Covid Pandemic has changed the world for many of us and Digital Inclusion has become an overnight priority. With schools being shut and classrooms moving to digital, the gap between thos who have access to digital and those who do not have only tells us part of this challenge. So many children that i personally know of have given up studying because they don't have either a smartphone or a laptop or a computer. Those who have also one of these also cannot afford data recharges needed every month to be able to access online education. While this is good news for entreprenuers and telco providers (they have an opportunity to bridget), this is certainly not an encouraging statistic for the nation where few million students complete education and enter the labor market every year. 

It was with this thought in the background, when i came to know of the concept of Digital Daan, i reached out to Osama Manzar, Founder & Director of Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) to understand the initiative and learn more. Osama started DEF at a time when Digital had not yet arrived. His struggle for years at the beginning of his career, leadership in setting up digital initiatives for leading print media houses, experiences in social enterprise, entreprenuership, ability to innovate, experiment and create opportunities are a phenomenal account that one can listen and learn from. 

Listen to this interesting Podcast (Listening Time: Approx 38 Mins) and yes, if you are a reader and listener of this Podcast, you can definitely action digital karma by offering some digital daan here.

In this brand new podcast episode of #TheChordsOfLife, my guest, Shreyasi Singh, Founder & CEO of Harappa Education shares her interesting journey from being a journalist to the CEO of an EduTech company, HARAPPA EDUCATION. Born and brought up in Bihar, she moved to Japan in the early years of her life and her experience of having lived in multiple cities made her agile and adaptable to change. Shreyasi believes that while her past defines her to a point, it is her actions today that have a larger bearing on the life! 

Back in March 2020, when the world was slowly awakening to the disruption caused by #Covid19, Shreyasi and her team were quick enough to realise this and introduced a campaign called #BEAT2020. The campaign is about embracing change, rising to the opportunity and being a role model in the face of crisis. No wonder, the campaign saw phenomenal response. As part of this campaign, her team introduced a free course, Embracing Change and no wonder, over 0.12 million people have logged into this course in last five months. 

Know more about the exciting journey of #SHREYASI and be ready to #BEAT2020 by listening to this episode. If you have questions or suggestions, please visit: www.vineettandon.com and drop in your suggestions! 

This week i have Jaba Menon, an Executive Coach sharing her perspective on our Podcast - The Chords of Life. Jaba has over three decades of experience and in her last assignment was working as Vice President, Marketing Communications at Centum Learning, a Bharti Group Company. A diligent practitioner of Nicheren Buddhism, Jaba consults global clients spread across 14 countries in her new avatar as an Executive Coach.  I was fortunate to have worked with her in early part of my career and I would not hesitate to admit that some of the marketing acumen i developed was under her able guidance. 

Having spent her early childhood days in Ranchi, Jaba emerges as a strong independent woman for whom sense of purpose and work shapes her identity. Music has always been part of her life and whenever she finds herself, overhwhelmed, the song Que Sera Sera, What Will be Will Be offers hope and guidance. Having worked in Corporates for over three decades, Jaba realised that the support system for Senior Leadership is hardly adequate and this was her starting point of her journey into Executive Coaching.  

Check out this interesting episode where Jaba shares her journey through the years and her commitment to reduce what she refers to as "Wastage of Human Potential". If you have questions or suggestions, please visit my website: www.vineettandon.com and write to me.  I personally answer all questions that listeners may have about the Podcast. 

This week i have a very interesting personality, probably India's First Teen Life Coach, Rajat Soni, sharing his perspective on our Podcast - The Chords of Life. Rajat has over two decades of experience and over the years has impacted over 500 families and 20000 teenagers with his coaching programs. 

A B.Tech Graduate, Rajat was working like many of us in corporate sector, when he quit his job and moved to executive coaching. He armed himself with a certification from International Coaching Federation (ICF) and changed his career path. It was during his executive coaching, when a CXO shared a challenge he was facing with his child, that's when Rajat got introduced to Teen Coaching. Since then there has been no looking back. 

