Future of Work Playbook

Gaurav Kumar

Gaurav has worked extensively in the area of higher & vocational education, workforce development and future skills.

In his previous roles at KPMG and PwC India- he advised key stakeholders such as- central ministries, state governments, bi&multi-lateral agencies, education institutions and employers across sectors on changing workforce requirements, impact of technology on labor elasticity and key priority areas in future. In his last avatar as Vice President & Head of Strategy – Special Initiatives at Reliance Jio, Gaurav was responsible for new business ventures, product management and investments.

In his current role at upGrad as President – Corporate Development, Gaurav heads M&A, Partnerships and Strategic Alliances with key stakeholders in HigherEd, HRTech, Financial Institutions and Employers.

Lux Rao

As the leader for the Digital business, Lux is responsible for devising the strategy and lead the charge for NTTs foray in digitally enabling organizations across sectors & industries thereby adding impetus to the Digital Solutions Business at Dimension Data.

Prior to joining NTT, Lux was heading the Digital Transformation Office at Cisco. He was responsible for driving the Digital Transformation (DT) agenda and help customers define their digital journey & chart out the Transformation Roadmap across various verticals such as Healthcare, Manufacturing, BFSI, Retail, Smart Cities etc.

Lux is a regular speaker at technology conferences in India & Abroad and has chaired/moderated several conferences. He has been awarded the prestigious IDC Award for Excellence in Innovation for the year and best CTO – Digital Transformation He has also won the coveted “Technology Evangelist for the Year” – an Industry recognition for three years in a row.
Lux is an Electronics & Communication Engineer from Bangalore University, PG in System Analysis & Design and an MBA specializing in Marketing & Finance from Manipal University.

Robin Bhowmik

Robin Bhowmik is the Chief Business Officer for Manipal’s Global Academy of Banking, Insurance and Financial services. An innovative, entrepreneurial, growth and results-driven executive with over 24 years of global experience; Robin is a recognized expert in using both consumer and enterprise technology to drive disruption within Industries that include Education, Banking and Healthcare.

He has led global teams within the technology industry across Europe, Asia Paciﬁc and Japan and has performed leadership roles within industries that include Healthcare, Telecommunications and Financial Services. In these roles, Robin has successfully delivered organic and inorganic growth while leading geographically diverse teams focused on Management Consulting, Digital transformation and Global Delivery besides spearheading change management programs.

An alumnus of University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business; Robin additionally holds a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Jadavpur University, an Advanced Diploma from NIIT in Systems management and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Calcutta University.

Anjana Ravi

Ms. Anjana Ravi works in the employment law team at TLA, Bangalore, a boutique law firm with depth of understanding and domain expertise in Technology & Outsourcing, IP, Privacy law, Labour & Employment matters, Sports law and Start-Up legal offerings and has a law degree from the National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi. Ms. Anjana’s focused domains are employment, technology and privacy law.

In labour and employment law matters, she has specific focus and expertise in, reductions in force (RIF), equal opportunity and disability policies, contingent workforce and staff augmentation, workplace privacy and structuring of wages, benefits and compensation.

Sheahan Verghese

Sheahan Verghese is the co-founder of TLA [Tree of Life Associates], a boutique law firm with depth of understanding and domain expertise in Technology & Outsourcing, IP, Privacy law, Labour & Employment matters, Sports law and Start-Up legal offerings. Mr Verghese’s focused domains are employment, technology, outsourcing, transactional IP and privacy law and he is the Practice Head of these areas at TLA, Bangalore. He specialises in cross-border and local technology deals and techno-commercial contracts, including outsourcing, technology transfer, collaboration, reseller and licensing transactions (including software, gaming and SaaS contracts), and software services supply, sourcing, reseller, subscription and other commercial contracts related to the development, licensing and use of the software. He also advises technology start-ups and mobile application developers on their IP protection, development and commercialization strategy. He advises on legal and regulatory issues in the new age and emerging technologies such as IoT, AI and cryptocurrency as well.

Manmeet Singh

Manmeet currently works in the Citi as Practice Area Lead – Digital Skills. The job involves getting employees, HR and learning professionals within Citi to be ready for the future workplace. It involves identifying future skills and helping build digital acumen within the organization.

He has worked across HR and learning domain and likes working on projects at the intersection of people and technology. He has worked extensively in leadership development, coaching, digital learning simulations and collaborative learning projects.

He likes reading, running and learning new languages. He is passionate about learning and loves to have conversations over cup of coffee or tea, in-person or virtually.

Vikrom Mathur

Vikrom is the Founding Director of Tandem Research – a Goa based research collective conducting interdisciplinary policy analysis at the interface of technology, sustainability and governance. Vikrom is an anthropologist of science and technology.

