 Welcome, welcome to season four, episode two of Dreamers and Unicorns. This is a show where we get the movers and shakers to come and talk about everything around the two themes of technology and talent. So this is really what we are going to do today. My name is Abhijit Bhadri. I work as an executive coach and I also specialize in helping people manage their career transitions. We do this by helping them build their personal brand in these new circumstances. Besides that, we also work with organizations ranging from tiny startups with 20 people all the way to organizations which have trillions of dollars in market cap. But today, my guest is the CEO. He's the global CEO of Mastic Group, Hiral Chandrana and Hiral is an IT services executive where he's got a real passion for talent, tech and the customer. Hiral spent 14 years at Vipro which is when we had a brief overlap and then he's actually moved on to take on this really fabulous responsibility of leading Mastic. So without any further ado, let's get started and figure out how does the chief executive decide to spend the first 90 days which is so very crucial. So let's hear it from Hiral. Welcome. Where are you joining us from? Which city in the planet are you right now in? Abhijit, I'm in Worm and sunny Chicago and looking forward to the discussion. Thanks for having me. Thank you very much for being in the studio with us. We are really excited because I've never actually had somebody talk about what is the first 90 days like. There is this very famous book by Michael Watkins where he says the first 90 days are very crucial. So we are going to sort of really grill you on that one but when you were growing up, what was your ambition? What did you really want to do as a kid if somebody had asked you in college? I know you did engineering, you did an MBA and then you sort of did a whole lot of courses at Wharton and various other Ivy League colleges but when you are growing up, what did you want to do? Yeah, not too many people know about this but I actually wanted to become a lawyer. I had an interesting inclination and knack for debating and it was interesting where my mom said become whatever you want but just don't become a lawyer. That's a different story but I did have a passion for cars and automobiles and ended up doing engineering and then of course joining Telco and those days it used to be called Telco now Tata Motor so that was kind of my initial stint and then got into more engineering building solutions actually, software engineering solutions in the many days. So you were a mechanical engineer, is that so? Yeah, I did my bachelor's in mechanical engineering, that's correct. And do you think if you had to start life all over again, you would still go back and do exactly the same thing? You know, I probably would although there was the time where everyone wanted to do computer science and still probably is the case and electronics was very hot in our times. It was like an achievement to get into electronics and communications but mechanical engineering which those of who have gone through that can relate to it probably gives you that broader focus. It's almost like doing a bachelor's in business maybe in some form but it does open your eyes to a lot of things where particularly when you're not fully decided on what you really want to do and I think it leaves the options open as you evolve and learn along the way. So I just want to take a minute and welcome all the viewers and listeners who have joined us. So this is a live conversation we are having with Hiral Chandrana, he is the Global CEO of Mastic Group and I'm going to invite all my viewers and listeners to also put in their questions that you have for Hiral and if something that we are talking about triggers a question you want to ask that question please feel free to add it in the comment section and we'll put it together. So we've got plenty of comments which have come up but I want to first start off by saying that I read somewhere that you've got a huge interest in sports and which sport or is it sports in general? Do you like watching it? Do you play sports or what's it like? Yeah I mean I do try to play tennis once in a while but growing up I played a few different things. The inspiration that I have gotten directly and directly through sports and some credit goes to our son who's very athletic and he plays soccer and tennis as well but there's numerous occasions from very recent last few days to many years back and I can maybe just quote a few to kind of tie up what I'm referring to. A few years back Oracle, an Oracle executive invited me to watch the US sailing championship which was kind of going through Chicago and it's fascinating the amount of analytics and data that gets crunched you would never think right when it comes to a sport like sailing. All the way to you know when I went to watch the Indy 500 not too far away from here the difference between winning and losing is actually the one or two seconds that the team works together in the pit stop and what decision you make in terms of when you want to stop in the pit stop. All the way to kind of you know underdogs younger people coming in and beating more experienced people all the way to more experienced people like you know you've seen the likes of Tom Brady recently who of course officially retired and starting his own yeah he's younger than NFTs you know what a career switch this is absolutely incredible that he's I think that's just you know you'll see a lot more sport celebrities are going in that direction some of them have already been there but yeah I mean there's just a tremendous inspiration whether it's team work, determination, grit I mean recent Australian Open I was putting a few days back I mean Nadal had a 4% chance of winning at one stage in the game and you know he came back and of course beat Medvedev both great players but you know just speaks for great inspiration but also speaks for a lot of commitment and hard work. So you know when you think about there was a question that came up just now which was that you know which is really so somebody wants to know Nadal or Djokovic you know what is it that you would vote for you know. Yeah I have to personally go