GUEST Michael Watkins is the best selling author of The First 90 Days and Master Your Next Move: The Essential Companion to The First 90 Days, published by Harvard Business Review Press. He is the Co-Founder of Genesis, a global leadership development consultancy based in Boston, MA where he coaches CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. He is also Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at the IMD Business School in Switzerland where he teaches two open programs for leaders in transition, inc...
Jun 13, 2019•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 485
GUEST Kartik Hosanagar is the John C. Hower Professor of Technology and Digital Business and a Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Kartik’s research work focuses on the digital economy, in particular the impact of analytics and algorithms on consumers and society, Internet media, Internet marketing and e-commerce. His book - “A Human’s guide to Machine Intelligence” has recently been published by Penguin Randomhouse in India. The book is a comprehensiv...
May 21, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 473
GUEST Rajat Gupta is a former CEO (Managing Partner) of McKinsey & Co. and led the firm between 1994 to 2003 across 3 terms of 3 years each. He was the first non-American CEO of McKinsey & Co. and arguably one of the first Indians to lead a pedigreed organization at a Global level. In 2012, Rajat was convicted on charges of insider trading and sentenced to two years in Jail. He recently published his memoir, titled “Mind without Fear” published by Juggernaut Books. Given most of the pres...
Apr 27, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 463
GUEST Falguni Nayar is the Founder and CEO at Nykaa.com . She founded it in 2012 with the vision of making the best of beauty products available all across India. Today, Nykaa.com ’s collection includes the best of Indian and International brands across make up, skin care and hair care categories. Falguni is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and initially worked as a Consultant with AF Ferguson & Co and then as an Investment Banker at Kotak for about ~18 years (with roles in International Business...
Apr 10, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 453
GUEST Rich Fernandez is the CEO of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI). Prior to this he was a Director of Executive Education and People Development at Google. SIYLI began as an initiative in Google in 2007 when a team of leading experts in mindfulness, neuroscience and emotional intelligence developed an internal course for fellow Googlers. It quickly became incredibly popular within Google and given the interest outside Google was so great, SIYLI was set up as an independent N...
Mar 14, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 444
GUEST Stewart D. Friedman is a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program and Wharton’s Work/Life Integration Project. He has been on the Wharton faculty since 1984 and became the Management Department's first Practice Professor in recognition of his work within the fields of Leadership Development, Human Resources and Work–Life Integration on the application theory and research on the real challenges ...
Feb 13, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 435
GUEST Ramachandra Guha is a historian and biographer based in Bangalore. He has taught at the universities of Yale and Stanford, held the Arné Naess Chair at the University of Oslo, and been the Indo-American Community Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. In the academic year 2011-2 he served as the Philippe Roman Professor of History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics. Guha’s books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods ...
Jan 17, 2019•52 min•Ep. 426
GUEST Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School (HBS), where he has sought for two decades to study the drivers of entrepreneurship in emerging markets as a means of economic and social development. At HBS since 1993, after obtaining degrees from Princeton and Harvard, he has taught courses on strategy, corporate governance and international business to MBA and Ph.D. students and senior executives. For many years, he has served as the Faculty Chair for HBS a...
Dec 05, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 415
GUEST Indranil Chakraborty runs StoryWorks, that helps organisations and leaders harness the power of stories to create and deliver impactful messages. He has spent two decades of experience leading teams and driving change at reputed firms such as Unilever, Tata Group and Mahindra & Mahindra. He is the author of the book "Stories at Work - Unlock the secret to Business Storytelling” published recently by Penguin Random House. In our conversation, we talk at length about some of the insights...
Nov 15, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 407
GUEST Mr Om Prakash Bhatt (OP Bhatt) is the Chairman of Tata Steel Limited and a Board Member at Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) and Standard Chartered Bank. He started his career in State Bank of India (SBI) as a probationary officer in 1972 and retired as the Chairman of SBI in 2011. I had first met him when I was participating in the Director’s Club programme conducted by Hunt Partners, designed to prepare individuals to be effective Board Memb...
Oct 23, 2018•55 min•Ep. 397
GUEST Ambi Parameswaran is the Founder of Brand-building.com , a Brand Advisory Organization. In a career spanning 30+ years, Ambi has handled assignments in Marketing, Sales and Advertising with companies like Rediffusion DY&R, Boots Company and UDI Yellow Pages before dropping anchor at FCB Ulka where he spent about 25 years finishing as ED & CEO of FCB Ulka Group. Ambi has also been a prolific author and his ninth book is 'SPONGE - Leadership Lessons I learnt from my Clients'. The boo...