His research focus interests include: the governance of emerging technologies, social and cultural dimensions of socio-technological and sustainability transitions. He has a PhD from the Institute of Science, Society, and Innovation at the University of Oxford.

Sumit Lakhani

Sumit Lakhani is the Chief Marketing Officer of Awfis Space Solutions which is India’s largest network of co-working spaces. With over a decade of experience spanning across Investment Banking, Private Equity and IT Services sector, he has played a key role in shaping impactful ventures.

Sumit joined Awfis at the inception as part of core management team and heads Demand & Supply side function at Awfis. Key responsibility areas includes Sales, Marketing, Real Estate Acquisition, Fund Raising and Strategy. Previously, he has worked as Vice President with the investment banking team at Yes Bank. His earlier stints include Tesco and ST Asset Management, Singapore.

Naomi Climer

Naomi is an engineer and leader, her career has been spent in the Broadcast and Communications technology industry including technology leadership roles at the BBC, ITV and Sony both in Europe and the US. Now Naomi focuses on the role that technology will play in the future and advocates for technology as a force for positive change, highlighting the changes we need to make as a society to better equip us for this future.

Naomi is the Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, Non Executive Director at Focusrite Plc and Sony UK Technology Centre, Past President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Trustee at the Royal Academy of Engineering and Chair of Council at the International Broadcasting Convention.

Naomi was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2018 for services to the engineering profession.

Chandramouli Srinivasan

Chandramouli has over 20 years of experience in research-based consulting engagements in the B2B and B2C market spaces, positively impacting close to 300 clients.

He has been instrumental in building Feedback Insights into a leading firm focused on carrying out Customer Experience Studies, Customer Journey maps, Employee Experience, Dealer Satisfaction studies and Brand assessments for leading B2B firms across sectors. His key strength is his ability to design a contextual research approach which is specific to the client’s business objective.

Chandramouli is a regular speaker in various industry forums and associations such as SPIN, NASSCOM, IMTMA, etc and conducts guest lectures on B2B market research at various management institutes such as IIM Bangalore, XIME, IFIM, Symbiosis University, SDM Mysore etc.

Sangeet Paul Choudary

Sangeet Paul Choudary is an international best-selling author of the books Platform Revolution and Platform Scale and a C-level advisor to Fortune 500 firms in Europe, North America and Asia. He has been selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and is ranked among the top 30 emerging thinkers globally by Thinkers50. His work on platforms has been selected by the Harvard Business Review as one of the top 10 management ideas globally or 2017 and has been included twice in the HBR Top 10 Must Reads compilations.

Sangeet is a frequent speaker at global events including the G20 Summit 2014, the United Nations, the World50 Summit, the Mobile World Congress, and the World Economic Forum events. Sangeet is an Entrepreneur-in-residence at INSEAD Business School and was formerly the co-chair of the MIT Platform Strategy Summit at the MIT Media Labs. He is also appointed to the WEF’s Global Future Council on Platforms and Systems.

Raymond Koh

Raymond is Research Director with IDC, leading the Asia/Pacific Future of Work, AR/VR and Mobility practices, based in Singapore.

In this role, he provides strategic insights and advisory services to business leaders, C-Level executives for their business transformation, technology investments and go-to-market strategies. Raymond brings deep understanding of the technology sector and analyzes the impact of emerging technologies such as AR/VR, AI, IOT as well as demographic changes, and evolving people behaviors on Future of Work and society at large.

As a DX business development evangelist and an entrepreneurial and innovation consultant, Raymond provided consultancy services to organizations helping them reinvent their businesses for the digital age. Prior to joining IDC, he was the head of Deloitte SEA’s Risk Innovation Center. In this role, he had helped to incubate new innovation and greenfield projects.

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Mandeep Maitra

Mandeep is a Leadership & Transformation Consultant and Coach with nearly three decades of work experience across Paris, London, Singapore & Mumbai. She has successfully mentored and coached High Performing teams and Senior Business Leaders across industries and countries.

During her stint in Paris she was a part of the Academy of Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship – Gconsultancy, London. She was involved in facilitating design thinking workshops, mentoring start-ups and coaching women entrepreneurs. As the Country Head Human Resources and Corporate Services for HDFC Bank based in the Corporate Office at Mumbai, she is considered the ‘architect’ of the HR function in HDFC Bank and managed mega mergers to build scale and reach for the Bank. The HDFC Bank group grew from less than 1500 people to around 80,000 during her tenure.

She is on the board of the HR Fund that supports technology start-ups focused on new world of work by focusing on workforce experience and productivity, enterprise benefits, workforce healthcare, gig economy, AI/ robotics etc. She is also a motivational speaker who has won several awards for her organisations and in an individual capacity.

