The unTuned

In this episode of The Untuned, Gaurav had a candid chat with Jin Kan Moller, around importance of simplicity in design.  Jin Kang Moller is an award-winning customer experience strategist, design practitioner and highly-acclaimed executive trainer. She held design leadership positions to creative value and bottom-line impact in the large financial services firms such as OCBC Bank in Singapore and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, and has led user experience consulting services for leading pharmaceutical companies. With 20 years of practitioner', she is a highly acclaimed executive trainer on design thinking, customer experience and design leadership at Singapore Management University. She is the author of The Simplicity Playbook for Innovators – creating lovable experiences in a complicated world, a battle-tested strategy and the collection of tools to drive innovation, humanise digital transformation and to win customers’ hearts. She is passionate about how design can create value in business and in life, always looking for ways to design simplicity in life. Jin is also the director of design at https://designfulcompany.com/

In this episode, Gaurav invited Vineet Panchhi - A Poet , Filmaker and Entrepreneur.  Over the last few years , Vineet’s work has been going viral across different social media platforms ,where he touches various aspects of life, in in shooting voice - in what he calls as nazm numa items - something like poetry. After years of corporate experience as a HR head , making some of the well accepted ad jingles and founding few venture on his way to Entrepreneurship , Vineet today runs a media & production firm - word of mouth media. In this super interesting and candid chat, Vineet shared about his journey , his point of view around different aspects of live and living . And I had a great time learning about so many things . In Vineet's words Sabak jo seekhe zindage - the lessons I learnt from life . You can see Vineet's profile here : https://www.vineetpanchhi.com/

In this episode of The Untuned, Gaurav invited Prantik Mazumdar , Founder of Happy Marketer and current Managing Director of CXM @Denstu.  The episode focuses on Value and Impact creation through entrepreurship.  "Prantik is an entrepreneur & venture investor and acts as a Digital Transformation Catalyst in organizations to drive sustainable change and impact. After pursuing a major in Computer Engineering & a minor in Technopreneurship from the National University of Singapore (NUS), he kickstarted his career with the Singapore government (Enterprise Singapore) to drive international trade promotion for the island state. He started his entrepreneurial journey with Happy Marketer in 2011 where he spent a decade building & scaling up one of the best and most awarded independent digital marketing services firm in the region that served brands like Standard Chartered Bank, Income, Great Eastern Life, Royal Brunei Airlines, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Starbucks, Ping An, Grab, Shopee, GoJek, Kimberly Clark, PropertyGuru, PegiPegi, Starhub, Singtel, Nanyang Business School, Kaplan, INSEAD amongst many of it's prestigious clients. In February 2019, he had a successful exit when Happy Marketer was sold to an American digital enterprise called Merkle, which is part of dentsu International, the largest Japanese advertising conglomerate. He is currently serving as the Managing Director of the CXM Group at Dentsu Singapore. He is a regular columnist for Marketing Magazine, Campaign Asia, Economic Times, Business Times on all things digital transformation and marketing and has trained over 500 enterprises in the region on this subject. In 2015, he was recognized as one of the Top 50 Most Influential Marketers in the World. Apart from his corporate role, he is an active angel & venture investor, mentor, advisor and speaker through organizations like Quest Ventures, Tie Singapore, HealthXCapital, NUS Angel Ventures and is an Entrepreneur-In-Resident at INSEAD.

In this episode of The Untuned, Gaurav had a candid chat with Lavania Rosie, Founder & Director of Dance Embassy.  Lavania is a multi-talented and multi-faceted woman leader. Recognised as Singapore’s Top 20 female entrepreneurs by Zee TV APAC and awarded the Mrs Singapore ASEAN title in 2018 and the Crown of Compassion in 2019, she comes with a decade of experience in dance, fitness and advocates for mental and physical wellness. Lavania was chosen to create the world's first Bollywood Dance Fitness podcast on Amazon Audible in 2020. She has created an unparalleled connection with people around the world, making her one of the most respected wellness instructors in Singapore. She opened her first joint venture “BollyFreak Dance Fitness studio” in Mumbai in 2019 and has led several dance workshops in France, Bangladesh, Malaysia & India. She is the founder-director of Dance Embassy and Tinted Wateva in Singapore, and is a Happiness consultant at KeyTeo. Coupled with a Bachelors in Psychology from Edith Cowan University, she is also a certified Zumba, Zumbatomic, Aqua Zumba, Zumba Gold Instructor and Strong Nation Instructor. This gives her the well-rounded knowledge and experience to help people set and accomplish their fitness goals. A community builder, Lavania has long believed that empowering others creates growth and opportunities for us all. She works with “Her Rise Above” and gives free mentorship and advice to home-based women entrepreneurs to increase their business avenues and gain higher financial and economic freedom. She sincerely cares about contributing more than she receives. For collaborations and engagement Lavania can be reached at lavania@danceembassy.com