Oct 05, 2018•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 388
GUEST Arun Maira is a former member of the Planning Commission of India and former Chairman of BCG India. He had a distinguished career in Tata Motors (then called TELCO) and rose to be on the Board of the company. He then had to relocate to the US due to a personal situation and had to reinvent himself at 45. He has written several books, the most recent one being “Listening for well-being: Conversations with people not like us”. In our conversation, we discuss some of his key transitions post ...
Sep 19, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 376
GUEST Bombay Jayashri is one of the leading Carnatic musicians in the country. She is born into a family of musicians with a rich lineage in classical music. She represents the fourth generation of music practitioners in her family. Apart from her contribution to the world of Carnatic music, she has collaborated with artists around the world including Egyptian musician Hisham Abba, Senegalese musician Thione Seck and Finnish composer - Eero Hammeeniemi. Her collaboration with Sir Ang Lee (for th...
Sep 05, 2018•52 min•Ep. 363
GUEST Deepa Malik is a Silver Medalist at Paralympic Games (Rio 2016), an Arjuna Awardee (2012) and a Padma Shree Awardee (2017). She has won 58 National and 18 International medals (and counting) in her sporting career that started at the age of 36. She is paraplegic and was compelled to spend the rest of her life on a wheelchair after choosing to undergo a crucial surgery in 1999. This happened around the same time when her husband was fighting the Kargil War. In our conversation, we spoke abo...
Aug 08, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 353
GUEST Neera Nundy is Co-Founder at Dasra - India’s leading strategic philanthropic foundation. Dasra actively shapes the process of social change by forming powerful partnerships with funders and social enterprises. Since its inception in 1999, Dasra has accelerated social change by driving collaborative action through powerful partnerships among a trust-based network of stakeholders (corporates, foundations, families, nonprofits, social businesses, government and media). Over the years, Dasra h...
Jul 13, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 341
GUEST Vinay Sitapati is an Assistant Professor in Political Science and Legal studies at Ashoka University. He has a PhD in Politics from Princeton University, in addition to degrees from National Law School Bangalore and Harvard University. His book - Half Lion: How P.V Narasimha Rao Transformed India (Published by Penguin Randomhouse) - traces P.V. Narasimha Rao’s journey from his modest beginnings in Telangana to the post of the Prime Minister. More importantly, the book talks about the fact ...
Jun 20, 2018•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 330
GUEST Roopa Kudva is Partner at Omidyar Network and Managing Director of Omidyar Network India Advisors, where she leads overall Investment Strategy, Operations and Portfolio Development. Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Roopa spent 23 years with CRISIL, and was its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer from 2007. She led CRISIL’s transformation from India’s premier ratings agency into a diversified global analytical company. Under her leadership the company’s market capitalisation grew...
May 31, 2018•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 319
GUEST Chandramouli Venkatesan (Mouli) has a strong corporate track record of over 25 years. He is an alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur and spent his initial years in Sales and Marketing in Asian Paints, GE Capital and Onida. He worked with Cadbury’s from 2005 till 2016. Over that time Cadbury metamorphosed to Kraft Foods and Mondelez and his last role there was Managing Director for India. In his decade-plus time there, he has worked across areas including Strategy, Marketing, HR and General Managemen...
May 10, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 307
GUEST Amit Chandra heads Bain Capital in India and is a Managing Director in the Financial and Business Services Vertical and a member of the Asia Pacific Private Equity team and a part of its leadership group. Before joining Bain Capital Private Equity, he spent most of his professional career at DSP Merrill Lynch, a leading Investment Bank in India. He retired from DSP Merrill Lynch in 2007 as a Board Member & Managing Director. Amit is also a committed Philanthropist. He and his wife Arch...
Apr 26, 2018•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 294
GUEST Baijayant Jay Panda is currently serving in his 4th term in the Parliament of India. He was elected to his second term (2014-2019) in the Lok Sabha from the Kendrapara constituency, Odisha. He graduated from the Michigan Technological University and, with a background in Engineering and Management, worked in the world of Business before joining politics. Jay Panda had helped to form the erstwhile Young Parliamentarians Forum (YPF) and was its Convener. He has also been associated with the ...
