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Tag: Harvard Business School

  • Ashish Deora lays the bricks for a Proptech powerhouse at Aurum

    Ashish Deora lays the bricks for a Proptech powerhouse at Aurum

    MUMBAI: Aurum Ventures’ founder and serial disruptor Ashish Deora is stepping into an expanded strategic role at Aurum Proptech, bringing his formidable track record in building tech-first businesses to supercharge the company’s ambition of becoming India’s largest PropTech player.

    The move comes as India’s Proptech opportunity surges towards the USD 100 billion mark and Aurum is readying its blueprint for the boom. Deora’s focus will be on guiding the firm’s Rental, Distribution and Capital verticals, helping lay the foundation for a future where technology becomes the backbone of real estate.

    An alumnus of Harvard Business School, Deora founded Aurum Ventures at just 21, and over the past 30 years, has built a portfolio spanning telecom, aviation, renewables, and real estate. He’s best known for co-founding Renew Power, creating one of India’s first optic fibre networks, and revitalising a branded low-cost airline. But real estate is where he’s currently making his deepest mark.

    Over the last 15 years, Deora has developed Aurum Realestate, a full-stack platform offering everything from IT-SEZs and luxury housing to retail and integrated townships in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Complementing that is Aurum PropTech, launched in 2021, which now operates in 15 cities with 650 plus professionals and a tech portfolio including Nestaway, Sell.do and Aurum Analytica.

    Commenting on the appointment, Aurum Proptech director on board Vasant Gujarathi said, “We are thrilled to welcome Ashish to the Board. His visionary leadership has been the cornerstone of Aurum’s success, and his strategic insights will be pivotal as we scale new heights. With his continued guidance to the management team, we are confident in accelerating our mission to lead India’s rapidly evolving PropTech sector and establish Aurum PropTech as the nation’s largest and most impactful Proptech company.”

    Commenting on the appointment Ashish Deora said, “India PropTech sector represents a USD 100 billion opportunity across consumer tech, enterprise tech and fintech offerings. Since our inception in April 2021, we have strategically combined organic and inorganic growth to develop a clear vision and execution model, underpinned by operational excellence and strategic building blocks to cater to real estate consumers and enterprises. A 650 plus strong passionate team, who live and breathe PropTech is energized to demonstrate scale and depth with strong business fundamentals. As Aurum PropTech continues its journey toward achieving INR 1,000 crore in revenue, fuelled by our Rental, Distribution, and Capital offerings, I am excited to witness the technology-driven transformation of Real Estate, making it truly Future Ready.

    Backed by a mix of organic growth and savvy acquisitions, Aurum PropTech’s 10-product ecosystem is positioned at the crossroads of consumer tech, enterprise tech and fintech, with a mission to disrupt traditional real estate at every touchpoint from rentals and distribution to capital solutions.

    And Deora isn’t just shaping the future of business. Alongside his wife, he’s steering Aurum’s philanthropic initiatives, and serves on the board of Shriram Properties, extending his influence across India’s residential and affordable housing landscape.

    As India’s property market gets a digital makeover, Ashish Deora’s comeback to active strategy might just be the keystone that cements Aurum’s place in the Proptech hall of fame.
     

  • Sunil Gupta lectures AI’s transformative role at IAA Conversations

    Sunil Gupta lectures AI’s transformative role at IAA Conversations

    MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence isn’t just a buzzword anymore—it’s shaping the way industries think, act, and innovate. At the recent IAA Conversations in Mumbai, Harvard Business School Edward W. Carter professor of business administration, Sunil Gupta delved into AI’s transformative power in marketing, branding, and beyond. The event, titled ‘Marketing in the Age of AI’, was moderated by VML India CEO and an IAA Mancom member, Babita Baruah and organised in association with Harvard Business School.

    The session kicked off with Gupta highlighting the disruptive nature of AI and how businesses across sectors are adapting to leverage it. “Almost every business, not just advertising, is thinking about AI and how it will affect their operations,” he noted.

