Having mentors is an important aspect of this journey. Colleagues who are experienced, have cross-functional exposures, have worked across geographies can guide you and help navigate through important changes and questions that you may seek answers for
Tell us about your background, journey and upbringing.
As they say, you don’t choose your parents or the country you are born into and I'm glad you don’t !!
Born and brought up in Delhi, to doctor parents, dad being a chest specialist and mom a gynaecologist, I am a “Delhi boy’ as they say. I did my complete schooling from Mount St Mary’s in Delhi and learnt how important a value system is and how you actually develop from a kid to a boy.
Mount St Mary’s [MSM] as it is fondly called, is a divine place that instils in you early on the art of balancing and understanding, to take up larger challenges in life. Having lived for the most part of my growing years in South Delhi and seeing my parents work seamlessly to run the house and their working life, was super inspiring for me. I usually had 1 parent with me through the day. Mom used to come back from her night duties and then dad used to go for his daily duties and vice versa too.
I took early on the importance of time management and most importantly managing oneself and always being appreciative of the fact how much our parents do for us without us asking or knowing.
Post schooling, I went on to do my B. Tech from the prestigious Shaheed Bhagat Singh State University and those 4 years of doing my CSE were some of the best learning years I had. I made an incredible gang of friends who became family in no time and learnt a lot about the world of computers and coding and most importantly hostel life that I feel everyone should experience early on.
For my MBA I went to the “Queen of Deccan” city of Pune and joined Symbiosis Institute of International Business (SIIB). These 2 years were what I always call ‘refinement years’ as they change you for the good to be a professional and ready you to take on corporate challenges and work your way through the ladder.
Outside of my education, one thing that I observed my parents always do was giving back to society and the needy without any biases. I joined NGOs that worked with causes related to HIV/AIDS and children who are underprivileged right from my school times.
Spending time with them, teaching them basics of science and maths and English/Hindi, many a time painting or learning how to stitch, are beyond words a few things one can learn. Being grounded and the ability to stay humble and the openness to learn from anyone, anywhere are life lessons I always cherish.
Another thing that I picked up from my dad was writing. I blog, on a variety of genres and that helps me in unwinding and sharing my thoughts. I am also a passionate foodie and a lifestyle connoisseur and having worked a lot on affluent brands/products, I can understand what goes into elevating experiences.
Playing lawn tennis is somewhat mandatory as having learnt it for a decade back in school is a major stress buster and a mind sharpening game.
How did you rise to the highest echelons in your career?
I am a firm believer that all of us are ‘always on’ projects. There is so much to do and undo that you constantly have to rise up. Aspirations are different for different people and so are the states of echelons.
During my early MBA days, I knew marketing was something I really liked and understanding consumers and their ever-changing habits and lifestyle interested me. During my summer internship with Max Life Insurance core marketing team, I did a comprehensive project to design marketing strategies for the emerging markets of Max Life by strategically analyzing their business model and flow and made a comprehensive marketing plan.
During this time I got to travel upcountry markets in North India and the interaction with the sales personnel, branch managers, regional managers and the end consumers helped me not only delivering a good project but also helped me understand the ground realities.
Citibank India was a campus placement and a day 0 company at SIIB and hence it’s very special working with this 200+-year-old global brand. My first role was with the branch banking business of Citibank North India cluster where I learnt not only about banking, investments but also how challenging it is to sell/pitch an INR 30 lakhs savings account to a customer.
The primary challenge being that everyone is already banking with some bank or the other. The key is to differentiate on two aspects – a strong value proposition (brand and product) and personal relationship handling and management skill (customer service and management) which can change the arena.
I won the coveted top performer award in my very first year and did well in this role. In my second role, I joined the coveted marketing team of Citibank India and was privileged to handle the most engaging and hence complex of all the banking products – cards and credit cards in particular.
Post Citi, I have worked with American Express, Samsung in various roles in increasing order of responsibilities and it’s been a never-ending learning journey. I am a believer in the Amazon style of always working backwards and inventing on behalf of the customers. If we know our customers well, both pain points and asks and what ‘wows’ them, we can create magic using both data and tech.
Having mentors is an important aspect of this journey. Colleagues who are experienced, have cross-functional exposures, have worked across geographies can guide you and help navigate through important changes and questions that you may seek answers for. I try my best to mentor my teams or colleagues who reach out to me. Helping someone with your learning is priceless and one should always do it.
What does your typical workday look like?
A typical day practically means you are on the move constantly. I am an early riser and I am in the office usually by 8am. This gives me a good 2 hours to sort my emails, plan my day and basically wrap up critical path projects.
In leadership roles, it’s key to continuously empower and mentor your teams and also delegate work in a way so it expands learning and makes people move out of comfort zones. This is time-consuming, however, this is what mentoring is all about.
