Talk CXO Life

In this segment, Nishant shares how employee engagement is relevant and important across industries, regardless of the organisation’s size. He associates this with the changes in corporate culture marked by open workplaces, relaxed work attire and even the startup era. 

We also speak about the underestimated power of a genuine conversation within the context of engagement and Nishant’s future plans of expanding his services to a million offices across India and of building an authentic Indian brand globally. 

Stay Tuned.

Meet Nishant Parashar, Founder of engage4more, a leading employee engagement firm in Mumbai. Nishant who was also awarded the Business World Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2010, within about a year of setting up engage4more, shares how engaging with people and eliciting a response from them through events, activities have driven him since young.

As I revisit the fifth part of my conversation with Nishant on the role of technology and how it will change the ways companies engage with their employees, I can’t help but feel a bit eerie knowing that what seemed quite distant has become a reality almost overnight! The need to engage with employees remotely with the help of technology and that too, worldwide, as we are all witnessing it now.

Nishant shares his thoughts on how technology will provide the solution to effective engagement as it begins enabling an increasingly digitised world marked by remote offices, scattered workforce and a gig economy. He speaks of virtual buddy systems, digital streaming, digital gamification and counselling which he believes will help in leading this shift. Engage4more in fact already has three apps – Tikkle, Hug and Pat to boost online employee engagement. How? Well, Stay tuned to know more!

Hey! You are listening to the KIA series by TalkCXOLife and before I introduce our next guest, I hope and pray you and your loved ones are healthy, safe and sound and continue to be so during these very trying times! We are in this together and so may our commitment to ensure the wellbeing of ourselves and the society at large prevail!

Alright, no preaching now coz it isn’t fun at all is it. But you know what is? Imagine playing the drums or snakes and ladders or cuddling a pet or whipping up a dish whilst at work. No, we aren’t talking about working from home which is what offices the world over have had to adhere to, almost overnight. But about actually playing and having fun at work. Meet Nishant Parashar, Founder of engage4more, a leading employee engagement firm in Mumbai. Nishant who was also awarded the Business World Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2010, within about a year of setting up engage4more, shares how engaging with people and eliciting a response from them through events, activities have driven him since young.

In this fourth segment, Nishant shares an interesting insight on the effect meaningful employee engagement can have on containing attrition, with the CTC event as a strong case in point. He shares how the attrition rate is less than 10% among employees who participate consistently in CTC against the corporate 30%-plus attrition rate. Nishant also shares how repeat associations and participation by corporates, some since 9 years like Capgemini, Times of India, Walmart validate the value employers derive from such a collaboration.

We also discuss two factors which enable success of employee engagement programs – clarity of objective and understanding employee interest. On a lighter note, Nishant shares how companies are increasingly seeking ways to constantly have such engagement events with employees especially with the advent of social media!

Stay tuned.

Hey! You are listening to the KIA series by TalkCXOLife and before I introduce our next guest, I hope and pray you and your loved ones are healthy, safe and sound and continue to be so during these very trying times! We are in this together and so may our commitment to ensure the wellbeing of ourselves and the society at large prevail!

Alright, no preaching now coz it isn’t fun at all is it. But you know what is? Imagine playing the drums or snakes and ladders or cuddling a pet or whipping up a dish whilst at work. No, we aren’t talking about working from home which is what offices the world over have had to adhere to, almost overnight. But about actually playing and having fun at work. Meet Nishant Parashar, Founder of engage4more, a leading employee engagement firm in Mumbai. Nishant who was also awarded the Business World Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2010, within about a year of setting up engage4more, shares how engaging with people and eliciting a response from them through events, activities have driven him since young.

The third segment of my conversation with Nishant is primarily on this exciting trademark event of engage4more called CTC – Corporate Talent Championship touted as the world’s largest performing arts platform for corporates. CTC is a corporate reality show based on employee talent showcasing. It has about a lac participants across the country and across corporates participating. The ninth edition this year, which will again showcase employee talent within the 4 categories - music, acting, dancing and singing, is still set to be on course but with a twist! The competition is going to be conducted online this year and will be entirely intra-corporate to enhance employee engagement during this crisis scenario. Well, our well wishes are with the entire team to work through this challenge and make the CTC – Lockdown Edition, as it has been suitably christened – a super hit! Do visit www.ctcstars.com (http://www.ctcstars.com/) if you need more details. Stay tuned! Stay Engaged!

