security for

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More about

Neelesh Kripalani Neelesh Kripalani brings to Clover Infotech a perfect blend of IT services and BFSI sector experience. This stands him in good stead to provide top quality services to the customers, especially from the BFSI sector. He is also responsible for the automation initiatives in the organization, quality, and for capacity building across new-age technologies. Neelesh has been instrumental in enabling Clover Infotech to set up its first overseas office in Singapore to serve the Banking and Financial Services hub.

Neelesh holds a master’s degree in financial management from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of

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Management Studies, Mumbai.

devices, identity and access management to enable employees to work safely and securely.

Are We Ready to Work-from-Home?

We are already witnessing a paradigm shift in the industry, wherein enterprises are realizing the importance of building virtual workplaces and integrating new-age technologies in the IT landscape to ensure employees can work from anywhere, anytime.

For workforce to function seamlessly from home, a robust digital infrastructure is needed, where employees can access the data and collaborate from remote locations in real-time. Digital transformation here plays a vital role. Companies who have digitally transformed themselves are easily navigating the risks posed by physical infrastructure and traditional operating models.

As the number of employees working remotely is increasing, companies need to come up with proper training modules to equip their people to operate efficiently in the virtual workplace set-ups. This involves training them on best practices in virtual team building, virtual communication and collaboration. It would

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be good to get them accustomed to working seamlessly with a range of internal collaboration platforms meant for video and audio conferencing as well as internal enterprise applications such as CRM, ERP and the company intranet.

Above all, reskilling cannot be ignored. If efficient and secure ‘Virtual Workplaces’ are built, the time saved by employees on commute can be channeled to up-skilling, cross-skilling and reskilling them to augment their expertise.

Leadership Challenges The way we operate will change in the coming days but fundamental growth drivers for businesses will remain the same. Hence, we must focus on business development, technology innovation, collections, and keep the finances of the business healthy. We are working on strategies wherein we can extend the perimeter of work to much beyond the office premises. While we have enabled WFH and the tools to collaborate and function seamlessly, we are also focusing on employee safety and well-being. Our teams are ensuring communication to all employees as often as possible to ensure camaraderie and stand united amidst the lockdown.

As for our plan, we do see a sharp surge in digital transformation efforts, cloud enablement, application modernization etc. We also envision a rise in demand for remote services even in critical industries such as banking. Information security and Cybersecurity will become very critical now. I think, despite COVID-19, we have been preparing our business and setting up practices over the last few years to address these areas. We are prepared to address the demand augmentation that has been bought about

by COVID-19.

Advice to CIOs Ensure utmost focus on security of critical systems and data. The proliferation in access to organizational data and critical systems necessitates that we put the apt measures in place to safeguard it. Setting up processes and alerts to track end-point security, security of applications and databases, access and identity management, etc. is utmost critical. I believe Business Continuity with proactive measures to ensure security of systems and data should be the top priority today. (As told the Editor)

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LEADER'S INSIGHTS

How is COVID 19 Redefining the Global Supply Chain Model?

COVID has exposed the underlying weaknesses of companies across the globe and many of them are feeling the pain of supply

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chain disruptions caused by this pandemic. “One vulnerability that some Indian sectors share with supply chains worldwide is increasing dependence on Chinese imports,� says Sunny Nandwani, Founder

and Managing Partner of Acuver Consulting, which is a leading supply chain management IT solutions company with customers globally spread across Sweden, Australia, US, Singapore and India. In an email interaction with CXO Outlook, Sunny talks about the impacts of COVID on global supply chain Sunny Nandwani, Founder and Managing Partner, Acuver Consulting

industry, lessons every company must learn from this period, and many more. Here are the excerpts.

What are the major impacts of COVID 19 on the global economy and supply chain sector? How it will affect businesses in India?

The COVID19 outbreak is a black swan event of a kind never seen before in its trifold impact on demand, supply and markets. Demand has been forcefully constrained to essentials and the lockdowns worldwide have brought supply and markets to a screeching halt. With China as

CXO OUTLOOK May 2020

A crisis is a learning opportunity like no other, and one would be foolish to lose it

the world’s manufacturing hub, the effects of supply chain disruptions manifested in countries even before coronavirus had reached them. Currently, all Indian retailers and most MSMEs involved in non-essentials are not doing any business.

As per a UNCTAD report, coronavirus could impact Indian economy for about US$348 million, among the top 15 worst-affected countries.

The spillover would show in reduced growth until the last quarter of this fiscal year, and if the virus spread continues, the growth would likely be sluggish in the first quarter of 2021 as well.