    He outlined three ways AI is transforming industries:

    1    Augmenting and automating tasks to increase efficiency.

    2    Expanding and growing capabilities with innovative tools.

    3    Disrupting and experimenting, encouraging businesses to push creative boundaries.

    Gupta cited tech giants like Facebook and Google, explaining their use of AI to automate ad creation, audience targeting, and budget allocation.

    Gupta emphasised the unprecedented access to consumer data in today’s digital age. “It’s not just about what they buy or search for. It’s also about what they do on social media or why they contact a call centre,” he observed.

    AI, he argued, offers the ability to synthesise qualitative and quantitative data to create a 360-degree view of consumers. It enables brands to map customer journeys, uncover pain points, and even predict behaviours. “AI can act as a smart research assistant, helping brands connect the dots across vast datasets,” he added.

    Gupta also introduced the concept of synthetic consumers, personas created using past data to simulate market research scenarios. This approach offers quick insights at early product development stages.

    Gupta didn’t shy away from discussing the hurdles of AI adoption. “The use of AI will increase competition as it lowers entry barriers, making it easier for anyone to experiment and innovate,” he said.

    However, he flagged the risk of short-term thinking in advertising. “With AI’s ability to experiment and fine-tune ROI, there’s a danger that brands might focus too much on immediate results and lose sight of long-term brand building. And advertising is all about building brands,” he cautioned.

    Addressing how organisations should approach AI, Gupta urged companies to embrace the technology actively. “You can’t learn to swim by watching someone else. You need to dive into the pool yourself,” he remarked.

    He recommended dedicating time to understanding AI’s potential and limitations, noting that no technology has ever reduced workload—it has only shifted it. “Jobs don’t go away, tasks do. AI will eliminate non-value-added tasks, allowing professionals to focus on more impactful work,” he asserted.

    On a closing note, Gupta reminded attendees of the importance of starting with the problem, not the technology. “Sometimes, we get so caught up in the technology that we forget the problem we’re trying to solve,” he said, adding that copyright and IP protection will remain critical concerns in an AI-driven world.

    IAA India Chapter president, Abhishek Karnani underscored the event’s relevance, “At the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA), we take pride in being the only body in the industry that brings together creative agencies, media agencies, and media under one roof. This year, our focus is clear—Conversations, Skilling, and Artificial Intelligence—all aimed at preparing us for the opportunities and challenges ahead.”

    Organised with support from Free Press Journal as the presenting partner, the IAA Conversations event highlighted the intersection of technology, creativity, and strategy, offering a forward-looking perspective on how AI is reshaping industries.

  • India Today-Axis-My-India exit poll mechanism enters Harvard Business Class

    India Today-Axis-My-India exit poll mechanism enters Harvard Business Class

    NEW DELHI: Known for its most accurate predictions, the India Today Group’s exit-poll mechanism has made its way to the Harvard Business School curriculum.

    The India Today-Axis-My-India post-poll surveys have given the most definitive predictions in about 95 per cent of all the elections that took place in the country between 2013 and 2020.

    Now, the same research and multi-layered mechanism has become the first ever case study built by the Ivy League business school.

    The case study, now part of the HBS’ classroom course on elections, highlights the complexity associated with successfully predicting elections in the world’s largest democracy, with all its diversity, varied geographies, shared international borders, sprawling rural populations and 23 different languages.

    The case study, written by professor Ananth Raman, senior associate Ann Winslow and research associate Kairavi Dey, discusses the process that goes behind forecasting elections in India and the methods the channel uses to analyse data along with the research firm to reach accurate forecasts – from selection of field surveyors, hiring and training, data-collection technology, quality auditing, data analysis to final forecasting.

    India Today Group is delighted to be associated with Axis-My-India and this global recognition. The association goes strong for years and the results are a testimony to the most focused research and proven methodology.

    UPS Foundation professor of business logistics chair, OPM, HBS Professor Ananth Raman stated that predicting elections accurately in an extremely complex country like India is indeed challenging.