Mandeep is the chairperson of the Steering Committee for Engineering the Future of Work in India, an initiative by the IET.

Samir Desai

Samir Desai is the Vice President – Central Operations and Customer Experience at OYO WorkSpaces. In this role, His role entails building and driving a culture of strong processes to raise the bar for customer experience by leveraging technology-based solutions for solving day-to-day challenges at our co-working centres. He also leads the capability building initiatives for all customer-facing staff that are at the fore-front of client experience at all locations and across all brands of OYO Workspaces.

Samir comes with almost 18 years of experience in a diverse set of industries including financial services, consulting, not for profits, personal care and insurance. Notable organisations that he has worked for are McKinsey&Company, Lakme Lever and Naandi Foundation. His last role was with OneAssist Consumer Solutions as Vice President of Customer Service and Customer Experience.

Ashish Goenka

A veteran in the coworking, Ashish has run small community-orientated spaces for several years, before switching to a large-format enterprise coworking model with his family business, Redbrick Offices. Hailing from Kolkata, Ash is a proud father of 3 daughters, and is passionate about community, collaboration and unschooling.

A Software Engineer and a Chartered Accountant, Ashish returned to India in 2008 from the UK, leaving behind a diverse career across Tech, Consulting & Investment banking. Since then, Ash has been involved in coworking, India market entry and advisory and an active part of the startup ecosystem.

Manmeet Singh

Manmeet currently works in the Citi as Practice Area Lead – Digital Skills. The job involves getting employees, HR and learning professionals within Citi to be ready for the future workplace. It involves identifying future skills and helping build digital acumen within the organization.

He has worked across HR and learning domain and likes working on projects at the intersection of people and technology.

He has worked extensively in leadership development, coaching, digital learning simulations and collaborative learning projects.

He likes reading, running and learning new languages. He is passionate about learning and loves to have conversations over cup of coffee or tea, in-person or virtually.

Yeshab Giri

Yeshab Giri is VP Specialties & RT for Randstad India. He has been at the forefront of pushing boundaries with his team and businesses at this organization.

Yeshab has spent considerable time in the staffing industry learning and impacting it. Building businesses from scratch to turning around ailing divisions, he has always welcomed challenges and believes in taking calculated risks. His experience ranges from industries like FMCG/ Office Automation and now HR Services.

He passionately believes that data speaks facts and has also been instrumental in driving a performance based culture in his teams & organization. He is passionate about helping young leaders, coaching & mentoring them to unlearn/ learn and move forward.

Pranjal Sharma

Pranjal Sharma is an economic analyst, advisor and writer who focuses on technology, globalisation and media. He guides projects on economic forecasting, business intelligence and public diplomacy with Indian and global organisations.

He served as a member of the Global Agenda Council on Transparency and Anti-Corruption at the World Economic Forum for eight years. He is now a member of its expert network. Pranjal is also a Speaker at The Outstanding Speakers Bureau.

He is the co-author of The Z Factor. His book Kranti Nation: India and The Fourth Industrial Revolution, published in 2017 was the first to chronicle the impact of emerging technologies in India. Pranjal has written and edited several reports and papers on economic development. He is columnist with Business Standard newspaper and BusinessWorld magazine among other publications.

As Founding Executive Editor at Bloomberg UTV, he helped launch and run the channel. At TV Today Network, his team pioneered business news content for non-English audiences. Pranjal received the News Television Award for the best business show in 2007.

Amit Vadera

Amit Vadera – Business Head of BFSI and PSU Vertical, TeamLease Services Ltd.

Amit started his professional journey with Infomedia India Limited (Ex- Tata Infomedia ) as a Management Trainee in the year 2005 and joined TeamLease Services in 2007 & has handled various portfolios for more than a decade. Today, as part of TeamLease’s Staffing Leadership team, He drives the corporate vision of “Putting India to Work”. as head of BFSI and PSU vertical at TeamLease. A resourceful, multilingual, result-oriented professional recognised for building high-performance teams.

Samip Mutha

Samip Mutha has 15 Years of experience in Management Consulting, Digital Transformation and Corporate Innovation across geographies and industries. Currently working as Vice President and Group Head – Digital and Innovation with RPG Enterprises. One of the early Digital leader who crafted a vision of “Reimagine.RPG” and established a dedicated Digital team RPG driving business benefits through Digital Innovations.

Started Digital RPG from scratch driving the Strategy and agenda of the various group companies by working closely with the Digital and Leadership Teams. Today RPG is one of the lead group in India leveraging digital to not just enable new ways of doing things but also drives the top line and bottom line impacts across our businesses.

