I like to think of myself as a lifelong student of human behaviour, who brings a deep consumer understanding and research expertise to businesses and helps them in enhancing their consumer connect, making better business decisions and achieving fail safe growth.

1. Tell us about your background, journey & Story

I am from an educated, middle class Indian family, which takes pride in its Indian roots but has a very modern, cosmopolitan outlook and global exposure. Being Jains, we strictly adhere to, jain and Gandhian principles and values. My parents and grandparents instilled in me, an appreciation for hard work, honesty and integrity in everything that one does.

Starting abroad and then in New Delhi, most of my schooling was in a rather strict missionary school in Mumbai. Pursuing an education in the science stream for graduate studies I chose Physics and Electronics and graduated from the Institute of Science, of University of Bombay, then shifted to a PG course in Business Management from Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.

My father was a statistician and researcher and that probably predisposed me towards research and analytics. In 1992, I started my career with IMRB (now Kantar) in consumer research and the rest of my career too has been based on research and insights function.

I have worked mostly in India, splitting time between Delhi and Mumbai, with a few years in the Middle East. I was very fortunate to get opportunities to set up and manage India operations for a US based research company very early in my career. My third job was to start, manage and grow the subsidiary of a European Research company in Middle East and Levant. I was willi nilly a start-up specialist long before that word became fashionable. This gave me exposure to start and manage a company, something which helped me to turn entrepreneur and start my own companies.

A realisation that being a small-time entrepreneur in the knowledge services industry in the early 2000s was limiting my options, I returned to a corporate job and later switched to the Client side with jobs in Godfrey Phillips and Reliance Retail, where I am at present.

I like to think of myself as a lifelong student of human behaviour, who brings a deep consumer understanding and research expertise to businesses and helps them in enhancing their consumer connect, making better business decisions and achieving fail safe growth.

I love teaching, as it is a good way of returning something to my profession. Over the past 25 odd years I have been a visiting / guest faculty teaching marketing, consumer behaviour, market research, advertising and branding in many reputed management schools. I have also been a trainer /speaker at innumerable Industry programmes and fora.

Going ahead I want to increase my association with social causes and give my humble contribution to society possibly in areas of education for underprivileged children as well as towards environment protection.



2. What are some of the biggest challenges and failures you have faced in your career?

I started my career almost 30 years ago. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, traditional degrees and an education in science were still prized, and stable jobs in the government or PSUs or academia were much sought after. Almost everyone in my family at the time was in some senior position, either in government, or in academics. Being the eldest in my generation I had to resist that pressure when I chose a career in the private sector.

I got an opportunity to start a corporate research agency and consulting operations very early in life. Working as a start-up intrapreneur was a big challenge and forced me to quickly learn so much in every aspect of business operations such as business development, key client management, vendor management, accounting, business law, human resource and talent management et al.

A unique aspect in the knowledge industry was that we sold the very product that we conceptualised and made ourselves. On one hand we had to be good researchers and insights professionals to ideate and create a research and insights “product” that was innovative, far better than the competition and which gave the client something unique and demonstrably useful in their business and on the other hand we had to be very good at marketing and sales to succeed in a tough business. This turned out to be the best possible all round training which came in handy when I became an entrepreneur.

As an entrepreneur and a business owner I learned that life was very different from that one had as a professional or employee. One was responsible for everything and on call and ready to pitch in 24x7 by 365.

One of my biggest challenges and an obvious setback came when I had to take a hard nosed and practical financial business decision of hiving off my own business and returning to a corporate job. I had realised that running a business in India at the time needed a whole lot more than just good business strategy, energy and hard work, it required that you played along with the opaque system where transparency and honesty were not the most prized values.

As the world changes and technology changes faster the biggest challenge on hand is to acquire new skills, quickly adapt to a new business environment to remain relevant. We must have the foresight to identify trends early and put into operation new ideas which will be relevant in the future.


3. What are some of the factors that made you successful?

There are many things which have helped me to be able to stay the course and achieve a small measure of success:

My supportive family which instilled in me values which keep me grounded and help me to practice and appreciate honesty, hard work and loyalty.

An education where my teachers helped me to develop an open, logical and questioning mind, a scientific temper and a thirst for knowledge.

The trust and faith of my early bosses who placed immense trust in me when they gave me leadership responsibilities beyond my age and mentored me to succeed in my roles.

An innate entrepreneurial spirit and ability to take risks.

Attention to details, ability to design systems and the determination and perseverance to complete a job.

Adaptability and ability to think on the go and take quick decisions based on accurate facts.


4. Marketing has changed a lot over the decade. What do you think will be the future of marketing ?

I believe that marketing is an evolving profession. As the world changes, technology changes and the consumer and her habits change, the way she and her family consumes products and services are continuously changing, so also all aspects of marketing will change in consonance and marketing theory will continue to evolve. The basic fundamentals of marketing still apply but the practice and methodology of marketing has changed.