Hey! You are listening to the KIA series by TalkCXOLife and before I introduce our next guest, I hope and pray you and your loved ones are healthy, safe and sound and continue to be so during these very trying times! We are in this together and so may our commitment to ensure the wellbeing of ourselves and the society at large prevail!

Alright, no preaching now coz it isn’t fun at all is it. But you know what is? Imagine playing the drums or snakes and ladders or cuddling a pet or whipping up a dish whilst at work. No, we aren’t talking about working from home which is what offices the world over have had to adhere to, almost overnight. But about actually playing and having fun at work. Meet Nishant Parashar, Founder of engage4more, a leading employee engagement firm in Mumbai. Nishant who was also awarded the Business World Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2010, within about a year of setting up engage4more, shares how engaging with people and eliciting a response from them through events, activities have driven him since young.

In this second segment, Nishant shares some of the key challenges a corporate faces in effectively deploying employee engagement, namely the BIB – bandwidth, ideas and budget.

He believes it is unfair to expect HR to take the onus for employee engagement when the function critically demands marketing, response generation, which the HR is ill-equipped to handle. Nishant also speaks about his company’s fastest growing segment – providing employee engagement services for free! Yes, you heard it right. He foresees 1 lac offices signing up for this segment which has clocked a whopping 250% q-o-q growth rate and has about 1670 offices currently using the 4500 free activities engage4more offers.

We also speak on why having fun and engaging maximum senses simultaneously is imperative for effective employee engagement. Stay tuned!

Hey! You are listening to the KIA series by TalkCXOLife and before I introduce our next guest, I hope and pray you and your loved ones are healthy, safe and sound and continue to be so during these very trying times! We are in this together and so may our commitment to ensure the wellbeing of ourselves and the society at large prevail!

Alright, no preaching now coz it isn’t fun at all is it. But you know what is? Imagine playing the drums or snakes and ladders or cuddling a pet or whipping up a dish whilst at work. No, we aren’t talking about working from home which is what offices the world over have had to adhere to, almost overnight. But about actually playing and having fun at work. Meet Nishant Parashar, Founder of engage4more, a leading employee engagement firm in Mumbai. Nishant who was also awarded the Business World Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2010, within about a year of setting up engage4more, shares how engaging with people and eliciting a response from them through events, activities have driven him since young.

In this first segment of our conversation, Nishant speaks about his foray into events and employee engagement subsequently and how he remains connected to the thread of reaching out to people and evoking a response that continues to propel him and drive him.

We speak about the challenges of setting up a novel idea especially of grappling with the identity of a venture which doesn’t fall within the usual industry contours. And how reconnecting with and infusing fun in engagement proved to be a major game-changer for engage4more resulting in one of their biggest client wins with the FMCG giant P&G in 2017.

Happy listening!

This is a bonus segment of our conversation with Rajesh Saluja, CEO & Managing Partner, ASK Wealth Advisors. Now, if you have listened to the full conversation we had with Rajesh so far, you will know that this veteran financial advisor consulting several HNIs, is a rare mix of eternal optimism and solid pragmatism, which is why we think you ought to listen to this bonus segment which is on a matter of universal interest – wealth, better yet, on how to increase it. Rajesh shares basic, simple tenets of investing within the India context, importance of staying systematically invested in equities and in other well-regulated investment products and doing so, responsibly. We need to mention here that though this conversation was recorded some months ago, Rajesh maintains the views he had shared with us even currently, when Indian markets are off their peaks by a whopping 30% amidst these very trying and uncertain circumstances, prevailing globally. Rajesh believes in staying invested, being focussed on the long-term to unlock the power of compounding, the eighth wonder of the world as Albert Einstein put it, and that patience is the key to getting lucky. Stay tuned.