He is regular speaker at many industry forums and events on Digital Transformation, Industry 4.0 and Digital Innovation. He is also a visiting faculty to leading B-schools and also an adviser to Digital Start ups and Investment Ventures.

Gaurav Kumar

Gaurav has worked extensively in the area of higher & vocational education, workforce development and future skills. In his previous roles at KPMG and PwC India- he advised key stakeholders such as- central ministries, state governments, bi & multi-lateral agencies, education institutions and employers across sectors on changing workforce requirements, the impact of technology on labour elasticity and key priority areas in future.

In his last association as Vice President & Head of Strategy – Special Initiatives at Reliance Jio, Gaurav was responsible for new business ventures, product management and investments.

In his current role at upGrad as President – Corporate Development. Gaurav heads M&A, Partnerships and Strategic Alliances with key stakeholders in HigherEd, HR Tech, Financial Institutions and Employers.

Robin Bhowmik

Robin Bhowmik is the Chief Business Officer for Manipal’s Global Academy of Banking, Insurance and Financial Services. An innovative, entrepreneurial, growth and results-driven executive with over 24 years of global experience; Robin is a recognized expert in using both consumer and enterprise technology to drive disruption within Industries that include Education, Banking and Healthcare.

He has led global teams within the technology industry across Europe, Asia Paciﬁc and Japan and has performed leadership roles within industries that include Healthcare, Telecommunications and Financial Services. In these roles, Robin has successfully delivered organic and inorganic growth while leading geographically diverse teams focused on Management Consulting, Digital transformation and Global Delivery besides spearheading change management programs.

An alumnus of University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business; Robin additionally holds a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Jadavpur University, an Advanced Diploma from NIIT in Systems management and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Calcutta University.

Sharad Saxena

Sharad Saxena is the VP & Business Head at OYO WorkSpaces. In this role, Sharad works directly with the CEO and is responsible for accelerating the business growth profitably for the workspaces vertical across the portfolio [Innov8, PowerStation and WorkFlo]. Sharad also devotes time in building significant leadership and functional capabilities in the regions in line with company expansion plans.

Sharad has over 13 years of experience across business leadership, operations, growth and strategy, and performance management across a wide range of sectors in India. Prior to this, he was with Max Healthcare where he spent the previous 4 years over multiple roles.

He is an avid (long-distance) runner and traveller, and loves to invest time in management coaching at select B-schools.

Ramesh Vantipalli

Ramesh Vantipalli is the Director EUC, Systems Engineering at VMware India and is responsible for evangelising VMware’s vision for Digital Workspace solution in the India region.

He has held many responsibilities during his 13 years career with VMware in the region.

With over 20 years of Systems Engineering and consulting experience in the Indian IT industry, Ramesh has an extensive understanding of the market. He was earlier associated with RSA Security where he was involved in providing security solutions on cryptography and identity access management. He is also a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a VMware Certified Professional (VCP).

Ramesh holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the Andhra University and Executive MBA from IMT Ghaziabad.

Engineering the Future of Work - Download Agenda

Prajit Nair

Prajit Nair is the Director of Sales for End-User Computing at VMware India. He is responsible for driving sales for one of the key business units of VMware – End-User Computing.

He has been associated with VMware for over 11 years, having started his VMware journey as Enterprise Account Manager.

Prior to that, he was the Sales Manager at CA Technologies.

Prajit is appreciated for his excellent people management and interpersonal skills.

Dr. Amit Malik

Dr Amit Malik has trained and practised as a psychiatrist for over 14 years. He completed his undergraduate medical training in India and his postgraduate training and higher training in Psychiatry in Nottingham, UK – obtaining his Membership of The Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK and the Certificate of Completion of Training in Old Age Psychiatry.

Dr Malik has held numerous leadership roles including Clinical Director and Associate Medical Director. He has been member of the Council of The Royal College of Psychiatrists, the European Board of Psychiatry and the standing committees of the European Psychiatric Association.

He has played a critical role in building out and managing multi-location mental health services, leading on national and international health policy initiatives and most recently leveraging technology to bring mental health services to a very underserved area.

Amit strongly believes that technology can be leveraged to overcome all barriers to high quality mental health access. A few years ago, he pressed the pause button on his UK National Health Service career to try and address 95% mental health treatment gap globally. To this end, he founded InnerHour (www.innerhour.com), an organisation that leverages technology to deliver personalised mental health solutions for individuals and organisations.

