Paresh Nanda

There has been a veritable data explosion over the past several years, leading to a virtual spawning of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data Analytics. Sophisticated Big Data Analytics, working in tandem with Cloud-based enterprise tools, can lead to a more focused, collaborative and explorative understanding and leveraging of business data. No wonder, these new-age technologies have been radically transforming the way organizations do business. For example, IBM has unveiled a supercomputer Watson that can crunch data at the speed of 67 million pages per second, transforming them into actionable insights. The data tsunami is coming from millions of interconnected devices as part of the Industrial Internet of Things. The innovation is aimed at establishing a question and answer dialogue between it and humans—Watson will analyze huge amount of data and respond verbally and in real time. “The use of new technology such as AI in enterprise technology...

Research shows the clear-cut relationship between number of hours spent at work and productivity. In fact, research show that there is a dramatic decrease in the productivity when we start to go beyond the usual 40 hours per week at work. Here are some of the common habits that kill productivity. 1. Impulsive web browsing Impulsive web browsing is one of the major reasons for a drop in an individual’s productivity. How many hours do you spend working daily? About 8-9 hours per day? And, how many times does your mind get diverted from work because you clicked on something irrelevant? Or simply opened your Facebook just to check a few notifications? Now, all that might seem like a few minutes per day, but when you club those minutes for an entire week, entire month or even an entire year, then you will see that picture is quite horrifying! And, this isn’t just about laptops and desktops. The mobile bug has bitten us all. We have our smartphones on 24/7, clicking sel...

Last month, my article titled 'Hindustan Unilever Limited: Competing with Goliath' focused on the 'mistakes' HUL made in its strategy when major competition from Nirma first emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. With 22,000 views and 1,900 likes the article was received extremely well. By 1985, the once dominant Surf brand by HUL was reduced to a mere 8.4 per cent market share and Nirma detergent brand gained a market share of 58.1 per cent. This article shares the strategies, processes and the final product by HUL to counter competition in the low price segment of detergent powders in India in the late 1980s. Even two decades later, this case provides valuable insights to students, researchers and management practitioners on brand positioning, marketing and new product development. Project STING by HUL It is popularly believed that they launched Project STING: Strategy to Inhibit Nirma Growth. The discussions were led by HUL Chairman Dr. Ashok Ganguly, and were attend...

The workday can be one of the most stressful times for a lot of people. Monday is among one of the most stressful days, even starting Sunday evening. According to The Telegraph recently, science shows that: "Monday mornings so depressing you won't crack a smile until 11.16am" Why? It's a "jolt" to get out of weekender mode and into work mode. I believe workdays can be better. And, it may even start with a new ritual on before bed: MEDITATION Below, I'm going to share with you my 3 favourite 5 minute meditations to help! And then, for the sceptics, I'm going to share some scientific research we did to prove that meditation can help you be more effective at work. HERE ARE THE FREE MEDITATIONS! Before A Meeting — (5 Min) This meditation is useful for two reasons. Sometimes you are anxious before a meeting and this helps reduce the stress. But, more often you’re running around and you come into a meeting forget the intention of the m...

As per a survey conducted by CareerBuilder, employees are said to waste over 30% of their working hours on other tasks. The primary cause for distraction is - zero points for guessing - mobile phones. Read on to know more about the top distractions at work and managing distractions at work. 66% of the employees that were a part of the survey admitted to checking their phones multiple times while working. With office Wi-Fi so easily accessible, it only makes it more convenient for people to check their updates. Though the survey was conducted in the U.S., it is extremely relatable globally. The results showed that private messaging is one of the top distractions at work. Majority of the employees always have their phones within their reach. To add to that, most of the time it’s not on silent. As soon as people hear their notification tone, they pick it up and check who messaged. While this is acceptable, what it usually ends up as is a long conversation with the person. According ...