We also get a lot of opportunities to speak or interact with VCs who are some of the leading names in Fintech, Payments Business, Digital Analytics and Marketing and keep updated on the latest happening around us.
And we do usual coffee catch-ups, checking on what the competitors are doing and above all, a lot of reading and data analysis to help give insights about our consumers - both in spending volumes and the places/categories they are spending on and measure impacts and not to forget how to create seamless experiences- both onboarding a customer and check-outs.
It seems onboarding, even in 2021 is a long drawn out process behind the scenes. How do you envision this changing in the future?
Every risk (pandemic in this case) allows you to re-think, re-imagine and (re) innovate.
Establishing a robust onboarding process is key to building a cohesive, productive, and engaged workforce. Yet according to Gallup, only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees. This is bad news for employers and employees alike.
According to SHRM, employee turnover can be as much as 50% in the first 18 months of employment. Onboarding can play a significant role in retaining and engaging employees for the long run by setting employees up for success from day one.
I have seen some firms leapfrog this process and some still battling the tides. In the future forward, I personally would love to see the below 2 pointers going live:
On-boarding mobile applications that give flexibility to new hires to complete their onboarding from anywhere, anytime in a seamless manner. Higher chances of employee retention due to a delightful first impression during onboarding are known to all and hence the aim should be to nail it.
Creating a strong feedback culture is especially important during uncertain times when you can’t always predict how employees will react or what they may need from week to week.
In the end, companies need to work to empower new hires and hiring managers with a truly digital end-user experience.
Studies today show that an organization can lose INR 10 lakh (~ $17,000) on average on a wrong hire or for hiring someone with a false degree. The only tried and tested way to prevent frauds is via a thorough background verification process. Download SpringVerify's e-book for a comprehensive guide to Employee Background Verification in India.
Several global companies have come out and thrown their support behind not needing a formal education. What is your opinion about this?
As they say, computers and the internet level the playing field between those who attend university and those who don’t. My two cents on this is that education gives you the time to dabble what you like, plan to love later and take up and most importantly, try to structure yourself and your thoughts into what all can be explored.
It’s also a great way to meet people, mentors and friends from whom you can learn and unlearn a whole lot of ideas and thoughts in a structured ecosystem. Also, if you don’t like it then step out and swim your way through.
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?
Actually, a couple of them are from my own experiences.
- Always keep learning. A day you don’t learn something new, you waste it.
- 100% effort in whatever you are doing- if you are not giving your full don’t expect anyone else to chip in more than needed. Remember, great things come when you put in more than 100%.
- Don’t work in silos – This is a corporate world and it has no place for people who are lone warriors. Take your stakeholders along with you as you drive ahead.
- Network – This is a key takeaway. If you don’t know people, people also don’t know you. Meet, call, interact and expand your network. Ideas, inputs and solutions can come from corners that you never imagined.
- Balance – It’s no use skipping an important family wedding function or taking a break from work. If you are the only one who is always working, then there is something wrong, terribly wrong.
- Worship timelines- Without an end date, things will never start to kick up. Be on the rigour and ensure you track everything in detail to avoid any last-minute surprises.
- Meet consumers – No matter what your role is, the best insights and tips will come from the people who use or recommend or hate them. Meet them, visit them and plough back the learnings.
- Move on – Things will not always happen the way you want or expect. There will be some hard battles and some bad blood. Pick up your battles correctly and this also means moving onto greater roles/opportunities to ensure you don’t become too comfortable with your current ones.
- Take risks- Like a job in a different industry? Join anyway and learn on the move. Best learnings will happen when you take risks and move out of your comfort zone.
How are things changing in your domain, what role will data and information play in the future?
Big data processing allows companies to complete complex tasks like risk assessment, providing financial access to groups of previously inaccessible people. Nascent big data technologies such as machine learning have already been applied in fintech.
Emerging markets are the primary beneficiaries, as they seldom have an established credit registry.
These technologies are also able to process mobile phone usage and payments data more effectively, to help lenders in emerging markets understand credit risks.
Similarly, the ability to produce new credit risk models for nano and micro-finance benefits the underbanked by providing a broader range of options and access to the financial highway.
Working with Big Data, banks can now use a customer’s transactional information to continually track his/her behaviour in real-time, providing the exact type of resources needed at any given moment. This real-time evaluation boosts the overall performance and profitability of the banking industry thrusting it further into a growth cycle.
Which is your favourite book and why?
Books are friends who never leave your side. This saying is very true as books have always been there for me.
My favourite book is usually the one I happen to be reading. Usually, I don’ buy books, I get them as gifts.
At the moment, I'm reading The Amazon Management System by Ram Charan and Julia Yang. The book shares amazing insights on the ultimate digital engine that powered Amazon’s unprecedented growth and shareholder value creation, being customer-obsessed, continuous bar-raising talent pool, AI-powered data with high-quality decision-making and a forever day 1 culture.
Interviewed by - Bhavana N
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