Dr. Prakriti Poddar

As the Managing Trustee of Poddar Foundation, Prakriti focuses on raising awareness of mental health issues and creating preventive mental health programs for the Nation. Recently Prakriti has been awarded ‘The Iconic Woman Of the Year in Social Service’ by the Nav Bharat Times. Dr. Prakriti Poddar has been working in the area of Corporate and Personal Wellness
since 2001 when she started Mind Over Image Consulting with the keynote ‘It’s not a Make Over; it’s a Mind Over’. The company focus is on Corporate Consulting, Counseling and Life Coaching along with Soft Skills development.

Prakriti became a doctor of alternate medicine in the system of Hypnotherapy in 2004. She is a certified counselor, a certified transpersonal regression therapist and Member of earth, a NLP practitioner and a certified Neurofeedback technician. She is amongst the first to add Neurofeedback in her clinic in India.

Prakriti has developed many pathbreaking techniques for deep healing and interventions towards wellness. An innovator when it comes to Mental Health and Wellness having created three new technologies of complete healing and wellness.

Sarita D

Sarita Digumarti is the COO & Co-founder of Jigsaw Academy, an investee company. She has over 20 years of extensive analytics and consulting experience across diverse domains including retail, health-care and financial services. Her experience spans companies like Symphony Marketing Solutions and Genpact LLC.

As an educator, she has designed, created and delivered programs across analytics, data science and machine learning landscape. She has facilitated several technical programs for senior and mid-level teams in companies like Tesco, Diageo, AB InBev, ICICI Bank, Société Generale and more.

She has a Masters in Quantitative Economics from Tufts University and an MBA in Finance from TA Pai Management Institute. She has been rated as one of “India’s Top 10 Data Scientists”.

Pravin Agarwala

Pravin runs Betterplace. He is a technology leader, entrepreneur, and dreamer. Ex VP & Global Head, SAP.

He is also an investor and advisor in several tech start-ups, including ConfirmTkt, Flo Learning, and Flexiapps Solutions.

His insights and ideas come from staying current, observing people, exploring nature, and indulging in banter with his daughters and wife.

Mani Kumar

An entrepreneur since the age of 18, Mani is a product strategist who has worked with agencies and startups for close to 5 years. He is currently a co-founder of TheMindClan, a mental health platform in Mumbai that’s set out to make mental health care a personal journey for every individual in the country.

TheMindClan.com offers a curated list of mental health care tools like counsellors, support groups, events, helplines, products and resources to anyone in need of support. His platform is also involved in helping corporate organisations prioritise mental health of their employees by helping them frame and establish wellbeing programs and policies across departments.

Mani has always believed that every individual has a powerful story that deserves expression – all they need is the right space and platform to be heard. Through his initiatives, Mani hopes that individuals find the safe space to express their stories and discover themselves.

Anshul Khurana

Anshul is an entrepreneur with close to 10 years of experience in building and scaling businesses. An Indian School of Business (ISB) graduate, he built new digital products in the real estate and infrastructure space, before setting up an entity in the personnel services industry.

He led the venture which dealt with facility management, staffing and household services to a pan-India presence in a span of 4 years while generating employment for more than 3000 workers. Working closely with the blue collar workers in the service industry over this period, he saw the opportunity in enabling access to flexible and fair financial services for this segment of workers.

He is currently the Co-founder of “Entitled” which helps employers offer financial services as an employment benefit to its workers by utilising digital infrastructure and alternate data sources for credit assessment.

Lux Rao

Lux Rao is the Director & Leader for Solutions & Digital Transformation at NTT India. As the leader for the Digital business, Lux is responsible for devising the strategy & game-plan and leads the charge for NTTs foray in digitally enabling organizations across sectors & industries.

Lux has rich experience in multifarious roles spanning IT hardware & software solutions, sales, channel management, product management, product support, pre-sales, competency development and customer service in organisations such as IBM, Canon & Xerox.

He has been awarded the prestigious IDC Award for Excellence in Innovation for the year 2015 and best CTO – Digital Transformation for the year 2015-16 by Tech Plus Media. He has also won the coveted “Technology Evangelist for the Year” – an Industry recognition for three years in a row.

Lux is an Electronics & Communication Engineer from Bangalore University, a PG in System Analysis & Design and an MBA specializing in Marketing & Finance from Manipal University. He is a Technology adviser in several start up communities including T-Hub, Nasscom 10K Start-ups and is a part of the Nasscom Task force for Digital Transformation.