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How is Acuver Consulting and technology platforms helping customers manage the current supply chain disruptions?

Acuver is currently on an all-hands-on-deck mode for agile innovations and repurposing existing resources, IT Solutions to answer the changing consumer demands.

Adverse effects on consumer sentiment are likely to linger post the lockdown, inducing more cautioned behaviour.

The upside is that digital shopping will take precedence over physical for this period. We are helping our customers ready their IT solutions for omni-forward. The supply chain disruption has alerted our customers to loopholes in certain systems like last minute delivery and opaque vendor trails. Acuver is helping customers prioritize critical focus areas.

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Besides evaluating and adapting strategic priorities, we are helping customers optimize Support & Maintenance IT spends by leveraging technology to reduce fixed costs since currently all retailers are looking to optimize each penny spent.

More about Sunny Nandwani

What are the things retailers doing differently as a response to the COVID 19? How is it affecting the operations of Acuver Consulting?

There are a variety of responses from retailers. Some are looking to move into the essentials category while using their existing digital infrastructure. Store-only operations are moving online, or newly rolling out ship-from-store modules.

Lockdowns in specific areas have made certain businesses investigate selling to different geographies and partnering with vendors and delivery partners in several locations. Given hygiene and safety concerns, certain businesses are deploying curbside delivery to ensure no human contact. Despite working from home, our dedicated customer managers and teams are constantly working with customers to address these needs in the nick of time.

We anticipate a surge in demand for digital commerce and we are upskilling our employees to be ready for it.

Managing Partner of Acuver Consulting. Here

In your opinion, has this ongoing crisis exposed any of the underlying weaknesses of the Indian supply chain system? What are the lessons every company must learn from this period?

One vulnerability that some Indian sectors share with supply chains worldwide is increasing dependence on Chinese imports. The value of diversification and localization couldn’t be any clearer than it is now. Opaque supply chains are frustrating

covering the entire lifecycle of Supply Chain

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and Acuver Consulting

Sunny Nandwani is the Founder and he has been instrumental in conceptualizing and scaling Acuver to a 100 strong company today along with his two cofounders. His strong domain knowledge supported by his business acumen aided him to scale the company from the ground up. He plays the role of the CEO at Acuver and is responsible for its overall operations and growth. Sunny an IIM Bangalore alumnus also holds an engineering degree from Bharati Vidyapeeth. An ardent family man, he spends his free time reading and staying up to date on the industry.

Acuver launched in 2013, is headquartered in New Delhi and has branch offices in Bengaluru and Singapore. Acuver has grown rapidly ever since its inception from an original 3-member founding team to a team strength of 100 plus today within a few years. The company now delivers IT products and related services spanning Order Management, Warehouse Management, Inventory, Implementation to Reporting and Analytics. In addition, Acuver is also actively working towards harnessing and integrating AI, Machine Learning, Blockchain and Robotics in their solutions. Their client list includes prominent brands in retailing such as Gati, Godrej Interio and Croma to name a few.

producers with no answers in sight.

Strategies that focused on minimizing costs by planning for just-in-time deliveries and left no buffer in inventory are falling flat on their face. Also, traditionally, demand forecasting relied heavily on previous sales histories, which don’t tell you anything about what will happen in the event of a natural disaster.

A crisis is a learning opportunity like no other, and one would be foolish to lose it. Companies need to remember that all their systems designed for business-asusual will not stand erect when unforeseen change comes abruptly – the only way it does! We need to always assess risks, whether imminent or distant and design a handful of alternative modes of functioning to tackle them.

In the supply chain industry, what has been the role of technologies like AI, Machine Learning and so on in controlling the damage due to the COVID 19?

AI & ML are doing a great deal in helping manufactures rapidly scale up production of masks and PPEs for the medical community. AI-enabled automated workflows are helping companies ensure employee safety while aiding them to execute new tasks like home-delivery or drop-to-location. Procurement difficulties and logistics complexities are also being eased by data-driven decisions.

How can the supply chain be more prepared to handle a crisis like COVID 19?

Supply chains need to diversify their logistics and supplier network and build in redundancy. Another important aspect is relationships – you have to know your last-mile partner and other staggered

tier partners. In times of crisis, the collaboration will keep you afloat but only if you have active communication channels in place beforehand. Further, supply chains should devise variable cost-models that flexible to adapt to drastic changes.

What is the future supply chain market looks like? Please tell us some of the major developments in this sector that everyone needs to look forward to.

