Follow "The Leader"

We met at the Doon School. The year was 1991. He was my senior and a School Prefect. We were the founding team of a new house ... the founding team had to compete against well-established houses in all areas – academics, sports, and extra curricular activities. He led the house in different fields especially athletics, cricket, and music & won us many accolades - Aye aye captain! 

Later on in life, we both ended up doing our MBAs from Symbiosis. 

Post my MBA while I was with AT Kearney - I got a call one late evening from him. We met and discussed old fond memories and towards the end of our discussions he said, “Come join the HR Consulting team that is making news in the country!”

My journey into HR began with that meeting. Rest is history - I joined Hewitt Associates (that's what it was called back then). Perhaps amongst the sharpest and most fun teams, I worked with. The leader had managed to spot and bring together people who shared the same vision and were committed to each others' success. Investing in building and unleashing their talent was his mantra – today many of these individuals are leading consulting firms and Heads of HR in different parts of the world. 

The leader was charged with building our presence in the Middle East and growing our business in Asia. We generated new business in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, and many other countries. I had the opportunity to work in and grow the 3 named markets. Each trip to these countries was fun and one could write an interesting story about each one of them. 

He had built the Hewitt business in a very structured and entrepreneurial fashion (perhaps an oxymoron). Always cutting edge and designed for scale. Over the years, I learnt a lot under his leadership. 

My years at Hewitt gave me the courage to start my own consulting firm in a completely alien city. Years later when I was working from Chandigarh - He had gone on to set up an innovative business school - School of Inspired Leadership (SOIL) as a co-founder and President. 

At Zeus Consulting- my own consulting and search firm ... we ended up doing some work for SOIL.

As the years went by I decided to move back to Delhi. 

I was keen to understand the landscape of the consulting market and connected with him. He was now the CEO and Managing Director of Mercer in India. As luck would have it, there was an opening and I fit the bill. Meeting a number of ex-Hewitt friends who had joined him in the journey at Mercer didn’t surprise me!

The leader was headhunted and decided to move and so did some of us - to grow the People and Change consulting business at KPMG. 

As time passed by, I went on to lead HR for the nations' skilling body - National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). We engaged “The Leader” for his thought leadership on certain occasions. 

After I stepped out of NSDC - I re-started my search firm. We used AI to bridge the talent and opportunity gap. 

“The Leader” after having spent close to 6 years at KPMG was now at EdCast as the President Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. As EdCast was looking to ramp up the team in India – he reached out to me to partner with EdCast on this journey. 

One evening, “The Leader” called me and wanted to have a chat. I honestly thought it’s a confidential senior management position that he wanted to discuss. Over coffee, he shared that there was a large scale project EdCast had been awarded which would impact the lives of many in India and he was keen I lead it. The opportunity played to my strengths and the skills I had built as a consultant, as a HR leader and as someone who has worked closely with the Government. It is uncanny that at every stage, we remained connected & today, we are working together again! My gratitude to the entire leadership team at EdCast for selecting me and granting me this unique opportunity!

The Leader who I have followed all these years is Nishchae Suri. A friend, mentor, and guide. My decisions to work with him have emanated from the fact that I haven’t had to compromise on my values and beliefs; I have had the opportunity to build something new and have had the opportunity to work on leading-edge technologies which have the potential to change our lives in so many ways. Also, very importantly - he always set high standards for himself and drove the team on meritocratic principles. 

It’s been one hell of a joyful experience thus far and when Nishchae’s in the drivers seat – I expect it will only get better! 

Aye aye captain! 

Note:

About Edcast: EdCast is an award-winning, AI-powered Knowledge Cloud for Unified Discovery, Personalized Learning. The company has customers including Fortune 500 companies and multinational organizations.

EdCast's Knowledge discovery & Learning Experience platform transforms the way learning/ knowledge is aggregated, curated & personalized in Fortune 500 Companies.

Be it helping Organisations unlock internal (& tacit) knowledge or personalizing learning to each learner, to bringing in context-rich content from free & open sources or delivering learning in a truly ubiquitous way, the solutions help you deliver it on all. EdCast comes with fully integrated MOOC platform power.

EdCast uses artificial intelligence and its curation engine to bring together organizations' internal learning content, expert insights along with millions of external resources into an easy-to-use, personalized learning experience and knowledge platform.

Since its founding at Stanford University, EdCast has been recognized by industry analysts as a new type of digital learning platform that is learner-centric and learner-driven. Powered by content pulled from many internal and external sources -- and enhanced by collaborative knowledge-sharing from within the organization -- EdCast is the application layer that facilitates personalized learning with proprietary AI and machine learning. Mobile first and embedded with social and collaboration capabilities, EdCast delivers both a superior learning experience for employees and enhanced levels of performance for organizations.

The EdCast executive team has a track record of building large-scale transformational technology solutions, and the company's entire team is passionate about the global impact of mobile and online knowledge-sharing. EdCast is based in Mountain View, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley, with offices worldwide.