Sheahan Verghese

Mr Sheahan Verghese is the co-founder of TLA [Tree of Life Associates], a boutique law firm with depth of understanding and domain expertise in Technology & Outsourcing, IP, Privacy law, Labour & Employment matters, Sports law and Start-Up legal offerings. Mr Verghese’s focused domains are employment, technology, outsourcing, transactional IP and privacy law and he is the Practice Head of these areas at TLA, Bangalore. He has been in practice for seventeen plus years and has a law degree from the National Law School of India, Bangalore, the premier law institute in India. Mr Verghese specialises in cross-border and local technology deals and techno-commercial contracts, including outsourcing, technology transfer, collaboration, reseller and licensing transactions (including software, gaming and SaaS contracts), and software services supply, sourcing, reseller, subscription and other commercial contracts related to the development, licensing and use of the software. He also advises technology start-ups and mobile application developers on their IP protection, development and commercialization strategy. Mr Verghese also advises on legal and regulatory issues in the new age and emerging technologies such as IoT, AI and cryptocurrency.

Varun Chawla

Varun is the Co-founder and Head of Real Estate of 91springboard, one of the biggest co-working communities in India. He is responsible for creating fun and lively spaces that have supported over 3,000 businesses in their growth journey. Through 91springboard, Varun has built a vibrant community for start-ups, freelancers and business owners that enables networking, growth and upskilling.

Varun conceptualized 91springboard in 2013, a time when the term ço-working was alien to India. Currently, Varun plays a key role in identifying the right markets and real estate partners to ensure that 91springboard stays true to its key value proposition of offering a lively and hassle -free environment to its members so that they can focus on building their business.

Prior to this, Varun played a key role in setting up the Goldman Sachs equity research operations in Bangalore. Under his leadership, the team grew to 120 employees in a span of 18 months. He also setup Goldman’s Mumbai Office when Goldman’s joint venture with Kotak ended in 2006.

He is the ambassador of World Start-up Report and has significantly contributed information for the India start-up market for the inaugural World Start-up Report.

Sumit Lakhani

Sumit Lakhani is the Chief Marketing Officer of Awfis Space Solutions which is India’s largest network of co-working spaces. With over a decade of experience spanning across Investment Banking, Private Equity and IT Services sector, he has played a key role in shaping impactful ventures.

Sumit joined Awfis at the inception as part of core management team and heads Demand & Supply side function at Awfis. Key responsibility areas includes Sales, Marketing, Real Estate Acquisition, Fund Raising and Strategy. Previously, he has worked as Vice President with the investment banking team at Yes Bank. His earlier stints include Tesco and ST Asset Management, Singapore.

With a MBA from S.P. Jain Centre of Management, Sumit has a perfect blend of the right and left brains. Under his aegis, Awfis has grown to become one of the most recognised & reputed consumer focussed brands in the co-working industry.

Layla O'Kane

Layla O’Kane is a Senior Research Analyst on the Economics team at Burning Glass Technologies, where she manages projects that use labor market analytics to further public policy. Her work includes research and data analysis to create potential career pathways for workers displaced by automation, understand the return on investment of industry credentials, and prepare policymakers for the future of work.

Prior to joining Burning Glass, Layla was a Data Consultant at the Boston Women’s Workforce Council, helping Boston area employers work towards closing the gender wage gap. Layla has previous experience researching the use of behavioral economics to increase gender inclusion in hiring and promotions for local governments and international organizations. She has also worked in economic consulting with a focus on labor and antitrust litigation and merger review.

Layla holds a BA in Economics and in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and an MPA in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Rajat Malhotra

Rajat Malhotra is the Chief Operating Officer for Integrated Facilities Management, West Asia. He brings along nearly 30 years of experience in the Engineering, Operations and Technology. Currently, Rajat oversees the business infrastructure functions and leads the SME platform for IFM operation. These are JLL’s best practice platforms and expert teams on technology and IoT, building operations, engineering, energy & sustainability, supply chain management, compliance and business assurance. Rajat is deeply interested in the transformation of workspaces enabled by technology and his current focus area is around the impact of tech in the entire real estate life cycle enabling workspaces and work environments of the future.

He is well known in the Facility Management, Building Engineering and Sustainability Industrial forums. Rajat is a member of the Executive Committee of IGBC and works closely with them to provide the necessary impetus to the Green Buildings movement in India. He has also worked closely with the USGBC in India is launch of GreenBuild in India.

He has also led a number of business excellence projects and consulting projects in engineering, sustainability, risk management, technology and productivity in FM that have brought in significant value to clients in their real estate operations.