Interestingly, coronavirus seems to only be making pre-existing trends emerge stronger. We will see more of a shift towards localization following protectionist attitudes, especially in critical goods and services. Buying and spending will be more digital. I think brands which can build a TRUST for end consumers to create safe, hygiene shopping experience would be the key. Clean use of AI and Technology would certainly benefit.

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What is your advice to businesses that are impacted by COVID-19 or trying to mitigate supply chain disruptions?

If you haven’t already, first get together and map out your challenges. Put together a task response team and communicate clearly with internal as well as external stakeholders. Put on an agile and adaptable mindset and reassess your priorities.

If you cannot do what you wanted to before all this, find out what is the next best thing possible right now ensuring business continuity. Repurpose your product, design a new service or devote time to those long-overdue tasks that were too disruptive to tackle when things were normal. When the going gets tough, the tough get going!

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IDEAS

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Being a Swiggy Delivery Boy to Building Affordable Co-Working Spaces: Why Yogesh Thore is the Next Big Name to Watch out for?

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ogesh Thore quit his job in Sales and Marketing because he thought, he was not 100 per cent efficient in that job. “I was not giving my everything to make things happen. Over a while, I understood that I cannot spend the rest of my life like this, so I quit my last job without having any plans,” says Yogesh. Being liberated from a tiring day-job, Yogesh started exploring the market for opportunities. He adds, “I was fascinated with hospitality in general since my MBA days. So, I decided to work in a field which I love.”

Yogesh’s next job was as a waiter in a restaurant.

In his words, "just to understand merchants and customers in deep, their problems, delight moments and all.” He then moved to Swiggy as a delivery boy for some time to understand the roles of technology in startups. “Then I started Celebofest, which was a platform to sell discount coupon and tickets for nightclubs and pubs in Pune,” recounts Yogesh.

Without any doubts, like any budding entrepreneur, the start was tough for Yogesh and his lack of any prior experience in hospitality made the journey tougher. “All three jobs I did earlier were in Sales and Marketing, that too in B2B. The market won’t trust you easily unless you, as an entrepreneur, show some results,” shares Yogesh. However, Yogesh strongly believes that sometimes not having prior experience may help you to create something unique which no one would have thought.

From Coupons to Co-Working With Celebofest, Yogesh was selling discount coupons for nightclubs and pubs. He usually met the managers in the afternoon to make the deal and get the coupons. During one such meeting, Yogesh wanted some space to sit and work. He asked the restaurant manager if he could use the space to work until their deal was done as they had WiFi as well. The manager said he can, as no one comes there during the daytime. This one line changed Yogesh’s life for one more time. He says, “I realized that I don’t have an office and restaurants don’t have customers in the afternoons, so why can’t we restructure this completely?”

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The market won’t trust you easily unless you, as an entrepreneur, show some results

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Friyey Space came into existence from this very thought - transforming restaurants and cafes to cater to those looking for an affordable place to work. However, there is more to Friyey Space than a just co-working space provider. Today, Friyey Space is one of the fastest-growing community of Startups and Entrepreneurs that caters to the rising number of remote workers and freelancers. Yogesh explains, “Friyey is zero Capex and scalable model whereas traditional co-working is capital intensive. We have the first-mover advantage where we are working to make co-working spaces free. Over some time, people will join us not because of co-working but for the community.”

With 150+ startups joining Friyey Space by just word of mouth and more than 95% customer retention rate from its inception, the company has seen a promising growth since its inception in 2019. “We target entrepreneurs and freelancers and digital media has made it easy for us to

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reach our target audience and talk to them about us," says Yogesh. Another thing that has contributed to Friyey’s growth is having a mutual understanding among the team, which has ended up in bringing people along in his journey and get things done.

Already setting the steppingstones, Friyey Space plans to prioritize on supporting the businesses in their community during this unprecedented time. People will need affordable workspaces than before, courtesy to the impact of COVID19. Setting an example on how to come out stronger in challenging times, Friyey Spaces plans to expand their operations in all the major metro cities as soon as possible.

A startup’s growth depends on the entrepreneur’s hard work, their commitment to their ideas and the risks they are ready to take for them. Following the mantra, “Be passionate about your goals and have enough guts to go after it”, Yogesh shows everyone that entrepreneurs don’t let any obstacle dissuade them from following their dreams and give their best in turning their ideas into reality, inspiring young entrepreneurs to never lose hope and keep working hard to achieve what they aspire for. “Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey. You need to push yourself all the time (passion does that actually) and you need to keep working without any funds in wallet most of the time,” concludes Yogesh.

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