Simply Blood is World's First Virtual Blood Donation Platform. Everyday more than 12,000 people fail to get blood and die. More than 2.8 million units of blood was wasted in last 5 years in India and our nation is among those countries where black marketing or paid blood donation is happening on large scale. Change With One Foundation came up with a single solution for all these problems - Simply Blood. Our mission is to save a million lives through blood donation using our platform by 2020. Gaurav had a heart to heart conversation with Kiran Verma, Founder of Simply Blood.  https://www.simplyblood.com/

In this episode, Gaurav had a candid chat with Sumedha Khoche, founder and CEO of KinderPass kinderPass is an early learning company that enables parents to give the best start to their children. Learning begins at birth- with that guiding principle , today kinder pass has 1200+ developmental activities and play ideas for babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers. Sumedha started KinderPass as an attempt at using tech as a tool to help parents give their child the best start by making KinderPass their personal child development guide- everything they need to help promote the child’s development- in one app. Prior to this, Sumdha was leading and managing businesses at Pepsico and Procter & Gamble for 13+ years, in sales, research and marketing across FMCG categories such as beverages, laundry, dish care and air fresheners across APAC-India, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia. https://mykinderpass.com/

Leadership is not just about a professional success or a title, there are various aspects of being a holistic leader and readiness towards it. In this episode , Gaurav had a candid conversation with Manoj Vasudevan, world champion of public speaking and one of the most influential leadership coaches. Manoj Vasudevan is an internationally renowned Next Level Leadership Readiness Expert who helps executives to breakthrough to the next level of their career, business and life. He is the 2017 World Champion of Public Speaking, CEO of Thought Expressions and chief mentor at Next Level Unlimited. Manoj holds an MBA from Imperial College London with more than two decades of leadership experience in many major multinational clients in Asia, Australia, USA and Europe. As an expert in Next Level Leadership Readiness, he has coached and empowered C-Level executives, senior executives, bureaucrats, celebrities, UN diplomats, high-performance teams, high-potential employees and professionals from over 100 countries. Manoj is the author of the international bestsellers including Mastering Leadership The Mousetrap Way and How To Become The World Champion of Public Speaking. Manoj has been featured widely on international media including BBC, CNBC, Business Insider and world’s top-ranking book fairs. In 2017, he was featured among the top 50 World’s leading professional speakers at the International Speakers Summit. https://thoughtexpressions.com/about-manoj-vasudevan/

HR led technology transformation is not really a buzz word anymore but it is becoming more and more relevant and contextual , with all the changing dynamics around how people and companies work.  In this episode, Gaurav has an insightful conversation with the executive team ( Manu Khetan, CEO & Philip Wixon, COO)  of leading HR Transformations company in South East Asia, "Rolling Arrays".   Rolling Arrays (RA) is Asia’s premier award-winning HR Transformation Company, headquartered in Singapore with offices in 6 countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, UAE & India). Since its inception in 2009, Rolling Arrays has successfully delivered more than 150 HR transformation projects for more than 75 blue-chip clients across Asia. A consultative approach to HR Processes, HR Functions and HR Software is Rolling Arrays’ core expertise and the primary catalyst for its success. Rolling Arrays is an SAP Gold Partner and has won several awards from SAP for its expertise in SAP SuccessFactors. Rolling Arrays was recently recognised as Singapore’s Top 75 fastest-growing company by Straits Times in 2021. For more details, visit www.rollingarrays.com/

AI & Data has been changing the landscape in most of the industries , and Financial services/Fintech is no exception.  In this episode, Gaurav invited Abhinav Mishra , Founder & CEO of Value3 Advisory.  Abhinav is a Capital Markets, FinTech, Risk Modelling and Analytics expert with more than 15 years of experience in portfolio risk management, fixed income and credit risk. Abhinav is Founder and CEO of Value3 and has led its product growth to cover credit ratings and research in more than 10 global markets today. Prior to Value3, Abhinav was Vice President for Financial Markets at Standard Chartered Bank and Senior Business Analyst for Fixed Income Markets at JPMorgan. He was also Singapore Chair for Next Generation Talent Group and Board Member for Singapore Diversity Council. He has worked across US, UK, Singapore and India markets with leading global investment banks where he led strategic digital transformation projects and cutting edge technology solutions to shape the pricing, risk and control platforms at these institutions. Abhinav has been listed amongst the Top Asia FinTech Leaders by Singapore FinTech Association in 2019 and Under-35 Global Young Scientists by Singapore National Research Foundation. He is also a Mentor of Change for the Atal Innovation Mission of NITI Ayog under the Government of India. He holds a Masters in Risk Management from NYU Stern School of Business and Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology from University of Mumbai. About Value 3 : https://www.value3-advisory.com/ Value3 is an award winning B2B FinTech that offers a capital market AI platform for independent, unbiased and automated corporate credit ratings, research and analytics solution to empower corporates and financial institutions to make better decisions. The platform combines structured financial data with unstructured news flow, macro, geopolitical, industry and company specific events and other market data to transform data overload into actionable insights. Value3 was founded in 2018 with its headquarters in Singapore. Today, it offers its services across Asia Pacific, Europe and Middle East markets. It has won multiple Best FinTech Awards in Singapore, India and Europe.

