SITM

Confirmed Speakers

• Dr. Pawan Agrawal
  The CEO of renowned Mumbai Dabbawalas. The Master of supply chain management spoke of the values and the sense of ownership that they carry to run their business, which ofcourse are the primary reasons of their flawless business excellence. He started off with his less believed theoretical knowledge by providing the take-aways from his business which are passion, commitment, consistency, 100% execution, accuracy and customer satisfaction. He then with utmost emphasis spoke of the principles that they follow in their business which are : Work is worship, Customer is God, no alternate to hard-work and finally importance to human values. All of these are instilled in the illiterate workers of this business working day and night with this consistent passion of treating their customers as God and thus providing them with an error-free service throughout. He also told the reason of this consistent passion which is the religious following of the employees towards Vithal God who preach to treat customers as God. Then he spoke of the bombastic statistical figures which are involved in their regular transactions. He told that each employee in their organization carries 60-65 kgs of food in the local trains of Mumbai and travels continuously for 8-9 hours regularly 7 days a week until excused otherwise. Thus 4 lac transactions of tiffins regularly, that too on time, even at the times of emergencies, when the trains were stopped or when Mumbai was flooded. Thus it’s been said that your clock can get late but not the delivery service of Dabbawala and thus the trust has reached to such an extent that people send money, jewellery to places using their tiffin delivery service. He proudly announced that his business is awarded as 6-Sigma standardization which is like making 1mistake in every 16 million transactions and also no police case or a strike has ever stained their image since its inception in 1890. Thus he conclusively suggested that we should not be after money and should work in the direction of helping people with full diligence. Because by the end of the day, all of it is rewarded in some form or the other.
• Preeti Shenoy
  A veteran writer, painter and poet. Initially she told the audience about her creativity in the domains of writing, painting, poetry and now into paper-quilling. She stressed on her belief that creativity is a part of every human and we are simply suppose to channelize it into the right direction in order to make it prove fruitful and note-worthy. She then enlightened us with the apt definition of creativity which is a perfect blend of richness of ideas and originality in thinking. Like students use mnemonics to be creative in learning, while home-makers use it in making food and decorating their place, a sports-person in developing new types of shots. She then moved on to explain her self-researched process to be more creative. Firstly, an incubation time is required for an idea to sprout out and so this stage is very critical for your inner creativity to take it’s shape In the form of an idea. Moving further she stressed on perseverance, which comes out as the backbone of implementing your idea into real life. She gave a very interesting example of Neil Young who makes pictures using dots and spends around 150-200 hours in making one. Further she stressed on conviction and courage without which neither Einstein nor Edison or any other creative man could have ever been able to make any discovery. She also acquainted us with the bitter fact that every creative thing will surely be criticized initially, but a person’s creativity turns successful only if he sticks to it ignoring all criticism and unfavourable judgements. She gave examples of her idols Jackson Pollock the Japanese painter and Johan Maroo who were the ones to receive immense criticism but fought their way out with the power of conviction which they pertained towards their work. Conclusively she suggested to have faith in ourselves and try digging out the creativity that’s hidden in us to implement the same into real life with utmost conviction and courage. She thus concluded with a very motivational and thought provoking quote : ‘A ship in a harbor is very safe. But that’s not what ships are built for’.