    The case study, which illustrates numerous operational details, including those associated with training surveyors and moving them across different locations based on their linguistic and socio-economic identities to get a feel of the electorate’s pulse, will inspire students at the Harvard Business School to create their own entrepreneurial journey, he noted.

    Professor Raman also mentioned that while they have seen numerous examples of experienced organisations struggling to predict election outcomes in the recent past, this case illustrates how a robust mechanism devised a process to predict outcomes most accurately.

    What sets it apart from all the other competitive surveys is its reach across the length and breadth of the country (700+ districts), an average survey size of over five lakh people for national surveys, GPS-enabled tablets to maintain geographical sanctity, as well as computer-aided questionnaires backed by social intelligence to garner maximum data veracity. 

  • Network18’s Joy Chakraborthy gets additional role as Forbes India CEO

    Network18’s Joy Chakraborthy gets additional role as Forbes India CEO

    MUMBAI: Joy Chakraborthy gets added responsibility as Forbes India CEO at Network18. Two months, Chakraborthy joined Network18 as president for revenue and business development in May 2016 and now he will be overseeing Forbes India as well.

    Chakraborthy comes with over twenty years of experience in the media industry and has worked across top companies such as the Times Group, where he was director-response handling the biggest revenue portfolio. Prior to that, he headed the Zee group as executive director in charge of revenues, channel placement and the entire niche channel business portfolio. He also served TV Today network as CEO soon after the Zee stint. He has also spent his early years as executive vice president at Star India for six years heading advertising sales of all the channels.

    Graduated from the National Defense Academy with a Master’s degree in marketing management from NMIMS. He has also completed Advanced Management Programme from the Harvard Business School.

  • Network18’s Joy Chakraborthy gets additional role as Forbes India CEO

    Network18’s Joy Chakraborthy gets additional role as Forbes India CEO

    MUMBAI: Joy Chakraborthy gets added responsibility as Forbes India CEO at Network18. Two months, Chakraborthy joined Network18 as president for revenue and business development in May 2016 and now he will be overseeing Forbes India as well.

    Chakraborthy comes with over twenty years of experience in the media industry and has worked across top companies such as the Times Group, where he was director-response handling the biggest revenue portfolio. Prior to that, he headed the Zee group as executive director in charge of revenues, channel placement and the entire niche channel business portfolio. He also served TV Today network as CEO soon after the Zee stint. He has also spent his early years as executive vice president at Star India for six years heading advertising sales of all the channels.

    Graduated from the National Defense Academy with a Master’s degree in marketing management from NMIMS. He has also completed Advanced Management Programme from the Harvard Business School.

  • Facebook appoints Umang Bedi as managing director India

    Facebook appoints Umang Bedi as managing director India

    MUMBAI: Facebook has appointed Umang Bedi as Managing Director, India, where he will lead in building and maintaining strategic relationships with top clients and regional agencies in the country. He will take over from Kirthiga Reddy, who will be returning to United States to take on a new role at the company’s headquarters at Menlo Park.

    “I am thrilled to join Facebook and am looking forward to working with the talented teams in India, to help brands and agencies grow their business on our platform. For me it’s a promising opportunity to participate in India’s digital growth, and I can’t think of a better place to be at.” said Bedi on her new appointment.

    Umang comes to Facebook with close to two decades of leadership experience covering sales, marketing and partnerships where he successfully built teams and grew businesses for multinational companies. Prior to joining Facebook, Umang was the Managing Director of the South Asia region at Adobe. He was responsible for growing their business in India and helping India grow to amongst the leading markets for Adobe in the APAC and global regions.

    Umang is an engineering graduate from University of Pune, an alumni of Harvard Business School and the recipient of the prestigious ‘40 Under Forty: India’s Hottest Business Leaders Award 2014’ given by The Economic Times and Spencer Stuart in 2014.