Fitness and Performance are not just state of mind. Fitness is a complete alignment of goals, actions and beliefs across Mind, Body and Emotions. In the fast moving world and the need for speed, it is extremely important to have a commitment towards fitness in a complete sense , for being a successful leader or a transformed individual.  In this exciting episode, Gaurav invited Sari Marsden, Co- Founder of Sarius Performance and Co-Author of "Fit to Lead". This insightful conversation about the right way for connecting fitness to performance and stories from Sari's journey is absolutely worth listening if you envision a fulfilling and high performance life , in this Digital and Data Driven world.

In this episode, Gaurav invited Modern Monk Anshul Bafna to talk about the importance of spirituality in this always connected and always-ON digital and data driven world. The conversations focuses on what does it take to practice spirituality living a modern life.  Anshul is a renowned spiritual coach, business psychologist and a mystic. A professionally qualified business psychologist from University of Wetmkinster, A charted marketer , a masters in communication & Entrepreneurship , Anshul is a TEDx Speaker and has received multiple prestigious awards such as India Icon -Zee News, Power Women Award and WEFT Leadership award , for her work in helping corporate and individuals on spiritualty and soul awakening , emotional intelligence and leadership. Anshul is also the founder of Searchlight| The Soul school that offers a range of development programmes for individuals and corporate.

Storytelling is an important factor in the context that we live in, and businesses are no exception. With the deluge of data and information, while it is difficult to derive the right insights for complex business decision making, having the right way of telling story through data is a critical factor for success. In this Episode, Gaurav invited Anjali Sharma , the Founder of "Narrative: The Business of Stories" , to talk about the importance of storytelling in business and some best practices around storytelling with data. Anjali is one of the leading business storytelling consultants, author, global keynote speaker, and founder of Narrative: The Business of Stories. Anjali has spoken on the topic of Storytelling in New York, Russia, India, Singapore, Japan, Australia, and many other Southeast Asian countries. She helps business leaders, data analysts, sales professionals, marketers and TEDx speakers find and tell stories. Anjali has worked in corporate roles for over 18 years in Australia, Singapore, and India. Her background constantly informs her work, so that it is not just theoretical, but based on extensive experience, knowledge, and understanding of strategic issues companies face as well as issues that employees face in delivering their best work. Anjali partners with Global 1000 companies including Facebook, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Microsoft, Shell, SAP, Microsoft & Danone. She regularly publishes her ideas on business storytelling on her storytelling blog .

How to become a great problem solver in the complex word that we live in. The multitude of signals , make it difficult to separate noise. It is extremely important to learn the right approach towards problem solving to excel at your job and beyond that. Gaurav brings insights into what does it take to become a good problem solver . Enjoy this episode!

For analytics professionals, there has been a pursuit for getting more and more included in  the consumption of analytics and not only creation. The value addition and impact derivation from all the analytics and data science efforts depends on the acceptance and appreciation of the process by the stakeholders, not only results. The impact of analytics is a long term cultural evolution than making short term decisions only. The reason creators and consumers have been debating the value of analytics and roadblocks in the maturity roadmap is because of the fact that  the consumers of analytics expect data science to be  full course meal or a gourmet cuisine. Analytic is not for one time satiation, it is to be savoured right from the time it starts cooking Make them learn the recipe , before they enjoy the meal Customer education is the most important part of analytics adoption in an organization. I have worked with many clients who love when they do some hands-on. Analytics is not about providing black box solutions. Make it transparent, have as many conversations as you can, right from the start of understanding the problem. Ingredients are important , so is the cooking process Learn, account for and explain the ingredients, and also the cooking process; which tools are you using , what hypotheses you are testing , which parts take how much time and iterations. How many other questions you are answering while answering one big question and what cannot be answered. This leads to a discovery based creation and consumption of analytics Learn how to master the art of dressing, data science is aesthetic Presentation is something you cannot ignore. Simple and intuitive. Think creative. Complex models need to be dressed with self-explanatory attires. Visualization is important. Analytics is as much as Power point as it is Python Leave room for Salt and pepper Leave some open ended questions. Do not close everything, keep your analysis and the results open enough to hit the curiosity button of the stakeholders. It is good to have ‘Not so complete’ analysis and let people walk out of the room with some take-aways and think-aways

Just having #bigdata is not enough. Just having people to work on data, is also not enough. One needs to exhibit the human aspects with a purpose and commitment to make data do wonders for them.