Check out this interesting episode where Rajat shares his journey from a B.Tech corporate professional to a Teen Life Coach through his own shares of experiences & learnings from this interesting journey. 

Rajat's book, Un-Judge your teenager is a must read considering that sooner or later we all end up judging our teenagers and trust me, there is a better way to unlock many of those challenges that you will discover in his book. 

If you have questions or suggestions, please visit my website: www.vineettandon.com and write to me.  Will be glad to listen to you and respond. 

This episode of the Podcast, titled "Tum Kya Jaano Dosti Kya Hoti Hai" takes a trip down the memory lane of what Friendship used to mean in the early days of my life, when i was still in the school. Internet has not yet arrived and friendship experiences were all in the real world. We would sit and chat (not text) for hours, spend quality time doing nothing (productivity was yet to be discovered) and fight on things that these days we would simply ignore. 

Today, as i scroll over the list of hundreds of friends i have on social media, i feel that absolute numbers don't really mean anything. What matters is how deeply we have interacted and engaged with a few quality friends from this list and how much value we attach to these real relationships. 

This Podcast Episode is in Hindi and format is Poetry. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me via my website: www.vineettandon.com

Dr. Raj Dravid has over 40 years of experience and has led leadership roles at IL&FS Skills and Centum Learning Africa. Dr. Raj personal career journey spread over four decades is testimony of the fact that success in career is very much a product of hard work and doesn’t happens overnight. Here are a few interesting takeaways from this Podcast – In Conversation with Dr. Raj Dravid:

1) There is no substitute for on-ground experience: If you think that you are from a premiere institution and you can start working on strategy and take high level decisions without working on the ground, you are destined to fail and learn the hard way.

2) Embrace Change: Covid19 has taught the world a few hard lessons and the best one to take forward is to embrace change. If we are not resilient and don’t embrace change, we are going to be left behind. Learn in his own words, how Pager Industry was introduced and wiped out in almost 14 months'.

3) Everyone needs a job & dignity of work: If skills that we provide people with are useful on the job or create employment, there are high possibilities that people will come for it, undertake training and will settle for jobs. The failure that we see today when people are let go with the onset of Covid-19 is because we never created that environment where workers were treated as kind of extended families.

4) Favorite Quote from The Podcast: Ask people one question, “what can you do to help others so that they can in turn help you”.

5) Love for Music: In the words of Dr Raj, “Music gives you oxygen and allows you to extend creative expression in life”.  He enjoys listening to Carnatic Music, Marathi Music, Chamber Music and enjoys Ragas and classical Hindustani as well. He has authored a book titled “Listening to Bismillah Khan” which is a standard textbook in multiple universities.

If you have questions & suggestions about this Podcast, please visit: www.vineettandon.com and share your feedback. 

Humble beginnings and playing the right bets - is how I would describe the phenomenal journey of Kamal Karanth, Co-Founder, Xpheno (Extend Your Expression). A Post Graduate in Microbiology, Kamal started his career as a sales trainee in a pharmaceutical company and rose to phenomenal heights where he lead leadership positions for two of the largest staffing companies worldwide including MaFoi and Kelly Services. 

Born and brought up in in a middle-class family in Karnataka, Kamal family followed cricket and movies very seriously. The challenges he faced in the early days of life armed him with right package of discipline, change and relationships that formed the source-code of his successful journey and shaped him as a person.  

Listen to this authentic, unplugged and interesting journey in this brand new podcast episode of #TheChordsofLife. 

Do share your feedback or thoughts on my website: www.vineettandon.com 

In this special episode, i am happy to share a unique perspective on life, careers and inspiration by none other than Dr. Ashutosh Karnatak, Director Projects, GAIL India Pvt. Ltd. I first read his book Yes You Can way back in 2008 and never imagined that one day i will meet him and have a such heart warming discussion with him on various aspects of life. 