with Federer you know Roger Federer is just I love his one-handed backhand and he's just such a I mean of course a lot of people like him he's just such a gentleman and the way he conducts himself so yeah between the three of them I would go with Roger but our son actually can as a big fan of Nadal so I'll probably pick him number two. Okay so here is a question from one of our viewers that how did you choose your priorities for the first 90 days what were they what are your tips to build the network with the CEOs for an account executive what are your challenges as a CEO so how would you say that? So Abhijeet I actually did not create a 90 days plan when I was joining Mastik and of course the whole joining process was fantastic you know a lot of done a lot of groundwork actually sorry. I tell us about the process of what was it like before joining you mean before joining this yeah I mean you know again Mastik we keep saying this and then we want to change this it's still a very you know well kept secret in many ways not the whole doesn't know as much as they should but you know we've had a history of long you know consistent innovation and many firsts right so the first company to create a platform and a solutions and software platform company within an IT services umbrella grew it called Majesco sell it to a private equity actually listed in the US exchange sell it to private equity great journey very different when it comes to the regular IT services companies you know lot more solutions DNA we kind of even today work with organizations to protect people you know patient safety help crime protection transform business models whether it's online transformation or supply chain transformation through our cloud implementations and articles so just a very very solid solutions DNA so that was one part of you know the inspiration saying hey this is a company which is slightly different we actually opened I don't know you knew this but we opened Deloitte's first captive center in in India ramped up to about 450 people we master catch the open to design thinking school about 1314 years back when I had not even heard design thinking at that stage so I think the long history of many first but but you know the more important part was the cultural value system the strong ethos I mean when you think about it I don't know how many situations or large companies we can quote on this but when you have founders who have stuck together for 40 years through various kind of innovation changes that itself speaks for the strong value system and of course we had we lost one of them a couple years back but you know the the founding members always stuck together and always kind of invested in the people and and of course just the sheer potential of unrealized value and opportunity in in front of us with Mastic and the you know the world right now we're what we're going through so so that was a little bit about how can I what drove me towards it but you know I guess back to your question about the first 90 days I actually created I decided I'll create a 45 to 60 day plan you know because in today's kind of environment 90 days is too long and so that's what I did I had a one week plan I had a one month plan then I had a 45 to 60 day plan and and I have to say the one week and one month plan I kind of more or less was tracking towards but after that it changes you know it actually does change and so that would be one learning is actually beyond 30 days it's and I'm not saying we shouldn't plan ahead obviously we just finished our three-year planning right now more recently so it's obviously good but the point I'm trying to make is the agility of adapting to the situation around you as well as inside the company is important and that happens all in the first 90 days right so yeah I mean you know some interesting learnings as I mean actually technically it's it's more than 180 days now so time flies so you had a second 90 day plan or did you again break it into 30-30 kind of days well I mean after the first 30-45 days it really went into a lot more specifics and a lot more around specific strategic initiatives around talent and people around our stakeholders externally including our customers and investors and how you kind of look at the journey ahead and and what are those fundamental things that you need to keep and enhance but also what are those gaps that you potentially need to fill right so that it was a lot more about that overall holistic strategy I do have to say one thing I could not do in the first 180 days which I'm not ashamed of admitting but I've always been a big believer of saying hey you know what you have to spend more than 50% of your time externally right and when I say externally it doesn't have to be all customers it could be partners it could be you know analysts and that's actually you know if I look at my 25 27 years I've always done that it's always been a majority of my time externally and and that did change so you know it maybe speaks to the the changing role of the CEO or the changing role of a leader for that matter in today's environment I was talking to a actually a ex-boss but a good friend and mentor who just literally finished his 30 years in Wipro and this week so I had to ask him like hey what's what are you most proud of and now I mean we're talking about 90 days you know this is 30 years so pretty much you know growing up and living his life in Wipro so I actually you know and I know this firsthand obviously but he really said the biggest thing I can be proud of is I really cared and took care of my people right which I mean I mean and this person has had fascinating accomplishments but if you think about the context of where we are today when everyone talks about talent and you know employee experience and we call it the master care experience you know we're all master cares at heart whether you're in the company or outside and you know it's kind of interesting right that after 30 years that's really what stands up you know one of the things I when I look at the role of the CEO and if I were to really step back a couple of years and I wrote about this one time that it's really like the organization you know earlier used to be like the aquarium where