• Ranjan Malik
  He commenced the session with a very interesting concept of an ‘Elegant apt stage of innovation’, a stage where less will be to less and more will be too much. He suggested us to learn about such a stage, which can show us the right path of innovation and also educate us when to seize the innovation in a particular direction. Then he briefed us about the importance of innovation which changes the way we live, work and play everyday. He then familiarized us with the concept of ‘Equilibrioception’ which is the sense of balance for humans and animals while standing or walking. He showed concern regarding our failure in applying this concept in the field of innovation. Further on, he made us think about the good food cycle that we follow in our daily life, in which our hunger seeks tasty food, then our sensory stimulation increases and so normal food becomes boring and this junk food becomes the new normal food for us and when saturated with this new food, we again switch back to the wholesome (nutritious) food. He then questioned us to pick either of man-made or nature-made food. Our ambiguity was solved by his justified reasoning of our intense liking towards both the options that we can never pick either of them and thus both hold equal requirement for us. He further showed concern regarding the high decibel advertising and glitzy packaging that is being done now-a-days to allure the people to an irresistible extent and thus this modern lifestyle are configured around helping people chasse symptoms of happiness. Then he talked about normal consumers getting allured with the product to become Super consumers and then getting further attracted towards it to become hyper consumers and to make it more vivid he gave a very thoughtful quote : ‘If best things in a child’s life are things, then humans around him will always be inferior things’. He then gave a very interesting relation between Being and Becoming by Doing. In this every human being is doing some innovation or the other for becoming and once he becomes, he again feels the need to do more innovation for becoming and this continues forever. But this type innovation is required to be studied using the parameters like Impact, Uniqueness, Sustainability and Scalability, Adaptability, System Vitality, Balance and finally Generativity. He suggested that we should learn from Nature-The Master Innovator, in which waste of 1 species becomes food of other, power of regeneration is fiercely guarded, interest of system and individuals is perfectly aligned, it does not get clumsy and thus works towards enhancing and regeneration of system. Conclusively, he suggested us to learn about the distance we still need to travel to get to an Elegant-Apt state and thus innovate with gratitude else it’s just an abuse to the society and to spend resources on people who can afford it economically, not morally. Thus he concluded with a very motivational quote : It’s easier done than said : Unless you don’t want it badly enough.
• Vipul Goyal
  A stand-up comedian who talks in four languages : Hindi, English, C++ and Java. He took us through a 20 minutes non-stop humorous journey. But during the same, also left us with very thought provoking observations going around us. He touched the domain of media which is going too female oriented and thus all the advertisements involving soft ends of life are featured by women, while leaving all the harsh ends to be featured by men. He made a very thoughtful point of having always women as the ones loving children like in edibles for children and a man comes into play only when money becomes an issue in the child’s life like in insurance advertisements. This undermines the fact that even fathers carry the same kind of love for their children as the mother and thus should be featured vividly to influence the audience about the equality in the love for their children. He very humorously pointed out another important observation which involves planning of a child’s future in a haste in which we often forget to consider the viewpoint of the child and his own aspirations and dreams. It goes like this : Motivated with child plan insurance schemes we see a child playing with an airplane and think of making him a pilot considering that he is fond of planes, but what if the other second he goes banging the plane again and again into the wall, will this view be now making you change your decision. Thus such critical decisions should be taken very carefully and should not be too influential. He further made an interesting observation about moon getting a better treatment in the domains of mythology and bollywood songs that too when it goes on no moon break twice a month and shows up partially on most of the days of the month, while sun which shows up everyday without fail doesn’t get enough appreciation and is considered as a horrifying source in advertisements and bollywood songs. The conclusion of his session was a very humorous one, when the complete audience gave a standing ovation for his session which took him by surprise and even more surprising for him was the view faculty, director and other speakers standing for him and thus humorously announced that this has happened for the very first time in his life that a director gave him a standing ovation.
• Sanjay Kaul
  The initiator of ‘Khusboo Gujarat Ki’ tourism campaign. He talked about travelling, its history which is as old as mankind itself, its importance which includes prosperity, industrial revolution, social integrity and growth (at personal to country level) and finally its growth which has been 12% last year, the count of travelers to the country rose from 7477 lacs to 8505 lacs. He further took us to the lesson of cycle of development that a destination undergoes. The destination is first discovered, then it grows and consolidates, then it stagnates and finally deteriorates. He took the example of Nanital in this respect which once was an untouched hill-station and has now turned into an overcrowded town and is thus deteriorating. He then educated us about the ‘Khusboo Gujarat Ki’ which is a marketing campaign for a place and not a product, because product has a fixed life cycle, while a place if maintained religiously can top the priority list of travelers forever. He showed concern about the challenges like rampant usage of natural resources which is destroying the beauty of Gujarat and moreover the monetary growth which is expected out of agriculture and other eco-friendly ways and finally the sense of ownership which is expected to come from the localites itself as finally they are going to be the ones looking after the state in future. Conclusively, he suggested us to see life in a more beautiful manner even though it’s considered famously fragile, but we should churn beautiful moments out of it by visiting places and seeing a more flamboyant and joyous picture of life.