Anuja Kapur

Anuja Kapur is a renowned Criminal Psychologist. She is a Delhi University Graduate and did her bachelor’s in psychology after that she joined Delhi Public School as a student counsellor. Later on, she got into Criminal Psychology and did her Masters in the same stream. The zeal to learn more led her into another course in Forensic Science from the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Science and the University of Delhi under the guidance of Dr Surinder Nath. After having expertise in the field of Psychology, Counselling and in other fields Mrs Kapur got the Degree of LLB from CCS University. After having decades of experience in psychology, Mrs Anuja Kapur decided to raise her voice for victims of rape, eve-teasing, violence and acid attacks, for which, she got an International Diploma in Victimology from, The Tokiawa International Victimology Institute, Japan. Mrs Anuja Kapur is the founder of an NGO named as “NIRBHIYA EK SHAKTI” which is the centre for “Victim Assistance”. It provides assistance to all the victims in the form of Counselling, Legal Aid, Vocational Courses, and Rehabilitation irrespective of age, caste.“NIRBHIYA EK SHAKTI” aims to work for all the victims and help them to live back their normal lives. She had appeared in the more than a dozen TEDx talks where she shared her valuable experience in the form of her talk and apart from this, she had been awarded the many Honours and awards for her outstanding contribution towards society.

Anitha Kaveri

Anitha Kaveri leads the strategic sector initiatives for the IET in India and steers our sector focus for the Internet of Things, Future of Mobility and Transport as well as the Future of Work. Anitha joined the IET in 2012 as part of the India Marketing and Communications team and led the function for three years, from 2015 to 2018. Anitha is pursuing a PhD in Management and her thesis straddles areas of organisational behaviour, organisational psychology and vocational behaviour. The central premise of her thesis is on the Future of Careers and the changing meaning of the phenomenon. She is passionate about communications and enjoys reading, travelling and cooking in her spare time.

Naomi Climer CBE, FREng, BSc, HonDUniv, HonDEng, CEng, FIET

Naomi is an engineer and leader, her career has been spent in the Broadcast and Communications technology industry including technology leadership roles at the BBC, ITV and Sony both in Europe and the US. Now Naomi focuses on the role that technology will play in the future and advocates for technology as a force for positive change, highlighting the changes we need to make as a society to better equip us for this future.

Naomi is Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, Non Executive Director at Focusrite Plc and Sony UK Technology Centre, Past President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Trustee at the Royal Academy of Engineering and Chair of Council at the International Broadcasting Convention.

Naomi was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2018 for services to the engineering profession.

Shekhar Sanyal

Shekhar Sanyal is the Country Head and Director of Institution of Engineering and Technology – India.

Shekhar is an expert on strategy, performance and organisation turnaround. He enjoys a rich experience in varied and senior roles across leading organisations.

Before joining the IET, he worked with Nortel as the Sales Training Head for Asia Pacific. Before his stint with Nortel, Shekhar worked with AchieveGlobal, the world’s largest (softskills) training organisation. Here he played triple roles of a Regional Business Development Director, Special Projects Manager and a trainer /facilitator. These roles allowed him a unique & amazing insight into core of the organisation while being able to see the organization from 30,000 feet. Shekhar has also worked with the ABP group as Head of Region (South) for Business World and with Tata Infomedia where he started his career as a management trainee and grew to the position of Head of Sales (Directories) for Chennai.

Shekhar is frequently seen commenting in prominent Indian media platforms on important issues related to engineering education in India as well as on the growing movement of Internet of Things.

A graduate from Delhi University in 1992 with a BA (Hon) in English Literature. He also holds an MBA from the Institute of Management Studies.

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Sandipan Chattopadhyay

A winner of the ‘Red Hat Innovator of the Year’ award among several others, Sandipan brings over two decades of experience across various technology roles. A statistics graduate from ISI, he earned his MBA from IIM Calcutta. Prior to founding Xelp, he was the CTO at Just Dial, a local search engine, where he built and scaled the technology stack, taking it from a mere number to the technology powerhouse it has become. When he joined Just Dial, the company was clocking about 30,000 calls per day, a number that had rocketed to 4.8 million user queries a day by December 2015 when he exited. Turning an entrepreneur at the age of 24 with E Dot Solutions, Sandipan went on to build MoneyControl.com.

Sandipan has played an instrumental role in Web technology at Tata Interactive and led the team which built the first version of Tata.com- the umbrella site for the whole Tata brand back in 1997. Over the years, he helped technology development of several startups as well as new initiatives at large enterprises such as Hyundai, Nextenders, Wipro, Tata Teleservices, Tata Motors, CRISIL MarketWire, Business Standard, IDBI Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank, and Edelweiss. Brimming with creative energy and passion to mentor and fund Indian startups, Sandipan founded Xelp three years back. A strong belief in ‘solutions of empathy’ outshining ‘solutions of sympathy,’ he is currently ensuring that hallmark solutions that benefit the next 500 million Indians achieve the success, recognition and respect they deserve. He is strongly committed to seeing such Indian startups share their prosperity with the common Indian household. Xelpmoc was listed on the BSE and NSE in Feb 2019.