you can look outside but you effectively focus on what's going on inside the aquarium if you look at what has changed today you know if you see that that the aquarium has become part of the ocean so this line between this is external this is internal that's completely changed so in that sense you know it's really fascinating we have a whole bunch of questions I am before I ask my question I would pick up one of them which is just come which is what's the best advice you can give to somebody who's just joined the organization today you know if somebody has joined an organization as a fresh hire yeah what is your advice to somebody like that yeah I mean and I give this to one or two senior leaders who joined us recently so I'll say the same thing but I truly believe in it you know those first few weeks first couple of weeks just take that opportunity to learn everything about the the organization and and it could be in some cases the history the solutions it could be some successes some failures I think what happens in with all of us right it is once you get into that mode of diving into your role or in front of the customer or depending on what the role is it's it's tough to kind of take that time out so that first few weeks or first couple of weeks is so critical to just pace it out and and you know meet as many people as possible virtually you know or in person in today's world depending on what permission and of course just learn as much as possible of what has motivated people what has changed in terms of you know period of time and and really the culture element of what what drives the organization right I mean we in Mastic we talked about Mastic 4.0 which was actually ahead of time again I mean in terms of autonomy and self-managed teams so so it could differ depending on the organization but just learn as much as possible because sometimes you don't get that time back once you're in the pickle thing I don't know I mean you you had you know various strengths of it yourself I think Microsoft and Adobe and others but but what about have you found that or has that been different to you? You know I always think that there are two ways the first 90 cases really about how do you structure information effectively you're getting into a new field it's a new organization so there are two layers of information that you get you know one is really that you're looking at the information about the business you know who are the clients you know where did you make money what are the growth opportunities all of that the other I think is the more complicated part of it and I always think that you know the information which is about the business etc it's it's challenging but it's you know you can deal with it in a fairly structured way you can get there very large part of the unstructured information about people you know so I think that is one of the pieces that I see is a huge area where people have their own take that how do you connect with a large number of people especially as a CEO everybody wants to you know get to know what's your take on various things so that I think becomes an interesting opportunity okay so we have a question from one of the LinkedIn users would love to see executive coaching opportunities for women on the board and what do you advise about executive board presence for women from the Asian community here specifically in India so that's a great question thank you so much and so what would you yeah I mean I mean we again just taking Mastic as an example we have a very complimentary board and and just in terms of diversity of thought first of all right because diversity comes in many dimensions from your background your experiences on support so that we're very fortunate in fact we've gotten a couple more advisors on board recently so that's one part of it this as far as the the women representation we have actually a senior person in our board who actually came from Infosys and a few other organizations very very sharp and very connected in the industry and and so I think you know there's a there's a lot of talk about this when in the context of ESG in the context of the the representation of women in leadership positions we have taken it on ourselves as a challenge to kind of change that not not just at senior level but across all levels so that's something that we're clearly prioritizing but the perspectives that you always will get from diversity whether it's gender diversity or any other forms of diversity and like I said diversity of thought is just so so valuable sometimes you may not even realize that during that time period so there's an organization called Diligent which actually specializes on board governance and now getting into ESG and so they they have a they have some good collateral and literature around this and you know folks who are interested I would have their website there's a lady called Lisa Edwards who talks about it quite a bit I think she's the CEO of Diligent you were talking about ESG for the benefit of all the viewers so ESG would stand for environment and then social social and governance right so social values social elements of I mean diversity and some of those elements would fall under that bracket sustainability and some of the things we talked about in terms of net zero carbon footprint would fall under the environment and governance is is I mean one of the things which we're so proud of actually at Mastic is it's just strong I think but also the governance I mean and you know that's even more important in today's world with respect to where information is shared privacy looking at clarity of and transparency of reporting so on. Okay so we have Preeti Shroff who sort of says it's environment social and governance aspects you know one of the things that I find really challenging about the role of a CEO is just the enormous number of you know conflicting priorities you know so you have to worry about this you know the investors they want returns you want to worry about the employees you have to worry about the board you have to worry about your environmental issues about the government do you find yourself working longer hours because you've become the CEO now or is it you still sort of managed to structure your