• Kaustubh Dhargalkar
  Elaborating on ‘Eye for Innovation’, Prof.KaustubhDhargalkar, an entrepreneur-turned-academicianstarted off with his viewpoint that the Indian Corporate should emerge with innovations which will enable it to be more than the backbone for the Global Corporate. Stressing on the fact that there is enough scope for innovation everywhere and that we just need to look around and observe to spot these opportunities he stated thattoday’s pain points are tomorrow’s opportunities. He then went on to share how his search began with 60 students every week trying to gather the pain points of the products/services of a sector by interacting with its consumers. This resulted Ina pool of more than 56,000 points of concern in 2 years which were further analysed by sir. This helped getting discussions in campus going as the studentsbecame curious and in turn better observers. sir then mentioned about websites that record the aspirations of customers, their experiences, pain points from a product amongst others that help organizations in improving on their products/services. These websites help in gathering the market insights by categories like brands, sectors and so on and are future repositories for future innovation. The next part of Prof.KaustubhDhargalkar’s talk was on how the education system should be. Drawing a brilliant analogy with a small child, sir illustrated how fostering the spirit of exploration among students right from the initial stages would result in motivated and confident individuals who wouldn’t need extra inputs to innovate and improvise in whatever they do.
• Sanjay and Shravan Kumaran
  Mr. Sanjay Kumaran and Mr.ShravanKumaran at the tender age of 10 and 12 earned the titles of CEO and President of Go Dimensions respectively, their very own mobile application firm. The masterminds behind 150 test apps conveyed to the spellbound audience that their success was no magic. Their top 4 apps that earned splendid ratings at the Apple App Store are examples of their innovative thinking and their incredible efforts. Prayer Planet is truly an example of out of the box thinking to provide an app for people on board flights to pray. Their apps have surpassed the count of 17,000 downloads across more than 40 countries, the top one being Catch Me Cop The duo also gave an insight to their upcoming apps which includes Go Map in India that will use data fed by people to guide and provide information on traffic, pollution and so on. They further went on to share their aspirations of coming up with the world’s lightest tablet called Go Sheet that would be configurable as per the user and would facilitate multitasking. The duo plan to be contributing 15% of the profits from Go Sheet sales to charity world over.
• Kaustubh Katdare
  Mr.KaustubhKatdare, the founder & CEO of CrazyEngineers sent across the message that achieving anything is possible. He started off by saying that external motivation sources do not work as in the long run the effect fades off and all that remains is one’s old self. He went on to say that there are 3 factors that form the magic equation to achieve anything that we want and they are extreme desire, super-duper excitement and commitment. The desire does not mean just the wants and wishes that an individual has but the true and passionate desires.
• Uddhab Bharali
  Mr.UddhabBharali, an Indian serial innovator, scientist as well as social entrepreneur started off with the note that one cannot have innovation as his part time job and has to live with innovation throughout. He had the audience enthralled throughout his session not only with his amazing list of innovations but also with his passion to do something for the country and people who struggleto earn a living. He spoke about the challenges that he had to face in his journey so far and his strong will of not accepting defeat in any of his ventures. Mr.UddhabBharali mentioned a few of his innovations that were open for further improvement so that they would serve their purposes in a much better way. Among these were the brilliant instances of the wheelchair for the differently abled to ease their life to an extent and the tea leaf processor machine that has been a relief to some of the small tea plantations in Assam. The small fish dressing and the areca nut machine are some of his other innovations that have come as a boon to many people. With 98 innovations to his credit Mr.UddhabBharali is striving continuously to uplift women and also the poor. He also emphasised that when one really has a passion to not give up and work with dedication money follows automatically. So it is the drive of the person wanting to do something that helps him to innovate.