Storm the Norm

Almost 60 years back, the Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “The medium is the message” to focus attention on the character, not just the content, of a medium. And he spoke of this when television was barely born and the internet was just about a germ of a thought, at best. In short, the media were not quite as complicated as we know them to be today.But today the shadow of digital looms the largest over the media landscape. And other media – television, radio, out-of-home, print –are not extinct either. And that makes it messier. Or does it? Listen in as we storm this norm with none other than Sam Balsara, the doyen of the media industry. And as always powerful #StN Hacks to help you optimize your strategies in the right direction.

As we reflect upon MNC after MNC and how they’ve gone about their journeys in India, the three things that strike you immediately are: they play it safe, they prioritize testing the waters profitably from Day 1 over making a long-term commitment with lesser profitability in the early years, and they come with a “this is what we have, take it or leave it” mindset until India teaches them otherwise. And that’s the reason for today’s norm: Innovation at global companies only serves the niche.And our guest today who’s stormed this norm with his disarmingly simple but insightful take is the Gulbahar Torani, CEO of global company Philips Domestic Appliances. And of course the 5 powerful hacks from Anisha & Narayan that will help you in your innovation journey!

Regardless of how progressive or woke an organization is, employees always start from a position of disadvantage, negotiating their way to a better place—either individually or collectively, formally or informally.That’s the norm we storm in this episode of our podcast.Listen in as Narayan & Anisha get chatting with a talented duo Aditiya & Gautam from the very aptly titled new age firm “TALENTED” and their attempt at creating a workplace model that’s trying its best to exceed employees’ expectations one HR policy at a time We also have for this episode Ritika Mathur, Partner – Human Capital Consulting, Grant Thornton Bharat for the GT Insights section to throw some light on how can companies deploy ESOPs in the best way to foster not just stock ownership but company ownership in the true sense of the phrase.

“The start-up economy today is only about moving money, not value creation.” This is the provocative norm we posed to veteran Fund Managing Partner,VT Bharadwaj, partner, A 91 Ventures & we began the discussion with something like this..venture capital firms basically mop up money from various sources – individuals and institutions, pension funds across the world, etc.—and then pool it up to then fund start-ups and new ventures. Basically, they move others’ money around and make more money by doing so. We pushed the argument further by saying that VCs are not “making” anything, in the traditional sense of manufacturing or creating. If anything, they’re manufacturers of belief, getting those with investible wealth to believe enough in ventures that don’t currently exist to back them with their surplus money.In this entire reductionist approach, where is the conversation around sustainable value creation? Listen in to what he has to say…#startups #Funding

In a world that’s all about the Web3 bubble, there’s no place for chewing gum bubbles.Now, that’s a big and provocative norm to challenge about a category—and about large FMCG companies—that have built not just big customer bases for themselves but I daresay, also responsible for creating the kind of unparalleled mom-and-pop retail footprint in India that very few other categories can.And I don’t say it lightly. The world of brands today seems to be about one or more of the following three things: purpose, planned purchase journeys, and pivots enabled by disruptive tech. Where’s the place for a frivolous, impulse-driven, unchanging product category in this world?So how can an impulse category pivot to succeed in a D2C world, where the rules of commerce, culture and communications may be very different?And today’s norm is not just an existential question but a practical one that our guest Mr Rajesh Ramakrishnan, has been tackling at the helm of Perfetti even before the pandemic, but also through it.de!

Can we separate cryptocurrencies from blockchains?Are coins a necessary part of securing a public blockchain?There is a widespread public perception that exists that blockchain technology is worthwhile, but cryptocurrencies are not. You hear this decree all the time and with the regulatory overhang, it's only increasing by the day.With some blistering critiques of cryptocurrencies, technocrats are trying to mitigate this stigma by focusing on the possible applications and changes that blockchains can bring about.But the question remains .can we justify the separation of cryptocurrencies from blockchain technology?Our guest Jonathan Caras explains..