Reema Nanavaty

Reema Nanavaty has been working with the Self-Employed women workers from informal sector since 1984 when she joined the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and stayed on to be elected as its General Secretary in 1999. She expanded membership to new heights making SEWA the single largest union of informal sector workers. Her key focus has been to provide full-employment & self-reliance to the 1.7 million members of SEWA. She was honoured with Padma Sri (the fourth highest civilian award in the Republic of India) by the Government of India for the 30 years of self-less contribution in the area of social services in 2013.

Currently she is replicating the Trade Facilitation Centre model in all the SAARC countries, building social enterprises of home-based women workers. Reema is spearheading the Hariyali–Green Energy and Livelihoods Initiative to provide 2,00,000 mostly farm women access renewable energy tools of cookstoves and solar lights, solar water pumping units for agriculture and salt-farming. She believes in empowering the poor women from informal sector by keeping them abreast with modern tools of ICT.

She is currently member of the Advisory Council on Gender of the World Bank Group. She is also members of International Labor Organization’s High Level Global Commission on Future of Work.

Pankaj Bansal

Pankaj Bansal is the Co-founder and CEO of PeopleStrong, a leading HR and Workforce Technology company in Asia. Under his leadership, PeopleStrong has established various Workforce and HR Tech brands like Wheebox, Taggd, PeopleStrong Alt, Zippi – which have a user base of over 750 thousand.

Before establishing PeopleStrong in 2005, Pankaj worked as a part of the founding team of Altran’s (formerly Aricent/Hughes Software) BPO division. He is an active member of CII’s National Committee on Skills & Jobs, a non-Executive Director at Wheebox, and Board member for Sheroes, the internet of women. He is the Co-Founder of Work10M(Work for 10 million people) a fund focusing on the New world of work and workforce and is the former Co-Founder of the HR Fund.

Pankaj closely follows and talks about the trends shaping the world of work and jobs and is a prominent speaker at various national and international forums.

Shashank Murali

Shashank Murali, started his entrepreneurial journey back in 2014 at the age of 21 while studying at BITS Pilani. He, along with a few friends, built an on-demand tutoring app for competitive exams called Edvice that received enough traction making Shashank & his co-founders the first set of undergraduates in 50 years of BITS History to have sold a company while in college.

The Edvice journey, while reasonably short, made Shashank realise the acute problem of access to expertise at the right time. Grown in a middle-class family, he also strongly felt the need to bring in economic equality by democratising access to meaningful incomes to professionals across the globe. He teamed up with his Edvice co-founders once again, to launch TapChief in their last semester at Pilani, in 2016. TapChief went on to receive an award of 1CR and the backing of Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and CEO of PayTm, beating 1200 other startups.

Starting from a hostel room, today Shashank and his team of 50 have the backing of 50+ investors which includes Paytm, AngelList, Stanford Angels, 500 Startups and prominent entrepreneurs like Aprameya Radhakrishna of TaxiForSure, Kunal Shah of Freecharge, Mekin Maheshwari of Flipkart amongst others.

Manish Bahl

Manish is a passionate futurist and advisor with a compelling perspective on technology and its impact on jobs, individuals, society, and the future of work. A respected speaker and thinker, Manish has guided many Fortune 500 companies into the future of their business with his thought-provoking research and advisory skills. Within Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, he helps ensure that the unit’s original research and analysis jibes with emerging business-technology trends and dynamics, and collaborates with a wide range of leading thinkers to understand how the future of work will take shape. He influences the way leaders think about and prioritize digital by challenging the status quo and reappraising the underlying principles of businesses to unleash the power of the new. Manish has over 17 years of research, advisory and business strategy experience. His professional expertise spans business technology strategy and planning, C-level thought leadership, innovation, and sales & marketing.

Manish’s views on technology and the future of work have been featured in leading publications and he is a frequent keynote speaker at various national and international conferences. He enjoys meeting new people and explore collaboration opportunities, so connect with him on LinkedIn or email him directly at manish.bahl@cognizant.com

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Our contributing authors

Sangeet Paul Choudary

Raymond Koh

Naomi Climer CBE

Robin Bhowmik

Lux Rao

Chandramouli Srinivasan

Sumit Lakhani

Vikrom Mathur

Manmeet Singh

Sheahan Verghese

Anjana Ravi

Gaurav Kumar

PEOPLE

People and skills in the Future of Work

PLATFORMS

Platforms powering the Future of Work

PLACES

Places enhancing the Future of Work

PRACTICES

Practices for reinventing the Future of Work

POLICIES

Policies redefining the Future of Work

People and skills in the Future of Work

Platforms powering the Future of Work

Places enhancing the Future of Work

Practices for reinventing the Future of Work

Policies redefining the Future of Work