» Talent

Internet Top 25 & Indian absence

Pushkar Sane — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:48:33 +0000

Earlier today I read Mary Meeker’s latest presentation on Internet Trends. It has lots of interesting data and analysis. One slide particular caught my attention as it highlighted top 25 Internet/tech companies.

I was happy to see several of Chinese companies climbing up that chart and challenging the US dominance in this area. On the other hand I was very disappointed to see absence of any Indian companies in that list. Its been more than 15 years since the commercial introduction of the Internet in India but we’re yet to produce a single company that can take a seat on top 25 table. It is rather unfortunate given the technical expertise and talent in India. Are we too busy fighting internally and happy about winning against our internal competition? Or are we satisfied with the fact that Google, Facebook, Yahoo etc have their development centers in India?

It surely got me thinking – specifically around what will it take for an Indian Internet company to earn a seat in global top 25. Wonder how many other people are thinking about it and is there a way to collaborate.

A day with Rishad

Pushkar Sane — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:15:06 +0000

It is always refreshing to spend time with Risad Tobaccowala. Last week I spent a day with Rishad in Delhi and learnt a couple of new things. He talked about ‘ignorance arbitrage’ and how that is likely to vanish from this world as information becomes easily (and timely) accessible. His point of view on ‘working media’ and ‘non-working media’ was quite refreshing and it caught attention of all the clients that he met in Delhi.

We got around talking about Talent and he said: “there is always a new wave behind us” – that made me think about the way we manage people in our industry. In most cases we put people with skills-of-the-past in-charge of managing people who are actually bringing in skills-of-the-future. Talented people don’t want to be managed and actually know how to manage themselves. So rather than thinking about managing talent we need to think about enabling talent and setting them free so that they can win. I think there is never a better than today to rethink how advertising industry manages talent.

Focus on Frontline

Pushkar Sane — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:25:16 +0000

Yesterday I spent 30 minutes with Rishad Tobaccowala and as always he had 2-3 very interesting things to say. One thing that really made me think is Rishad’s focus on frontline (it was refreshing as most people are just talking about topline or bottomline). He said: “I want to talk with the youngest people in organization. I want to focus on them and give them a platform to raise questions and express their ideas.”

I thought it was interesting because most senior leaders want to meet other senior leaders or mid-management staff when they visit a particular country or city or office. And that is true for both internal as well as external talent. And even if people talk to them… its more about just speaking at them rather than providing them a platform to interact & express freely. We’re in people business but as an industry (advertising) we don’t really invest time in frontline staff.

Rishad will be coming out to India & China over next couple of months and I’m looking forward to learning more about his approach & start practicing it in the near future.