Not Only at spiritual places, discrimination against women is a prevalent problem of these times. From hair shampoo to foot-cream, everything on sale is advertised by using women as props, especially through rampantly over exposing the female body and sexual objectification of the second sex. Intentionally, the presence of 'second sex' as an object of lust in promotional activities is kind of playing with their dignities. But why are men not projected like women even in the products exclusively for men? On the eve of Women's Day this year, we came across two short visuals. One was a short film titled 'Naked' featuring Kalki Koechlin and Ritabhari Chakraborty in main leads, where they tried to teach women how to face and overcome cyber bullying. And the other was a short visual 'How Much Cleavage Is Good Cleavage' featuring Swara Bhaskar and Taapsee Pannu where they sarcastically stated that women should live their lives on their own terms. A year ba...

With the US President Donald Trump deciding to dump TPP and all set to introduce legislations that seeks to penalize imports and outsourcing, the supporters of free trade would want China, the world’s second largest economy and still one of two fastest growing large economies to fill in for the US and pull the world economy out of trouble. President Xi Xinping’s defence of free trade and globalization at World Economic Forum in Davos further added credence to such hope. That leads to two questions: Can China fill in the role (of pulling the world economy troubled by slowing demand) that the US has been playing for decades? Will China known for its import restricting trade policy regime make concessions to its trading partners such as India which has been struggling to check its rising trade deficit with the mainland? Multi-lateral trade liberalization is not going anywhere for more than a decade now. But China playing can rely on the 16-member Regional Comprehensive Economic ...

In my entire career I have had two terrific bosses. The others were mediocre and incompetent at best. Two of them were borderline … (Never mind. That’s for another day). It is quite a normal distribution. I have often wondered, why are the majority of us so bad at managing others? I have often asked great people managers how they go about their daily routines. Being a manager is a bit like being a parent of a teenager. You have to set boundaries and that is just what the teens hate. Whether it is agreeing on the curfew hours or cleaning up the room or not to surf the web while preparing for an upcoming exam, being a parent is not easy. It is not easy being a teenager either. Every boundary is up for challenge. Every diktat invites a rebellion. Great bosses make the world of work magical. A great manager is a talent magnet. People will follow such a manager to the other end of the world. They are tough on tasks and deadlines. Yet, they still manage to find time to discover the huma...

Investors were knocking on the doors of the Karts and Deals that sold similar products in the same old ways with the same old styles. I asked myself what it was that investors saw as their valuations rose and their salaries doubled and tripled. Was discounts and undercutting all that mattered in the e-commerce industry? Did uniqueness not matter at all? Flawed business models, bad decision making, getting carried away like kids in a candy store and much more did not seem to faze investors. While, here I was with an e-commerce company that was pushing a unique idea with innovation and more but I was still not getting the kind of pull that regurgitated model was. What has gone wrong with failing start-ups is obvious enough. Unfortunately, their mistakes were quite cliched. They got too high a valuation, too many investments and then tried to do too much, too soon. They very clearly felt God-like with all that money. They could do anything and be anything. They could buy companies and ...

At Feedly we've found that saving and organizing content around our most important goals is a great way to feed your team with high-value information. Plus, sharing smart, relevant stories with your team or professional network bolsters your status as a visible expert. Sometimes you might feel overwhelmed by the volume of new stories in your feeds. There are important stories coming in, but it can be hard to keep up. In this post, we’ve shared the five easy ways to save stories and feed your team with only the most high-value, relevant information. Here are the 5 easy ways to save a story using Feedly Boards: 1. In your Feedly If you find an important story while reading from within your Feedly on desktop, click the “Save to Board” icon: Click on the board icon to open your list of Boards. If this is your first one, take a moment to give it a name. You can save a story to multiple Boards. Pro tip: We find that the best Board names are specific and project-related. For e...

For most manufacturing or CPG firm's, the last mile visibility is still a major problem organizations are working to fix.   A large bike manufacturer was concerned his only connect with the customers are through the dealers and was looking to engage with customers real time directly. A fertilizer manufacturer wished he understood the local sales patterns real time based on weather & sowing conditions to manage his FG inventory better. A cycle manufacturer realized his latest launch variant was not moving well in one location and could have shifted inventory with another location that was selling fast, missed opportunity with lack of real time data.  Real time view of sales is an opportunity for lean and agile enterprises to focus through digital. I recently floated this scenario on an ideation platform to crowd source some thoughts. One of the few great ideas that came was simple QR code solution, block chain and digital ewallets linking sale data incentivized wi...