priorities and does this change I mean did you the way you spent time if you had to do it like a pie chart would it be different in the first 90 days versus now that you spent almost about 180 days I would say a little over that that's right yeah yeah so would that be different you know it's a it's a really important question in terms of prioritization to be frank and and and it never goes away I think but that's the first 90 days you know I would say hey it's always the first 90 days I mean I guess Amazon talks about it being day one always you know I would say it's always first 90 days in some form because the underlying theme of what you're trying to do and how you're trying to make an impact and and get the organization aligned is is always going to be there right with the changing priorities but one area which which was interesting in terms of something I didn't expect as much to spend as much time on is actually interacting with some of our investors and while that is expected to some extent in this role I was very very pleasantly surprised or at least I had an impression before taking on this role that most of the investors are you know numbers people you know they look at you know financials they look at you know spreadsheets and and kind of really structure the conversation that way right it's just exactly the opposite I mean you know 80 maybe even 90 percent of the questions of the the insights some of them have brought in are actually strategic in nature for the most part and and I've actually found that very valuable in in my first 90 plus 90 180 days because we've spoken to about 30 or so investors one on one some of them of course we wanted to speak some of them they wanted to speak you know most of these conversations I've had with my cfo and and it's really very revealing that hey they're interested they're truly genuinely interested on the details of your strategy the details of how you will execute new answers that you would never think that they would be aware of so yeah I mean it's it's really been kind of it's it's really been unexpected to some extent in terms of the quality of the conversations it also shows that they care for MASTEC and they really know the industry as well right so I would say if I were to call out one thing I mean of course a lot of time with people a lot of time with understanding and seeing how we can take the the culture and amplify that going forward I talked about kind of the MASTEC secret but but also in terms of how we can get our word out there in looking at what the gaps are so those things happened but I was one thing I wasn't expecting is insightful conversations and and very deep conversations with our investors so that was something that I'd like to call out so okay so we have a question that you know how do you rate your own work-life balance I mean on a 10-point scale if you had to rate 10 being phenomenally good and one being terrible where would you rate your own work-life you know I have a reputation of being a very hard worker and I am but I have a better work-life balance than most people think and and it's you know you have to kind of align to peoples and your teams needs as well right particularly in a global role or any global role and this what had you know got even before MASTEC and different roles that I played and there is certain times of the day where you're spending time with family there's certain times of the day when you are doing things for yourself and there's certain times of the day where you obviously are focused on work and focused on the people and the business as long as you kind of manage that ratio you know it doesn't necessarily necessarily have to be exactly fitting your schedule it could even fit the team schedule in many cases because you know different time zones and in different parts of the world I think the the rating I would give myself is maybe around seven maybe six to seven so definitely some room to improve because I would want to spend more time doing a few things for actually society which I haven't had a chance as much as I would want right so from that perspective maybe a six or seven would be okay thanks so for for those who joined in a little late you know I am in conversation with Hiral Chandrana the global CEO of MASTEC Group and you know we've been really talking about his first 90 days and how he set the agenda and how he prioritizes so you know one of the questions that has come up is you know what is a book that has really influenced you I can see that what are the top few books you know that you really value and which has shaped your thinking you can I would like to sort of structure it in two ways maybe you can tell me about a book that really shaped you and set you thinking when you are in college and something that set you thinking you know in your new role so talk to me about two of those yeah so you know I I mean if you look at what's happening you know while I do I like to read books on few different topics but a lot of my inclination at least more recently in the last couple of decades have been that intersection of technology and talent which interestingly is the topic of of your show but the ways in which non-technology specific elements of some of these books influence you even in the technology world of the IT services world is fairly interesting I mean one of the books which is I think an old book so but but you know always kind of keeps coming back more and more in the radar is outliers and had well and so of course he talks about multiple different things and he's a great podcast host and he's done many shows and all that so but but that outliers book was did shape elements of my thinking and then you know how of how it shaped you give me one example yeah you know he he actually specifically said there is I think he talks about 10,000 and 15,000 hours he specifically said that there's X amount of time that you have to spend in a particular area and it could be you know career it could be sports it could be any specific profession to really really good get good at it right which which is kind of I mean it seems obvious you know intuitively but but the the details of how we kind of frame that and the examples of the you know that that he gave