Mr. D Shivakumar, Chairman and CEO – India Region, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd.

AIMA conducts its annual flagship event – National Management Convention with an aim to address the prevalent challenges of corporate ecosphere in India, their repercussion on the business scenario and deciding the tactics to handle it efficiently in coming years. A topic of national importance is taken as a theme in the convention and is addressed by The Convention addresses a topical theme of national importance and is addressed by prominent speakers from all spheres of life. Its grandeur can be understood by the fact only that last year almost 800 delegates from Industry, government, media and academia attended NMC and it is rising exponentially. There were number of prominent speakers this at 41st NMC. Topic of concern this year was “Changing Times: Reinventing the India Story”, and speakers from different fields of the industry put their thoughts through interactive sessions.

One such profound insight was laid upon by Mr. D Shivakumar, Chairman and CEO – India Region, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd. and former president of AIMA. In his session at NMC, he talked about reforms which should be undertaken when it comes to reinvent India for better. He said we have made progress and there is scope to achieve lot more in the coming years. He started his presentation with some facts. The people living under poverty line have come down to one-third, from its peak 70-80% to 33% in these years. Looking at the infrastructural growth now, ten folds growth has been seen in roads. Number of airports has reached to 125 and we now have 13 major sea ports in last 60 years. So it is clear from the numbers that we definitely have made progress in the infrastructure. Then he spoke about importance of women growth. Though literacy rate of women has risen from 9% to 74%, still involvement of woman in workforce needs to be worked on.

On the front of technological facts, aspired products of people have moved from owning bicycles to personal technology products like smart phones, tablets and much more. It is a mark of definite progress he said. Then he talked about these key reforms which should be undertaken for changing the face of progress in India. Firstly, there should be no small versus big ideology, ecosystem should be small and big working together. He further added that India is a scale country and we need to move forward from era of ‘jugaad’ to a thinking about brand, innovation and design to move up in the chain because then only it can contribute in reinventing India and products it has to offer. He also said that attitude should be changed. Mindset should be to put something back there as opposed to perennially complaining and moaning. What can I do to make a change that can make move forward? – This should be the point of ponder upon. Next point is about the lands. 90% of land is disputed and it should be reformed if we want anything to be done. Another thing is to invest in Teachers, if you want yield of high quality students. Focus should be on providing skills, not degrees along with emphasis on women. Last point on his presentation was of developing smart cities which involves lots of technology which will sure path to be taken for reinventing and changing times. He concluded by saying that if these little things are kept in mind, there is nothing which can stop in bringing a reinvented and desirable future.

The above article is an excerpt from the speech delivered by Mr. D Shivakumar, Chairman and CEO – India Region, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd. at AIMA’s National Management Convention which was held in September 2014.

Watch the video here:

Sangeeta Talwar, Former Managing Director NDDB

I believe, innovation is countering inertia of change, which we all find very difficult to undertake. Its certainly about confronting gravity, and severing the tethers of what ties us to tradition. It’s scaling the walls of doubt and turning them into windows of opportunity. You must have heard this morning. It’s about doing new & different things.  But it’s also about doing new and different things, differently! And, I think, doing a lot of new and different things, differently, there is a certain synergy that comes together and has thistransformative effect that innovation brings to organisations. As this book, ‘Orbitfuring Innovations’ has mentioned, it usually starts with the out of the box challenge. I think, Tanmay also mentioned it. ‘Tell me what the problem is’, and let’s look for that out of box idea, which is very clear definition of out of box challenge.

Innovation needs a lot of courage. You need to stand up to the change and you need to stand by the change. And I think that is a very critical aspect of innovation. If you don’t have the courage the stamina to stand by what is being created, it will fall by the way side. You must have seen a lot of passion and zeal, all of this morning and afternoon. That’s the call for innovation! The way it works is infectious and transcends the boundaries around you. Transcends the boundaries of reasons and metamorphosis all of them. It’s a drive of unfathomable Continue reading →

Mr. Kurush Grant, Executive Director, ITC Ltd

Ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning! A few years back when the last financial meltdown took place, the Advertising Agencies Association of India had a seminar in Mumbai, and I would like to repeat the name of that seminar because I think it fits in with what we are going through at this point of time. It is – ‘Why Waste a Good Recession’ and a lot of us laughed at it and thought they were being too clever but what we found is that those companies who leveraged to good recession actually did well and those companies who panicked and who did the traditional stuff, which Mr. Bajaj also talked about, didn’t perhaps do so well.

One of the issues raised in the brief up of this particular recession was, ‘is it worth while changing vision, is it worthwhile changing strategy during times of uncertainties and difficulties? And if you were to look at various examples of companies around the world, what we find is that those companies who stick to a vision and whose strategies are robust and whose strategies actually work across time, never actually change their strategies. What does certainly happen is that they change tactics, they change logistics, they change supply chain possibilities but in the long run, strategies are very very rarely changed. But the issue is what short term is & what is long term?

Successful companies throughout the world have actually, apart from the traditional aspect of having a three layered goal and three layers of new product innovation- the short term, the medium and the long term, what successful companies actually do is that they have three layers of planning and three levels of actual strategic formulation for the short, medium and long term. Continue reading →

Mr D Shiva Kumar, CEO PepsiCo & Past president AIMA

Thank you Ladies and gentlemen. We have already had 10 wonderful sessions and we have heard a lot on the theme of courage and uncertainty. I think, we can say if we conclude that uncertainty is here to stay amongst us and not go away.

How do firms deal with uncertainty? Some firms behave like an ostrich and soon they cease to exist. They are in denial mode and they start to externalise a lot. They start blaming others for their problems. Some firms get all rational and get into analysis paralysis mode. They think they are making great progress because of the number of slides and data points they have. This is what I call ‘death by PowerPoint’. Some firms get into an activity mode and unleash the activity trap, forgetting that the first thing you need when you go through an uncertain stage is focus. Some firms freeze, hence they lose. Some firms liberate to what I call emotional engagement. Courage is one part, logic many parts magic. And magic happens when we show emotions, when we tap into the emotional energies of people.

I want to show you a clip from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and then I will talk about what happened after that to end with what courage all means.

From the video, Derek Redmond showed enormous courage in dealing with failure, 150 meters into the race and 250 meters to go.

His decision to complete the race shows determination. His hopping for 250 meters shows endurance through pain. His father’s act shows empathy, compassion and the need for emotional anchors in uncertainty. His tears show vulnerability. That’s what courage is all about. And courage shown through these emotions has an astounding impact on 65000 people in that stadium. He didn’t win the race but he won admiration for life and that’s what courage is all about.

Two years after this Derek’s doctor told him that he couldn’t run again because he had had multiple challenges with his feet. So Derek without losing dedication decided to choose another game. He picked up basketball when Toronto represented United Kingdom in basketball. So, Derek represented the country twice, once in athletics and second in basketball. This Barcelona video brought him lot of fame. This was used by the Olympic committee on a theme called ‘humanity’. It was used by the Visa brand to promote the Olympic movement. It was used by Nike for ‘Acts of courage’. And this is what the Olympic committee or the movement said of this film when they ran it. They said force is measured in kilograms. Speed is measured in seconds. But courage, you can’t measure it!

On that note I would end my session. Thank you ladies and gentlemen.

The above article is an excerpt from the speech delivered by Mr D Shiva Kumar, CEO PepsiCo & Past president AIMA  at AIMA’s National Management Convention which was held in September 2013