Dawood Ibrahim is very possibly the Sachin of crime in India. Very active back in the day. Retired(somewhat) now. Responsible for causing a lot of damage, living like a free man, yet feared by many. Irrelevant comparisons apart, we had to start the list with perhaps the one who's most notorious for his heinous crimes. Just imagine, if Dawood could put his head into something constructive, he probably would've been as successful. Here's one example of his sharpness mentioned in the book, From Dongri to Dubai: An imported item of very high value arrives at the Bombay port bearing a consignment number of, let's assume, XYZ123. Dawood's men would change the consignment number to something that doesn't exist in the records, like XYZ456. He would then hide the consignment somewhere in the port itself. At the time of the delivery, consignment number XYZ123 will be missing, making the officials mark it as a package 'lost in transit'. The importer, at this poin...

Had the opportunity to attend the LinkedIn Staffing Entrepreneurs round-table session yesterday. In this insightful discussion, among the many things discussed was the very moot query - How do we manage & minimize in-house attrition? To a lay person, it may seem like an irrelevant point. We are after all; staffing solution providers so to lay people it is ludicrous to think that we ourselves may be facing staffing problems. However, attrition is a problem for us just as much as for the clients/corporate entities that we service.  A few views put forth at the discussion to manage this attrition were: -         Drive a process oriented organization -         Keep a transparent system -         Believe in the company vision and keep that alive -         Engage your employees & manpower on a daily basis etc. However, I believe that ultimately what it actually boils down to is the basic ...

India’s financial capital Mumbai, which is home to 46,000 millionaires and 28 billionaires, is the richest Indian city with a total wealth of $820 billion, says a report. The total wealth held in the country amounts to USD 6.2 trillion (as of December 2016) and the country is home to 2,64,000 millionaires and 95 billionaires in total. According to New World Wealth, Mumbai is the richest city in the country followed by Delhi and Bengaluru in the second and third place, respectively. Delhi is home to 23,000 millionaires and 18 billionaires with a total wealth of USD 450 billion, while Bengaluru with a total wealth of USD 320 billion houses 7,700 millionaires and 8 billionaires. The list also includes Hyderabad with a total wealth of USD 310 billion. Hyderabad is home to 9,000 millionaires and 6 billionaires.

Let’s face it- Real isn’t as interesting as fake. Unless it’s Donald Trump or Rahul Gandhi. Then, real might take the prize. Like the “real news” of Conway’s “Alternative facts” or Trump’s golden sharpie messages to the journalist who called his hands small or basically anything on the internet about Rahul Gandhi. But, on an average, Fake is more appealing, more emotional, and definitely more viral. And that’s the reason it has become a booming industry, with “Fake News” named the word of the year by Macquarie dictionary in 2016. So what consists of *Fake news*? Broadly, two things- news manufactured for earning money online and news manufactured for influencing the mindset of a group of people for political/corporate reasons. *Fake News has been part of the traditional media, and civilization in general for many many years (read teleshopping ads on TV, political news just before elections, state sponsored misinformation, even the spread of religion, some argue), but I’m stickin...

“People work for people – they do not work for businesses”          – Donn Carr This has been my mantra for as along as I can remember. The message is so simple, full of truth and direction, yet it is consistently ignored by human resource departments, managers and owners alike and they wonder why their turnover is so high or they are always having to look for new people. The problem is with the managers – and seldom the employee or the quality of the workforce. This has been proven and well documented by study after study. I don’t think this happens on purpose, most managers I meet have never been taught the art of developing people. Many rose to the rank of managers simply because they outlasted the last one and this lack of people training leaves the new manager with the only experience they know – to mimic the old boss. This does make perfect sense when you think about it. All I should have to do is mimic the actions of the outgoing boss or the one ab...