First time ever in India, a podcast from one of world’s best blockchain & token economic specialist from Israel, Mr. Jonathan Caras telling us how can an algorithm—a structured set of instructions encoded to enable repeatable tasks with the same consistent result every time—create or replace a phenomenon like trust?Trust which is a function of 3 human dimensions.Subjectivity is just one dimension of trust as we know it. One’s currently held beliefs play a large part in how one approaches an object of trust. A second dimension is the fragility of trust—it can be broken by something that may not necessarily be a disastrously bad mistake or error of judgment. A third dimension is that it takes time to build trust—it’s not something that can be generated instantly, not even overnight.So how can technology replace all the above?Listen in as Narayan & Anisha take this up with our global expert as he systematically storms this norm that has a far-bearing effect on businesses of the future.#blockchain #Crypto #Defi #Web3

The Covid-19 crisis exposed stark differences in the fortunes of different small and medium-sized businesses. Larger businesses did have an edge & were less hard-hit as a group. These were the ones who were able to take some knocks, bounce back, restart, adapt better than others.”.But we also know that the world at large & we don’t just mean the world of business and economics is mostly made of the long tail—from the results of a Google search to stocks listed on any exchange beyond the big index-driving stocks to mom-and-pop retail that drive and support the consumer economy, we see that it’s the small entities that sustain the world. And if these weren’t resilient, then we would have sunk as a socio-industrial-economic complex a long time back—whether we consider the global or the local economy.So where do we net out on this norm? Does size of operation insulate a business against shocks?Listen in to our guest expert Siddharth Nigam & a complete Storm the Norm RESILIENCE TOOLKIT as a handy ready-reckoner.

A picture speaks a thousand words. Indeed. But it is what you hear orally that stays with you for time immemorial. Even before video or the written word was a thing, we have evolved for millennia as oral cultures. And yet, when you look at it from a business point of view (myopic as that may sound, but hey we’re a business podcast) audio has always been and continues to be a poor cousin to video, and we daresay even to the written word. We’ve heard of movie czars and newspaper czars, but have you ever heard of a radio czar? Have you ever heard of an equivalent of Reed Hastings or Netflix for audio? Heck, even the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos put his bets on video with Amazon Prime and publishing the written word. And for all the hype that the iPod got when Steve Jobs first introduced it, it’s seen as a bit of a quaint anachronism now and Apple is known more for its phone and computing devices. And to top it all, we haven’t seen a single audio unicorn anywhere in the world. This is the norm that’s being stormed by our hosts Anisha Motwani and Narayan Devanathan in Episode 25 of Storm the Norm podcast series powered by #GTBharat.Talking about the medium, its popularity and shifts in way of consumption, the hosts are joined by Prashant Panday, CEO & MD, Radio Mirchi. Vicky Bahl, Partner and Leader, Sales Transformation, sharing GT Insights talks about how despite technological disruption the audio medium has evolved over the years and it is important for businesses to participate in the industry that's snowballing and will continue to stay relevant.Hey don’t forget to listen to 5 power packed audio-monetization hacks by our hosts to secure the future of the industry.

Is it easier for startups than for established businesses to turn around? Just think about it..mature organisations have established not just a business, but a certain reputation, ways of working, people policies, they’ve figured out ways around the corridors of power as well as versus competition, the company is like a machine (whether well-oiled or not), bound by systems and processes. A startup turning around is like someone on a motorcycle doing a u-turn, while an established business is like a long train that has to go in a different direction all of a sudden. You can’t just switch tracks abruptly, especially if there are no tracks laid out in the new direction in the first place. You’ll just derail the whole thing.But the real pivotal (pun unintended) question that we challenged Rohit Kapoor, CEO-Oyo with is much more fundamental; ‘Why do startups need turnarounds in the first place? And is it easier, as our thinking so far seems to indicate, for startups to turn around than it is for established businesses to do the same?We also have perspectives from Siddhartha Nigam, National Managing Partner - Growth, Grant Thornton Bharat who has shared insights on how start-ups go about executing the turn-around.Listen in to what our guest experts had to say & lots more. 

Creativity needs chaos. Structure constrains lateral thinking. And so, many professions have no option but to think inside the box. Or do they?The “creative professions,” such as advertising, art, music, entertainment, writing believe they have the corner on creativity, relegating many professions to the doom and gloom of Boring. Is it their ego that perpetuates this condescension or is their disdain justified?“Doomed to be deemed boring: Not every profession can be creative.”That’s the norm our hosts Anisha and Narayan explore in this episode of #StormTheNorm. And IP Lawyer and strategist Safir Anand decided to light a grenade under this norm to explode it, not just storm it.It’s one thing to identify a norm, and another to find practicable hacks to storm it. But you could do worse than apply this one, to begin with!“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day,” said Mark Twain.Intrigued? Click play to find out how this can be not just palatable but will in fact help lay out a delectable course for creativity for the rest of the day.For the GT Insights module, we have our expert Ashish Chhawchharia, Partner - Recovery and Re-organisation at GT Bharat, giving a focused take on how businesses can build creativity into their routine, regardless of what industry or function they are in.

