Ravindra Joshi Wins Hearts
Ravindra Joshi (MBA Full Time, General Management, 1998) tells how his time at Lancaster helped with his career goal to run a large company as CEO.
"I can proudly say that my days at Lancaster University made me who I have grown to be today. From the early years, as a young man full of dreams of conquering the world, I wanted to run a company that interacts and operates in a global environment. When I started working after my graduation, I found a pattern in myself that my seniors highly appreciated, which was that all decisions I took, were ultimately aimed at how it would impact the earnings and profitability of the company, while maintaining a stronghold on the organisational values and vision.
Moving up in my career, I decided to hone these skills and sought the experience and knowledge of professionals and that is where the Lancaster Full Time MBA helped refine these attributes to perfection.
The focus on company operations and economics started with my Baccalaureate in Electrical Engineering from the world renowned IIT, Roorkee of India, further developed through my Graduate Diploma in Management from AIMA, and sharpened and expanded through the University of Lancaster’s MBA in General Management, in 1998, where I focussed on Business Management, Strategy, International Economics and Finance.
Within the programme that year, the Business Plan module was especially interesting and would prove instrumental to a number of elements in my professional career. The team assignments in various business management areas taught me a lot about working with different personalities. Where else would you find the opportunity to hear the perspectives of people from 21 countries?
Some of my best memories were built during my time at Lancaster. Life was interesting and the people, amazing. I enjoyed the weekend pub hopping, lazing under the shining sun on the campus’s perfectly mowed lawns, going on walks, playing lawn tennis, swimming, interacting with wonderful colleagues on team assignments, having picnics with friends and much more. These are just a few of the unforgettable wealth of memories I gathered at Lancaster University. I am sure my presence there again would leave me in a soothing wave of nostalgia.
Moreover, the sustained guidance received from the faculty, for us to become better critical thinkers and problem solvers, adds icing to the cake of learning and personality development and is the rare type of guidance I didn't obtain in all my travelling. The motivation that has moulded me since my days at Lancaster University ensure I fly and stand out wherever I go.
As soon as I came back to India, I was approached by the world renowned Tata InfoTech to share my perspectives of benchmarking HR practices in a specific industry. I received the call on the basis of my project on Benchmarking of World Class Practices for BNFL on 'Resource Management' which was my primary project for my MBA. I was thrilled that my learning from Lancaster would come in handy almost immediately. It was good fun analysing the processes and practices of six leading software companies in India, including Satyam, which was, at that time, going great guns. When I visited Satyam’s corporate office in Hyderabad, they gave us another similar assignment.
The above assignments prompted me to open my own consultancy company, Vision Consultancy Services and the sense of satisfaction I felt when I printed my business cards as CEO of VCS, were unparalleled. This went on till 2004, when I received a head hunting call from NDPL (Now Tata Power DDL, Delhi) and I responded.
The power sector being privatised in the capital of India was a first and I was very excited about being part of a highly professional business house with turnover of more than US 100 Bn and operations in around 100 countries across the world. Yet again, this allowed me to implement my learnings from Lancaster, but in a completely different area.
Over the years, I put to work the management and social skills I had picked up through my Master's, as well as through the friends I made from different faculties at Lancaster at the time (I remember it like yesterday how we used to huddle in teams and discuss for hours, at times until morning - well we were having fun as well!).
That package, a lot of hard work, some luck and discipline would lead me to be part of Tata's Business Excellence journey. In the next 16 Years with Tata Power DDL (still continuing), I gradually saw challenging assignments in project management, business management and a particularly interesting assignment as Business Head for Special Consumer Group with responsibility for 200,000 low income consumers. This was a consumer group that was hard to penetrate. Trust in the private companies was low and their ability to dedicate a part of their meagre earnings towards electricity bills was even lower. With a mixed bag of goodwill, innovative practices and a mind to do best for my company, I was able to reduce AT&C losses from 39% to 15% during 2013-2017 by implementing a model I fondly call Winning the Heart model. This is a unique strategy, which clubs elements of CSR with electrical dues recovery and is a global benchmark recognised by World Bank. In 2017 this model and its success was noticed at Tata Group level and was awarded the “Best Implemented Innovation Award”, which was handed out by the Chairman of Tata Group in the presence of a galaxy of Tata group CEOs. The award motivated me to write a book on the model entitled Winning the Hearts-To Uplift Socially Deprived Section of Society (Co-authors Sudarshan Saini-Ex Sr VP, Tata and my ex boss and Dr Carlos Rufin - Professor of Strategy and International Business, Suffolk University, Boston, PhD Harvard University.) The book was released by Vice President of India and has been presented to Minister of State-Finance of India, Board of Lagos Business School, Governor of Maharashtra and Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. The foreword is written by Prof Ranga of Harvard Business School.
In 2017, looking at the success in my own city, I was asked to represent the Kano, Nigeria as Team Leader. MD of Kano Electricity Distribution Company appointed me as Chief Driving Officer for this large Utility Company, leading 2,600 employees and covering an area of 67,000 square km including three states of Nigeria. After a two year stint in KEDCo I created several records in performance including doubling the revenue and cutting losses by 20%. I introduced a performance driven culture and implemented the Winning the Heart model for a section of customers. The Nigeria model is shortlisted among best three Projects of Africa with competition from 54 countries and won the Best Project award for 2019/2020. The model is acknowledged by Harvard professors too and is used as a case study in several leading business schools of the world. I was invited speaker to share the case study in GHTC (Global Humanitarian Technology Challenge) 2014 in San Jose, California and in GHTC 2015 in Seattle."
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