Dr Karnatak was born in an ordinary family, had very ordinary schooling and yet he managed to rise to being the Managing Director of such a large Public Sector Undertaking. His passion towards Karma, commitment to make teams succeed and revolutionary ideas like "Plus Meditation" makes him a leader worth talking about. 

To read more about this podcast, please visit: https://www.vineettandon.com 

A lot of people reach out to me to ask how can they take a leap in their creative careers - like how can they be successful musicians, how can they monetize their talent and become successful artists so on. Being a musical motivational speaker myself, i know these challenges are very much there and i also know there aren't any straight forward answers. 

In a quest to search for these answers, i bumped upon the interesting journey of Kavish Seth who is definitely a voice to take note of. Being an IIT Mumbai Graduate, he carved out his own journey into independent music and founded Zubaan. He curated a musical instrument called Noori which is a collaborative instrument that can play different styles of music. His poetry can mesmerize you, his voice can take you places and his authenticity is his unique signature mark. 

If you are an artist or a professional with creative side hustle, there is something we all can learn from his interesting yet exemplary journey.  Read more on http://www.vineettandon.com

March 20 was International Day of Happiness and the theme chosen for this year was being Happier Together. However, with the outbreak of #COVID19, forget happiness, the recommended course of action is “social distancing”, so as to prevent and contain the outbreak of disease any further. Can we be happy living in isolation? Does happiness necessarily involve being close to people? Does happiness and its meaning change if our environment change? What can we do to be happy in times of social distancing?     

According to different researches, there are as many definitions of happiness as many researchers are there.  Kenneth Benjamin, Founder of Happiness International says, “Happiness is when your life fulfills your needs” (1). Martin Seligman in his book Authentic Happiness published, Happiness, H = S+C+V, i.e. Happiness is a sum of persons generic capacity to be happy (S), Life Circumstances (C) and Voluntary Control (V). 

Happiness (or lack of it) is omnipresent. Lot depends upon our mental construct how and do we perceive it. For some of us it is in the present moment, for others it is an enduring experience. For some of us, it is about reliving experiences of the past and for some of us it is about imagining the future. For some of us it is an outcome, while for a few others, it is part of the process. For some of us, it’s about spending time alone, while for others, it’s about being with people who matter!   

Here’s how to find happiness amidst times of social distancing:  

1) Use Technology: Whether we prefer solitude or we prefer to live in company of people, technology can be a great enabler for times like these. If you are a people’s person, use technology, do video calls with people who you care about and stay virtually connected! Have a coffee or a drink together over a video call.  The experience may not be exactly the same, but it’s quite closer!  

2) Re-visit Old Hobbies: We all have hobbies which got somewhere lost in the daily grind of life. Revisit some of our old hobbies like playing an instrument, reading books, bird watching or simply anything! Picking up your old hobbies will provide much needed escape from pessimism that’s all over.   

3) Be Innovative: Just because we are advised to be in confinement and isolation doesn’t mean we compound this experience with a flavor of sadness. People around the world are innovating the way they cook, the way they do lectures, the way classes are held, the way they relax and so on. May be its time you decide what you can innovate – may be your next meeting or your next morning meditation practice and share it online.  

4) Pick Up A New Skill: Pick up a new skill, a new language, a course that can sharpen your existing knowledge or can start your journey into something totally new. Attending an online course will not only occupy your mind, sharpen your skill-sets but will also keep you away from the unhappiness that stems from nothingness.  

5) Follow Gratitude: No one chooses to be in the times we are currently in, however, despite all the bad situation world over, follow an attitude of gratitude. There is always something in our lives that we can be thankful for – the fact that we are reading this, the fact we are breathing and healthy, the fact that we can spend this time with our family and so on. Gratitude polarize our mind towards the positive things, thus removing unwanted unhappiness. 

If you have a question about Podcast, please feel free to write to me on [email protected] or visit http://www.vineettandon.com