The biggest harbinger of change after industrialisation was the advent of the mobile telephony and the digital age. Smart phones and availability of cheap data viz. internet connections have changed the way people behave, connect and communicate, gather information, buy things and therefore marketing too had to adapt and evolve to reach consumers in a new digital avatar across multiple touch-points.

E-commerce, digital marketing platforms and remote shopping have brought in new challenges for marketeers. How to understand and communicate with customers with whom they do not have a face to face interaction, how to satisfy customers who may come to your website with the click of a button and may move away within seconds ? How to build an enduring relationship with customers who flirt with multiple competitors and get real time price and performance information ?

Marketing today must move from targeting broad consumer segments to focussed individual targeting at a mass level. This is only possible when marketeers learn to collect huge amounts of information on their target customers and use big data analytics with automated knowledge and insights solutions based on artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

A lot of marketing activity specially “digital marketing” activity uses automated software and remote systems, this definitely helps in improving the reliability and accuracy of transactions but in many ways limits choices based on algorithms which as yet are not able to take care of the emotional connect with consumers.

Going ahead newer technology will address these issues too. It is a really challenging and phenomenally interesting time to be a marketeer.


5. Voice has been heralded as the biggest growth lever of the decade for E-commerce. What are your thoughts about it?

Voice based applications along with Natural language programming for E-commerce are a definitely transformative advancement which will democratise the appeal of E-commerce even amongst those who are not literate or unable to operate in a particular language or written - visual medium. However voice technologies are just one of the new tools which will revolutionise the way we do remote shopping.

There are many new evolving and revolutionary technologies such as virtual or augmented reality, 3D video scaping, technologies which provide customers with enhanced tactile and olfactory sensory perceptions, emotional sensing AI to name a few, all of which will develop at accelerated pace to take e-commerce to a completely different dimension in the very near future.


6. What is the most important skill set required for someone who wants to rise in their career?

Besides many of the factors I touched upon in the answer (see qn. 3 above) to what made me somewhat successful, I would add flexibility and adaptability.

One must be able to communicate well and be able to present ideas and convince people, therefore acquiring good language and good presentation skills is mandatory.

In the digital/ internet age we generate more and more random data, therefore the ability to analyse this data and be able to distill viable knowledge and derive actionable insights from humongous amounts of data will be prized skills. So analytical skills, data management and knowledge mining skills are worth investing in.

Today in almost every discipline and every domain the use and mastery of technology, software applications and ITES tools is essential to succeed. Hence young people must acquire the skill of using domain and discipline specific software tools. However these applications and tools have very short lifetimes and are continuously replaced by new and nore advanced versions or completely new tools. Hence one needs to upgrade their ability to use these new tools effectively through training and education.

If a young person wishes to succeed in the ever changing work environment today, they have to continuously upgrade their skills and acquire new ones.


7. What does your typical day look like ?

(With a smile) Like the day of almost every other management professional with specialised domain expertise who is called upon to help solve problems across many operating areas and functions.

Planned and unplanned meetings and group and one-on-one interactions usually take up a lot of work time, post pandemic these are now remote meetings and virtual interactions.

To make these meetings useful and productive and to provide thought leadership for business decisions one has to imbibe and process a lot of internal company and external market and consumer information and data, analyse situations, ideate, devise systems and develop strategy. Reading from multiple sources to keep abreast of national and international developments in the fields of policy, finance, industry besides our specific domain is also essential for someone in my domain.

Along with team members and colleagues one also has to prepare presentations and reports to effectively disseminate information and to convince cross functional and senior management teams of the ideas and actions that one is evaluating, supporting and espousing.

Training, guiding and mentoring team members and new talent also takes some time to ensure that the teams remain motivated, competitive and productive.

A typical work day has changed quite a bit in the post pandemic period and has also become a bit more hectic and a bit more unplanned and just a tad bit longer.

However I do ensure that I balance work and personal goals and take some time out for family and friends and over the week. One must give time to nurture and maintain relations.

What I am not able to do is devote adequate time for exercise, recreational and sporting activities. That is something I am going to work upon.

8. What is your favourite book & why?

Well, I've been a voracious reader from childhood. But I really wouldn't say I have any one particular favourite book.

I usually read a lot on policy, economics, social movements, politics, philosophy and religion. I don’t really like to read much of fiction, drama or poetry.

At different stages in life, I have read different authors and different books which have helped me grow as a person, exposing me to new ideas, different philosophies and have had significant impact on the way I think today.

Over the past decade, I have been reading a lot about the history of India, specially 19th century pre-independence and post-independence history as a way to understand the evolution of our country, society and communities to try and understand why India and Indians behave in the way they do.

Right now I'm reading “The Fractured Himalaya, India * Tibet * China 1949-1962” by former Foreign Affairs Secretary of India and diplomat Nirupama Rao. It’s a good scholastic account and analysis of the events post-independence which have led India China relations to what they are today.