Mar 29, 2018•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 282
GUEST Devdutt Pattanaik writes on relevance of mythology in modern times, especially in areas of management, governance and leadership. Trained in medicine, he worked for 15 years in the healthcare and pharma industries before he focussed on his passion full time. He is author of 30 books and 600 columns, with bestsellers such as My Gita, Jaya, Sita, Business Sutra and the 7 Secret Series. He was a speaker at TEDIndia 2009 and spoke on Myths that Mystify, East versus West. His TV shows include B...
Mar 16, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 269
GUEST Suresh Narayanan is the Chairman and MD of Nestle India Limited (which recently crossed INR 10,000 Crores for the first time after about a century of operating in India). Suresh is often dubbed as a turnaround leader given what he has accomplished in various markets - Handling the operations in Singapore during the 2008 financial crisis, Leadership in Egypt, Libya and Sudan during the Arab Spring around 2011, turning around Maggi in 2015 when the company had taken a significant hit on the ...
Feb 16, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 257
GUEST KV Sridhar (Pops) is one of the most respected creative leaders in the Indian Advertising World and has been the driving force behind several international awards including 22 Cannes Lions. He currently runs Hypercollective - a cross-disciplinary platform for leading independent companies in strategy, communication, content, design, technology and data to collaborate and solve real world problems for brands, institutions and governments. In our conversation, Pops spoke about his humble beg...
Jan 25, 2018•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 247
GUEST Meher Pudumjee is the Chairperson of Thermax Limited, one of India’s leading energy and environmental engineering companies. She is also an active Philanthropist with a passion for making a difference in Education. She is the Chairperson of Akanksha Foundation and is a Trustee of Teach to Lead, Mumbai. She is also on the Board of Imperial College India Foundation, Shakti Sustainable Solutions and Pune City Connect. Meher has a keen interest in music, especially western classical and is a m...
Jan 11, 2018•43 min•Ep. 239
As we approach the end of 2017, we at the Play to Potential Podcast decided to step back and reflect on the year that has gone by and the incredible learnings from the various conversations at the podcast. It is hard to distil 20 plus hours of content into a few minutes but we wanted to share some key themes that stood out for us across the various interviews we had. We are excited to share that www.playtopotential.com (the site where the content is hosted) now has Curated Playlists by themes th...
Dec 21, 2017•27 min
GUEST Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand is an Indian chess grandmaster and a former World Chess Champion, considered as one of the greatest chess players of all time. Anand was the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991–92, India's highest sporting honour. In 2007, he was the first sportsman to receive India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan. Harnessing the full potential of our mind and staying relevant in the context of advances in machines is something that al...
Nov 17, 2017•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 230
GUEST Anu is a Partner with McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), the economics and business research arm of McKinsey & Company. She is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and worked for a few years in Banking before joining Consulting at McKinsey. Subsequently, she moved from the Consulting track at McKinsey to her current role at MGI through some experiments along the way. In our conversation, Anu spoke about some of the influences in her childhood and how they have equipped her for life. She also refl...
Oct 27, 2017•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 218
GUEST Dheeraj Pandey is Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Nutanix, Inc. (Market Cap of ~USD 3.5 Billion) that had an IPO in September 2016. Nutanix is a cloud computing software company that sells what it calls hyper-converged infrastructure appliances and software-defined storage. He grew up in Patna and is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and UT Austin. In our conversation, Dheeraj spoke about his early formative years and the rationale behind some of the initial career choices (writing JEE twice, going...
Oct 13, 2017•1 hr•Ep. 207
GUEST Rama Bijapurkar is India’s most respected thought leader on market strategy and India’s consumer economy. She has an independent consulting practice and works across sectors and organization types, describing her mission as “bringing market and customer focus to business strategy”. In addition to her consulting practice, she is on Boards of several blue-chip companies. She is a regular visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, her alma mater, and is a member ...
Sep 29, 2017•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 196
GUEST Zia Mody is an Indian legal consultant and considered an authority on Corporate Merger and Acquisition Law, Securities Law, Private Equity and Project Finance. She is an alumnus of Harvard Law School and worked for 5 years in the US with Baker and Mackenzie in New York City before returning to India. She started her own practice in Mumbai in 1984 and over the years, she has built AZB & Partners – one of India’s largest and most reputed law firms where she is the Managing Partner. She h...
Aug 31, 2017•39 min•Ep. 184