Has it become an acceptable norm to prioritise valuation over value creation when running a start-up? If yes, why is this trend embraced like the holy grail? With this borderline trend fast becoming the norm, it’s the right time to find out what gives start-ups the confidence to not bother about profitability in their first few years and what makes their path different from that of the listed companies.To answer these burning questions and share insights on the norm, we have for this episode, Vikas Agnihotri, India Operating Partner at Softbank Investment Advisers. And for Insight by Grant Thornton Bharat, we have on board Raja Lahiri, Technology, Media and Telecom Leader and Partner, Growth Advisory.Our experts discuss ways to 'storm this norm', and bring back on table the significance of value creation. Tune into the podcast to get insightful perspective on the starts-up of today and their debatable disdain for profitability.

As the world faces multiple crisis, there is an increasing need for corporates to come together and help the civil society. It is equally important to partner with leaders and ensure to bridge the gaps wherever necessary. Our norm this episode is set in this context: Can laws turn corporates into better partners for the society at large? Or will they turn CSR into Corporate Social Regulation rather than Corporate Social Responsibility? Find out as we storm this norm in Ep. 21

This norm—that the future belongs to the fast—feels as old as time itself. Aesop articulated it with the fable of the hare and the tortoise. Pioneers throughout time became rulers by being the first to get somewhere, or to conquer new lands. In business, we’ve had the idea of the first-mover advantage for a long time. And in a frenzied, VC-fueled new economy, it definitely feels like you’re a loser if you’re not the first out of the blocks.Undoubtedly, social, economic, political, cultural laws shape us. Isn’t that why fast does seem to be winning, and defining the future? Look all around us. That’s what we seem to celebrate. The fastest to become a billionaire, a unicorn to market etc etc.The Annual Special episode, highlighted the juxtaposition of fast and slow, and how the pandemic made us involuntarily choose slow by putting life on pause. Narayan Devanathan & Anisha Motwani explore whether now’s a good time to examine if that was just a blip accentuated by the pandemic or a norm ripe to be stormed. And to do that, we have perhaps the best spokesperson for Slow in the country today. Neelesh Misra is an award-winning journalist and entrepreneur. He’s famously popular and popularly famous for his radio stories on Yaadon ka Idiot Box. And his newest baby is the Slow Movement, an amalgamation of three verticals, Slow content, Slow food and Slow experiences.Followed by five practical hacks from Anisha Motwani on how to succeed fast with a slow pace.For GT Insights, Pallavi Joshi Bakhru shares the key guidelines to build a framework for companies that are on their good to great journey and in believe in business with purpose.

In August 2020, this story about the Choluteca Bridge in Honduras went viral and made many a LinkedIn profile get their 15 seconds of fame. Funnily enough, the bridge was built in 1996, Hurricane Mitch forced the river to change course in 1998 to completely render the bridge useless from the point of its original purpose. But it took a year-long pandemic in 2020 for people to realize that we had all been building our own Bridges to Nowhere while the river of life dramatically changed course.  Clearly, 2020 is our Hurricane Mitch. And 2021 is the year where we figure out what to do with the Bridge to Nowhere. Remember, Lewis Carroll’s iconic ‘Through the Looking Glass’. The cusp between 2020 and 2021 feels like we all need to step through a looking glass of our own, to see our world anew. With the advent of work / live / play at home era, the impossibility to plan in advance has erased the concept of chronos (as the ancient Greeks called it) or linear time. And because of that, we looked for our identity in the past. As many experts say, yearning—especially in moments of uncertainty—can be really grounding.  And it is this fusion of past and future that gives us five hacks to norm the storms of 2020 as we step into 2021.