    On the other hand, Kirthiga Reddy, who was the face of Facebook in India, is set to join the Global Accounts team at Menlo Park, CA where she will manage a set of global brands and also lead the emerging markets efforts globally for the Global Accounts team, which manages Facebook’s relationships with the world’s largest global advertisers.

    “After six years in India building our operations and business, it’s hard to leave a team I now call family. The good news is that we will continue to work together. As I look ahead, I am excited about how well positioned our business is, to grow from strength to strength with Umang’s leadership, and with my next opportunity to shape and drive our emerging markets strategy across some of the world’s biggest brands,” Reddy shared.

    Umang will officially start at Facebook in July 2016. Kirthiga will start her new role in August 2016.

    “India is known for its great talent pool and we are really pleased to have Umang Bedi, a proven business executive to lead our business in India. I also want to wish Kirthiga the very best in her new global role. Kirthiga has played a huge and key role in building our India business from scratch, and I know she will continue to deliver the same impact in the US,” said Facebook Asia Pacific VP Dan Neary.

    He further added, “Facebook is where people and businesses connect on mobile and with close to 150 million monthly active people in India, we see significant opportunities to help Indian business – large and small – deliver against their business objectives in the mobile world.”

    Facebook works with more than 85% of the top 100 advertisers in India identified by Kantar. 100% of those advertisers use video within their Facebook campaigns in India.

  • Facebook appoints Umang Bedi as managing director India

    Facebook appoints Umang Bedi as managing director India

    MUMBAI: Facebook has appointed Umang Bedi as Managing Director, India, where he will lead in building and maintaining strategic relationships with top clients and regional agencies in the country. He will take over from Kirthiga Reddy, who will be returning to United States to take on a new role at the company’s headquarters at Menlo Park.

    “I am thrilled to join Facebook and am looking forward to working with the talented teams in India, to help brands and agencies grow their business on our platform. For me it’s a promising opportunity to participate in India’s digital growth, and I can’t think of a better place to be at.” said Bedi on her new appointment.

    Umang comes to Facebook with close to two decades of leadership experience covering sales, marketing and partnerships where he successfully built teams and grew businesses for multinational companies. Prior to joining Facebook, Umang was the Managing Director of the South Asia region at Adobe. He was responsible for growing their business in India and helping India grow to amongst the leading markets for Adobe in the APAC and global regions.

    Umang is an engineering graduate from University of Pune, an alumni of Harvard Business School and the recipient of the prestigious ‘40 Under Forty: India’s Hottest Business Leaders Award 2014’ given by The Economic Times and Spencer Stuart in 2014.

    On the other hand, Kirthiga Reddy, who was the face of Facebook in India, is set to join the Global Accounts team at Menlo Park, CA where she will manage a set of global brands and also lead the emerging markets efforts globally for the Global Accounts team, which manages Facebook’s relationships with the world’s largest global advertisers.

    “After six years in India building our operations and business, it’s hard to leave a team I now call family. The good news is that we will continue to work together. As I look ahead, I am excited about how well positioned our business is, to grow from strength to strength with Umang’s leadership, and with my next opportunity to shape and drive our emerging markets strategy across some of the world’s biggest brands,” Reddy shared.

    Umang will officially start at Facebook in July 2016. Kirthiga will start her new role in August 2016.

    “India is known for its great talent pool and we are really pleased to have Umang Bedi, a proven business executive to lead our business in India. I also want to wish Kirthiga the very best in her new global role. Kirthiga has played a huge and key role in building our India business from scratch, and I know she will continue to deliver the same impact in the US,” said Facebook Asia Pacific VP Dan Neary.

    He further added, “Facebook is where people and businesses connect on mobile and with close to 150 million monthly active people in India, we see significant opportunities to help Indian business – large and small – deliver against their business objectives in the mobile world.”

    Facebook works with more than 85% of the top 100 advertisers in India identified by Kantar. 100% of those advertisers use video within their Facebook campaigns in India.

