Transparency is one of the key values at work that has really helped me to succeed and complete my assigned tasks and a motivated team. I always advise budding leaders to work on people management skills like communication, empowerment, walk the talk, lead from the front and be empathetic.
Tell us about your background, journey and upbringing.
I was born and brought up in Delhi, belonging to a large Punjabi family. My father was a senior Central Government employee and my mother retired from the State government, thus my entire childhood and upbringing more revolved around like any other middle-class family with discipline, focus on education, physical exercises and I was involved in lots of sports activities in my childhood like playing District level football, table-tennis, represented in Junior Nehru Cup Hockey tournament etc.
I am a Postgraduate in International Business from IIFT Delhi and completed my graduation in Commerce stream from Delhi University. I have been a very friendly, extrovert person since my childhood, hence networking and building personal circles came naturally to my traits. In my teen days, like during my School break in higher education, I used to work on part-time assignments like Selling Books door to door in summer vacation, participating in various market research projects for research Agencies etc. Hence, I decided to pursue my career in Sales & business development.
Fortunately, I got through to start my career with ICICI Bank in the year 2000, that was the decade when privatisation in banking was at an early stage and evolution of new-age banking started in the country like ATMs, Core banking Solutions were being adopted etc.
How did you rise to the highest echelons in your career?
I have excelled in Sales management, peoples management through my career of 20 years, started managing a small work team at a very young age during my Banking Sales days. The most important reason for my success to achieve greater heights in my career is about having Self-awareness, which means I have always known my strengths and weaknesses and worked truly towards them at different stages of my career.
My other trait which helped me to gain career momentum is decisiveness. In spite of many low and wrong decisions in my career, I ensured to take decisions quickly in life, at the professional front and strongly believe in the "Speed to market" theory. This made me transition my career fast from traditional financial services background and entered FINTECH industry and started working with start-ups which transformed my career, wherein at that stage lots of my colleagues and friends were reluctant and not ready to join small new-age companies because of the reasons like unrecognised brands, uncertain future, not ready to learn technology and working in unorganised culture. Learning and imparting my learnings is the continuous key to success till today.
What does your typical workday look like?
The COVID-19 situation has resulted in a massive impact on our lifestyle and human health, causing changes in our lifestyle and thought process over the last year through social distancing and isolation at home.
I have been working from home since the first lockdown began in 2020, and am very thankful to my current employer for providing this support in these tough times. My routine these days focuses on three areas i.e Health, Managing the office remotely & keeping in touch with family and friends.
I start my day at 7 am with some cardio exercises at home. I even started going to the gym before the second lockdown. My work routine starts at 9.30 am with prioritising the day on tasks planned. Since I am managing a Business development role, my work routine involves Team meetings, Client interactions, Planning, Cross-functional discussions and reviews.
I have divided my daily work calendar with two to three small breaks of 15-20 minutes to re-energise back to work. I utilise the break time talking to my son, family and listening to music. In the evening, I keep half an hour daily to talk to my near and dear ones like friends, relatives. I also talk to some professional circle clients to keep the informal relationship going. This helps me in strengthening my networking skills.
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It seems onboarding, even in 2021, is a long drawn out process behind the scenes. How do you envision this changing in the future?
Covid pandemic has altered the work world, it has forced changes in the Onboarding process of new hires, interviews happening virtually over video calls, telephonic discussions, individuals have the challenge to express themselves the way it happens in physical meetings.
HR teams are playing a very vital role in this rapidly changing work environment, where new joiners are being on-boarded virtually due to forced lockdowns at workplaces. The most practical challenge has been that most of the employees are thrown into remote work, but they didn’t know how to use virtual collaboration tools, live example at my home, my wife who is into teaching at High school with more than 15 years of teaching experience, initially faced challenges to operate online tools, take classes on Microsoft Team, using Google Classroom etc.
Here employers are ensuring the employees are upgraded to the same in the respective Onboarding process, like mastering the Slack, use of Zoom for demo sharing etc. In this work scenario, it becomes imperative for managers to demonstrate the ability to proactively communicate, be empathetic, and understanding accountability has become critical.
Several global companies have come out and thrown their support behind not needing a formal education. What is your opinion about this?
Education is a process in itself, formal or informal which helps in facilitating learning and acquiring knowledge, skills, values, morals and habits. Formal education helps an individual to acquire the basics, and informal education is through hands-on experiences. Both play different roles in our life, as per my opinion somewhere formal education needs to prepare the students for the real world and teach them real-life skills.
On the good side, acquiring knowledge and skills has become easier these days as compared to the earlier times, this is because of easy accessibility to the internet and digitisation in education. Even many Ed-tech start-ups are fuelling this change in the corporate ecosystem by providing short-term and relevant online courses for Skilling and up-skilling. Globally companies and recognising this need for its employees and with lesser weightage to formal college degrees, till I feel a way to go on this topic.
What is the best piece of advice you would like to give to those who want to rise in their careers in the corporate world?
As I said, my philosophy of career success is to be true to yourself. I mean here about self-awareness, knowing and working on improving your strengths and working on your weaknesses from time to time since it keeps changing with time. I am not only talking about personal traits but also processes you apply in your professional life.
I strongly believe in keeping fairness at work, treating others with equality, keeping my Enthusiasm up and going no matter what the situation is, I keep focus on positives and not negatives. Keeping Integrity is the most important of all, stay grounded, be humble.
Transparency is one of the key values at work that has really helped me to succeed and complete my assigned tasks and a motivated team. I always advise budding leaders to work on people management skills like communication, empowerment, walk the talk, lead from the front and be empathetic.
In this tough time of Covid, when this is volatility and dynamic changes being witnessed in the world, I believe it’s vital to be ready for change. I feel I look at change as an opportunity to gain learning rather than resisting it due to fear of failure. Not the least, challenging the status quo.
How are things changing in your domain, what role will data and information play in the future?
In the new digital era, Data is the new currency, specifically which is actionable in nature when it comes to the Financial services domain.
In the Fintech domain, Data analytics and tools to improve decisions, other few examples are real-time cash balancing and forecasting, managing payment splits across multiple entities, data is helping in tailored or personalised services to meet specific clients, managing accounts books and helping in automated tracking and reconciliation of receivables, greater automation of payables etc.
The key future drivers of the Fintech industry revolve completely around data and information, like AI and Machine learning, Fraud detections, Risk mitigation, banking chatbots, predictive analytics, regulations and policies.
The other key area where data is playing an important role is in Consumer trends in financial services, eg. Consumers preferences and behaviours impacted by Covid 19, helping Fintechs in driving digital acquisition of users.
Fintech platforms into Neo-banking and Investments are now increasingly focusing on personalised services using the cloud to track personal data of its customers that earlier existed in information silos. The data-driven models adopted by Fintech’s are calibrated as per user’s profiles for risk assessment.
Which is your favourite book and why?
Actually, I am not an avid reader, still out of very few books I have read till date, the one I liked the most is “ Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach “. The story is about a Seagull, who is no ordinary bird, it is adventurous and has a thirst for knowledge. It’s a touching story and teaches how one can change the way life is looked upon, knowing that there is more than one activity, more in life.
This book gives us a message of learning from failures and re-building and brings leadership lessons like Courage, resilience, we can lift ourselves out of ignorance, more so ever very important to me like breaking norms, taking risks and exhibiting high self-esteem.
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