This norm may sound pretty obvious—and familiar, because it is an inescapable one these days, given the socio-political climate, not just in India but in many countries across the world. Recall the Donald Trump’s MAGA ideology that almost demanded a nationalistic fervor from business (the integrity of that ideology is another debate altogether), Brexit has asked Britons to view business from a non-EU lens first. Even in something as critical as a Covid-19 vaccine, the US wants to favor the one developed by an American company (Pfizer, in this case) while India has its predilections towards the ones where Bharat Biotech or The Serum Institute have a hand. So, will local geo-politics influence businesses & will brands start being vocal about showing off their nationalistic credentials and make that a key strategic pillar in their playbook? To answer this, we have an expert who has straddled the line between both local and global. Our guest expert today is Geetu Verma from Unilever, a global marketer and business leader, part of Unilever's global Foods and Refreshment team based out of Rotterdam, Netherlands.

What are the rules of winning for challenger brands? But first, what makes a challenger brand? What differentiates them from market followers & qualifies them as challengers? Let's take a cricket analogy here. The 1983 men’s Indian cricket team was an underdog that came from nowhere to dethrone an invincible West Indies. But there is another more apt team when it comes to satisfying multiple conditions of being a true challenger. The Sri Lankan team of the 1996 cricket world cup. They were a decided underdog, much smaller as a cricketing nation, in the midst of the worst days of the civil war and they definitely did not stay in the same place at the end of the tournament. What is amply clear is that it’s high time the ‘challenger brand’ norm was stormed. We do have an expert who brings his lived insights and experience with him — on what it takes to be a challenger brand and not end up in the same place. Listen to Mr. Vishesh C. Chandiok, CEO of Grant Thornton Bharat to shed light on this & more. Don’t miss the #StN Innovation #Hacks to help you change your game

What really makes for a great board?The turn of the century saw the collapse of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Adelphia, 2008 saw the collapse of Lehman Brothers. They all had boards with great experience, diversity, equity involvement, independence, and they all oversaw governance as well as strategy. Closer home, we’ve seen the tussles in the past few years in two of the most iconic Indian companies—Tata Sons and Infosys. We take this norm head-on with the leading subject matter expert on Board Governance, Mr. Shailesh Haribhakti. We asked him—much like how it’s asked of journalism: who will watch the watchers—what governs the ones tasked with governance?And as expected, he didn’t just make sense. He gave a rousing rallying cry and pointed unequivocally towards the direction Indians boards need to take, and what it takes to be a successful board.#Business #IndianBusiness #India

The irony of this norm is that it’s staring at us, but that change seems to be so long in coming, when the norm has been actually crying out to be stormed!!The traditional media industry may not acknowledge it, but as Einstein once said, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity…and not in a good way.The problem with this industry is that they have allowed themselves to be defined by the medium and not the purpose. They’re called the media business, not the journalism business or news & analysis, or reportage. When you pigeonhole yourself like that, then you’ll tend to be defined—both from inside and externally—by whatever the fashionable technology is these days. For centuries, print was it, then along came audio-visual media such as radio and television, and now we have the 21st century’s posterchild, digital.But media—any of these—are just that. They’re just the technological platforms, they’re not the product. And when you let yourself be defined by a medium, then of course your revenue models are going to be constrained by that myopic thinking.So can this norm be stormed? Well, to take a crack at it, we roped in Mr. Anurag Batra, Chairman, and Editor-in-Chief of BW Businessworld. Anurag is a media mogul, serial entrepreneur, journalist, and an eternal optimist. Given his multi-faceted set of experiences, we figured we couldn’t have gotten a better expert to storm this norm.#Media #Business #IndianMedia

At a time when the Indian Government is ruthlessly banning Chinese apps and pushing the Indian Start-up eco-system to raise their game,the question really is, "Are we ready to take the challenge"?It's well known that most Indian startups are prone to emulate successful global ideas, by and large fine-tuning an existing model to serve local needs. There’s Ola for Uber, Gaana for Spotify, OYO Rooms for Airbnb, and Flipkart for Amazon. So while India has provided for a nurturing ground to numerous startups in the past few years but they are merely clones of Western ideas.To storm this very pertinent norm we have none other than GV Ravishankar, who is a Managing Director of Sequoia Capital India. GV’s specific focus areas are the Consumer, Financial Services, and Education sectors. Two of the most interesting Indian start-ups GV works with are Byju’s and Rebel Foods. A President’s Gold Medal awardee from IIM Ahmedabad, GV’s experience spans many years with Wipro Technologies and then McKinsey & Company in senior advisory roles.