  • ‘Broadcasters should black out areas where DAS implementation is tardy; Govt should move SC:’ VD Wadhwa

    ‘Broadcasters should black out areas where DAS implementation is tardy; Govt should move SC:’ VD Wadhwa

    An Alumnus of Harvard Business School and a fellow member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, V D Wadhwa carries his multifarious responsibilities with a humility and ease that belies the positions he had occupied in the private sector. 

     

    SitiCable executive director and CEO, Wadhwa has almost 30 years of general management experience in consumer lifestyle and retail industries. Additionally, he has also served on various committees of FICCI and Assocham besides serving as president of the Horological Federation of India.

     

    His personal interests include – playing squash, adventure sports, and travelling.

     

    Donning the hat of All India Digital Cable Federation’s president for the past 15 months, Wadhwa is convinced that the move towards digital addressable system (DAS) is in the  right direction. In an interview with Indiantelevision.com, he justifies this and is of the opinion that there should be no let up.

     

    Excerpts from the interview:

     

    With cable operators and multi system operators in so many states having got extension orders from the courts, do you feel the government should have given more time before implementing Phase III covering all urban areas?

    No, I feel that the Government has taken the right decision in not extending the date except where Court orders have come. With reports that there are pockets even in the first two phases where analogue signal is still being beamed, any extension by the Government would have made the MSOs and LCOs go slow and this could have gone on for years.

     

    At least the stakeholders now know they have a deadline that they have to meet. We should not forget that all stakeholders knew since September 2014 that the Government had set a deadline it would stick to, and had enough time to get ready for DAS Phase III.

     

    What is the way out?

    The Government should go to the Supreme Court and stop all the High Court cases on DAS.

     

    But there is great shortage of set top boxes, if you go by the pleadings before the High Courts…

    In SitiCable, we have 11 million subscribers on our network and we have already seeded three million STBs in Phase III. I am confident that we will complete five to six million in the next couple of months and reach 10 million by March. Thus we will cover 6.5 million boxes of the first three phases. Other stakeholders had enough time to order STBs if they had acted in time.

     

    But these are Chinese STBs with little or no service.

    They are Chinese, but they are reliable and when we fit this in any household, we give the requisite service for taking care of any problems.

     

    What about indigenous STBs?

    It is true that there is very little indigenous production with just two manufacturers. There are less than two per cent indigenous STBs. The Government will have to facilitate more under its Make in India scheme. But that is not our field. We have expertise as the distribution pipe.

     

    Pricing of STBs is also a problem since there is no fixed rate.

    STBs had initially cost much more, but are now being sold for just around Rs 1200 and even on a rental basis.

     

    What do you think should be done to speed up the DAS process?

    Implementation on the ground needs support. And the broadcasters should black out areas where implementation is tardy.

     

    And now the Government is gearing up for Phase IV, which covers the rural areas…

    In my view, Phase III and Phase IV should have been done together as the government had initially planned. In any case, there is a 30 per cent base of direct-to-home (DTH) platforms in Phase IV so a large pocket is already digitised. In fact, the total DTH segment in Phase III and IV is around seventy per cent.

     

    What are SitiCable’s future plans?

    We are very clear that we now have to concentrate on broadband and add on at least 500,000 subscribers every year.

  • Bloomberg TV India hosts panel discussion on “Strategies for Success”

    Bloomberg TV India hosts panel discussion on “Strategies for Success”

    MUMBAI: Bloomberg TV India, the nation’s leading English business news channel, hosted an exclusive evening with the industry honchos in Mumbai to discuss the growth in business with the right strategy.

     

    The fact that rapid socio-economic changes in the country are having profound impact across sectors set the tone for the evening. Keeping this in view, the panel discussion on “Strategies for Success” highlighted the various issues faced by the new age entrepreneur in the country from planning to execute to scale up the business idea and make a bench mark in the industry. Today, some of the biggest challenges faced by any entrepreneur are finding the right talent, keeping up with innovation, keeping up with government regulation, issues related to governance, managing partners and generating funds for the business.