Rajesh Saluja, CEO & Managing Partner, ASK Wealth Advisors, has over two decades of experience in the consumer banking, wealth management and private wealth advisory verticals and is well known for his love for golf which he took to in 1999 when he was heading the Priority Banking & Deposits India arm for Standard Chartered Bank. He is also an avid cricketer and represents his son’s school at prominent inter-school-league tournaments, putting in several hours of dedicated practice during the season, typically October – March. That’s not all. Rajesh also enjoys playing Poker. 

This is the highlights segment of our conversation with Rajesh Saluja.

Happy Listening!

The International Women’s Day – celebrated worldwide every year on March 8th has come a long way over the century – from women demanding the right to vote to women currently excelling in every field, shattering glass ceilings, leading some of the largest conglomerates to being the epitome of balancing and managing it all – home, career, personal interests. But how do they really do it? How far do we still need to go? Is it even possible to have an added dimension personally and excel at it? We think we got some marvellous insights through our conversations we had with some stellar women CXOs. So, here’s a compilation of three feisty women, one who has run the distance of the earth and may soon be on her way to run it twice over – and she has headed some of the largest fintech organisations. Another went on from being a preschool teacher to being regarded as among the foremost K12 leaders in India and drew much strength from meditation through this rollercoaster journey and yet another, a distinguished Marketing veteran who went on to become a Masterchef Singapore finalist, starting an Indian supper club based on Maharashtrian-Bengali cuisine with her CXO husband. Seeing pink already? Well it’s about time, we say – the Sky Is Pink – Well it very well could be.  Watch out! 

 

We bring to you the remarkable example of Vaishali Kasture, who is part of the Amazon Web Services India Core Leadership Team. She was also the India Country Head at Experian and has headed stellar organisations such as L&T Financial Services, Goldman Sachs, Deloitte India, Infosys BPO, Citibank etc. Vaishali, also a mother and a canine-lover, spoke with us on balancing a high-pressure career and personal commitments apart from following a passion ardently – Vaishali is the first Indian woman to have run all the world major marathons and to think she took to running in her thirties! We bring to you excerpts of our conversation wherein she shares how running above all else, helped her get more honest with herself and gain clarity of what she wants out of life. We also spoke of the challenges women continue to face in a largely patriarchal society and corporate culture, and how it is indeed possible for a woman to taste success on her terms, and append an additional dimension - a dimension only for her to cherish. 

 

Priya Barve, Head of BrandLab, APAC at Google, wears many hats. One such is of a Masterchef! This creative marketing executive also runs a supper club in Singapore, The Bombay Howrah Dining Car, celebrating Maharashtrian and Bengali cuisine. She along with her equally prolific husband, Aniruddha Ganguly, CEO and Co-Founder at Negobot, have hosted several guests. In my conversation with them, Priya spoke about how she began cooking, her takeaways from participating in Masterchef. Humour is a constant companion throughout this conversation. We also elicit amusing reactions of her colleagues when they came to know of her aspirations. Priya shares how she has sought learning, challenges and growth rather than designations to guide her when she chose the organisations she worked with and how success to her is an accumulation of experiences and she hopes to continue to do so. 

Lina Ashar, Founder of Kangaroo Kids Preschool and Billabong High International School shared some enriching insights into understanding the human mind, what it means of being in the business of tapping a being’s utmost potential. Her journey from being a preschool teacher, starting with a single preschool in Bandra West to an acknowledged K12 chain, arguably the foremost to bring forth the concept of ‘learning is fun’ , is inspiring. In my conversation Lina speaks how meditation provided her the right compass to give her a sense of reality – one which enables one to tell stories correctly, in a more peaceful manner, approaching it through love rather than fear. She speaks about how the power of meaning and purpose is well within the reach of everyone and the futility of dependin

Rajesh Saluja, CEO & Managing Partner, ASK Wealth Advisors, has over two decades of experience in the consumer banking, wealth management and private wealth advisory verticals and is well known for his love for golf which he took to in 1999 when he was heading the Priority Banking & Deposits India arm for Standard Chartered Bank. He is also an avid cricketer and represents his son’s school at prominent inter-school-league tournaments, putting in several hours of dedicated practice during the season, typically October – March. That’s not all. Rajesh also enjoys playing Poker. 

Happy Listening!