T A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Manipal, Karnataka witnessed an interesting guest lecture delivered by. He is currently, Corporate Vice President Head of HR for all businesses at Capgemini India encompassing Application services, IT Infrastructure Management, Consulting, Sogeti & BPO. Prior to this, he was Executive Vice President and Global CHRO for Patni – Global IT Services Company. He holds an MBA degree in HR and Finance from the University of Mumbai. He started his career in systems on COBOL platforms in the eighties, and went on to become a corporate banker with ICICI group. During the era of financial liberalization in India, he worked as a Corporate Banker with ICICI. His specialities include Organizational excellence, Leadership solutions architect, Learning and Development, Strategic HR practice, Global Compensation and benefits, Organization Restructuring, Shared services, PCMM and Life Coach.
Mr. Rajesh Padmanabhan started by touching upon various aspects like importance of an individual’s goal setting and working towards achieving the goal. He discussed what sets apart an institution and its students. He expressed his opinion, that it is encouraging to see the number of students interested in taking up entrepreneurial initiatives increasing. This shows measurement of success is restricted not only to corporate but entrepreneurial initiatives as well. Research is the backend to drive excellence. Everyone wants a dream runway to raise ones patience in search of a dream run. Resistance and anxiety builds up when ones does not meet one’s aspirations.
Mr. Rajesh Padmanabhan highlighted the readiness of students pursuing Management education in India – which stands at a large number of 3 lakh students, in 2012. There are over 4500 B-schools in India catering to these students. However, only around 20% of these management graduates every year are employable. He emphasized the importance of research during a management graduation course. He also underlined that beyond academics, the number of research papers from B-school students is declining sharply. This eventually results in lack of global business perspectives amongst students. According to him, there exists immense talent in the country and it is this potential which needs to be tapped appropriately.
Mr. Rajesh Padmanabhan analysed the gaps in the current system. Few of his assessments in this area were that practical hand on experience is necessary and so is leadership grooming. Cross cultural skills and new models of team effectiveness are areas that need improvement as well. He stressed on the value of employability skills – never to sacrifice ambitions. Change and transformation is constant. Group dynamics helps in channelizing and making winning teams. Effective communication, adaptability, willingness to learn and apply, and dealing with ambiguity are few of the very important aspects in today’s corporate world. The avenues to learn and explore consists of cloud, big data analytics, predictive modelling, mobility & convergence, social media and industry interface set up.
The speaker rounded off his speech by mentioning that the world today is moving towards virtual space without one being physically present. This session was followed by an interactive round where in the students of TAPMI asked questions, much appreciated and answered by the speaker. It was indeed an enriching address by the Corporate Vice President & Head HR of Capgemini – Mr. Rajesh Padmanabhan.
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