     

    The most important virtue an entrepreneur needs to develop is an optimistic mindset. Fear, insecurity, lack of focus, and self-disruption can bring down even the most excellent entrepreneur with the best idea.

     

    The panel discussion was a part of the ongoing series “Lessons in Strategy” featuring Dr. Tarun Khanna, Professor, Harvard Business School. In continuation to the earlier series Lessons to Leadership; the current series focuses on issues every entrepreneur faces, and arms them with crucial knowledge to nurture a great idea into a successful business model.

     

    The series includes five interview session with Dr. Tarun Khanna and one panel discussion. Bloomberg TV India brings together leaders of Indian industry and the faculty of Harvard Business School, for a discussion on innovation and how relevant is it to scale up an innovative business idea.  Each episode of the series is based on important entrepreneurial aspects such as starting a new business, Scaling up existing business, Diversification of business, Globalization of the business and sustaining growth.

     

    Bloomberg TV India has carved a niche for itself by catering to the influential and providing content to the viewers who are looking for niche business content in the country. Lessons in Strategy is one such thought provoking and thought leadership initiative which helps to understand how businesses operate in India and the strategies which can make a business successful. Lessons in Strategy is presented by Reliance Commercial Finance and powered by Voltas all weather.

     

    The Panel Discussion on “Strategies for Success”, part of the ongoing series “Lessons in Strategy”  will telecast on May 7th and May 10th at 8.30 pm and 10.00 pm respectively exclusively on Bloomberg TV India.

     

  • Bloomberg TV India hosts panel discussion to discuss “Strategies for Success”

    Bloomberg TV India hosts panel discussion to discuss “Strategies for Success”

    MUMBAI: Bloomberg TV India, the nation’s leading English business news channel, hosted an exclusive evening with the industry honchos in Mumbai to discuss the growth in business with the right strategy.

     

    The fact that rapid socio-economic changes in the country are having profound impact across sectors set the tone for the evening. Keeping this in view, the panel discussion on “Strategies for Success” highlighted the various issues faced by the new age entrepreneur in the country from planning to execute to scale up the business idea and make a bench mark in the industry. Today, some of the biggest challenges faced by any entrepreneur are finding the right talent, keeping up with innovation, keeping up with government regulation, issues related to governance, managing partners and generating funds for the business.

     

    The most important virtue an entrepreneur needs to develop is an optimistic mindset. Fear, insecurity, lack of focus, and self-disruption can bring down even the most excellent entrepreneur with the best idea.

     

    The panel discussion was a part of the ongoing series “Lesson in Strategy” featuring Dr. Tarun Khanna, Professor, Harvard Business School. In continuation to the earlier series Lesson to Leadership; the current series focuses on issues every entrepreneur faces, and arms them with crucial knowledge to nurture a great idea into a successful business model.

     

    The series includes five interview session with Dr. Tarun Khanna and one panel discussion. Bloomberg TV India brings together leaders of Indian industry and the faculty of Harvard Business School, for a discussion on innovation and how relevant is it to scale up an innovative business idea.  Each episode of the series is based on important entrepreneurial aspects such as starting a new business, Scaling up existing business, Diversification of business, Globalization of the business and sustaining growth.

    Bloomberg TV India has carved a niche for itself by catering to the influential and providing content to the viewers who are looking for niche business content in the country. Lesson in Strategy is one such thought provoking and thought leadership initiative which helps to understand how businesses operate in India and the strategies which can make a business successful. Lesson in Strategy is presented by Reliance Commercial Finance and powered by Voltas all weather.

     

    The Panel Discussion on “Strategies for Success”, part of the ongoing series “Lesson in Strategy”  will telecast on May 7th and May 10th at 8.30 pm and 10.00 pm respectively exclusively on Bloomberg TV India.

     

    Esteem panelist included Dr. Tarun Khanna, Professor, Harvard Business School ; Mr. K.V Srinivasan, CEO, Reliance Commercial Finance ; Mr. Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico Limited and Mr. Varun Aggarwal, Co – Founder, CTO & COO, Aspiring Minds.