Ramanujam Sridhar

Spinning up a Googly, R.Sridhar, Founder & CEO, Brand -Comm underscored the point that successful brands are those that are relevant to their target segment and different from competition. Impelled by hyperactive market conditions, brands need to constantly think out of the box. Every brand has certain distinct elements - these include its name, design, packaging, the logo associated with it, the associations and values it stands for, the experience it conjures up and the price value proposition it offers consumers. Any of these can be a brand's point of difference.  A brand is an enduring promise that resides in the consumers' mind. In order to ensure that a brand consistently wins the battle for consumer mind space it needs to harness the power of consumer insight by observing customers' behavior and trying to strike a chord with them. Citing examples of brands like Apple, Titan and Nokia he said that brands need to develop an emotional connect with consumers.

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Dr. Sridhar Mitta

Dr. Sridhar Mitta talks about his journey from a CTO at Wipro to his latest entrepreneurial projects. He lays out a Capability Maturity Model that maps the hierarchal path of a CIO, from being an able functional manager to an entrepreneur.The first level to this model is becoming a functional manager, where the CIO must achieve functional superiority in his or her functional domain. The next step, perhaps, is Alignment to business. The CIOs should maintain an inter-department interaction and keep the overall business objective of the company in focus. Finally, a CIO should enter the entrepreneurial level and think beyond immediate function and business and look for newer opportunities

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John Powath

In his presentation, John Powath, Partner, Ernst & Young, critically evaluated the impact of the current union budget with special emphasis on its impact on the IT sector. He explained that the key objectives of the budget this year were to sustain a minimum growth rate of 9 percent, create employment opportunities, reduce poverty and focus on infrastructure. The budget , therefore has been largely populist, with the major focus on rural infrastructure building. IT and manufacturing haven't been given the required stimulus they were hoping for to set the demand -supply chain into motion. He urged enterprises to lobby for representation at the Nasscom level to try and address some of the IT woes.

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Ravi Dasgupta

That there is a dearth of high quality people, and all industries face the same challenges, is a known fact, said Ravi Dasgupta, who heads HR at Biocon.  The trick is to  hire some domain experts and balance them with some intelligent people who can be trained. This could help meet the challenge of attrition after training. The trick to get the best talent is a combination of company branding in the job market (which Biocon enjoys), and ensuring candidates' expectations are met in terms of work challenges and professional development activities.Over a long term, it is the team leader's onus to maintain a balance between freedom to a subordinate and authority that the team lead should enjoy. This kind of a process in place would also help in planning for succession. Dasgupta also pointed out that a person hired at higher management  level needs to have the fire to reach the top, or what else  is heaven for? A team leader is only as good as the team he makes and to Biocon, that is written in stone.

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Alaganandan Balaraman

Alaganandan Balaraman, VP & Head-HR & Process Architect, Britannia Industries, in his presentation titled, The Slump and Beyond, explained how the slowdown had affected Brittania and how the company was changing the way it works to tackle it. He said that CIOs, today, need to focus on capability-based strategy instead of the traditional destination-based strategy to be able to adapt to the changing economic climate. He urged CIOs to work with business and enable change. He was of the opinion that organizations should not set goals that are cast in stone, instead they should keep tweaking the goals so that they are able to better respond to the financial crisis.

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