in the book right from when you're born to you know the month in which you're born so that that amount of time that you spend in a particular area it actually relates back to today's kind of environment right because there are generalists right and there are people who obviously are really good at at covering diversity of various topics but there are specialists right and if you relate back to today's kind of world the focus and and being what we call in our kind of world as SME right subject matter expert in having the depth whether it's a particular technology or set of platforms or a particular industry or a particular domain is is so important and you can do that only when you've spent a certain amount of time so I mean that's an example of how it even holds good in in today's environment one of the more recent ones that I was reading which I think you might have known this author is Amy Webb. Yes absolutely one of the finest. Yeah I believe she teaches in NYU but she's a very solid futurist and I found her I mean in a lot of people make predictions of course some of it is true some of it will not happen but but just the bold nature of those predictions I mean the book she wrote The Big Nine there's a lot about tech industry that we talk about today right I mean in today's kind of environment as you know there's the Big Nine the Big Five you know mama which I guess is now you know Microsoft meta in in that kind of acronym along with Apple Amazon and Alphabet so the influence that these technology giants are having just purely in terms of sheer size I mean I was I think reading another book or maybe it was an article roughly about 250 or 280 billion dollars of investments that they have done just in just just these five companies right in in 2021 and the reason I'm giving you that context is because what Amy Webb talks about in her book Big Nine is how these big tech companies are going to sort of almost warp humanity with their AI models and with their just the sheer power of the data that they have and just the ability to influence economy and the world and humans and she talks about the human element of it because I mean just going back to our ESG reference or diversity or or social elements you know machines are very intelligent obviously you know that's proven but are they are they intelligent in ways where they are empathetic where they understand you know human elements and so these are interesting topics which are obviously going to get you know hopefully resolved or uncovered at some point but bringing that out boldly in in ways that she did keeping an AI kind of theme but really touching humanity right. Hiral we've got tons and tons of questions from the viewers so you know for all those who are joining us we are talking to Hiral Chandrana the global CEO of Mastic and you know one of the things that Yogi Shriram has asked is do you have any suggestions on how a CEO should deal with a situation where there's an activist shareholder who has an agenda that'll take the company in a different direction in case of companies which are listed overseas I mean how do you sort of deal with that really there are tons of questions I've got to look for a really short answer on that. I guess fortunately I haven't been in that situation and I wouldn't want to you know pretend to be an expert giving an answer to that I will say just more broadly though right that one of the underlying themes that I've stood very kind of close to is just collaboration right I mean I always talk about speed collaboration and trust that that has not changed right last 25 years and so collaboration in this context can do wonders and you know it doesn't have to always be competing or going against each other you can figure out ways to collaborate and so I don't know that applies to the scenario of the activist shareholder but there is always a way to figure things out is what I think. There's a kind of a linked question I would say which is sort of saying that you know what is that one key trait that you look for people in your leadership team when you pick the people you are going to sort of work with and that doesn't actually mean only your direct reports but people who are going to take may have a significant impact on the organization in those roles what is the one trait that you look for if you are putting somebody there? Yeah it's very difficult to have that one trait I mean I'll just be very frank because that's not how you would actually select or that's not how you would actually pick talent or groom talent right but if I were to kind of because the question is specific about one the ability to unlearn and learn in terms of change in kind of today's world particularly with how things have evolved and adaptive you know behavior is so critical as you're going through various forms of change so one is of course adapting change second is driving change but just what underlying that is is the ability to unlearn you know try out different things look at career experiences that that have been stretched career experiences not necessarily always in your kind of preview of what you've been good at looking at how people have experimented in different areas or it could be in the same company but it could be different roles so those are things that it's tough to you know in a one or two hour or even few hours conversations very tough to gauge that but you can start looking at patterns right of how the person has evolved and so that I think to me that would stand out it's just the ability because that person you know can continue to drive change in the future. It makes complete change so adaptability is looked at one of the meta skills you know that you know today and Abhijith you're the expert on these so I know you're asking me these questions about your talent and skills and you know you do that to me really well obviously. Thank you but you know I when I see that you know across the different sizes of organizations whether it's you know tiny startups or you know very large organizations this is one of the things that is coming up more and more in the conversations you know adaptability the ability to learn what you've not been taught and also I think the ability to take decisions and deal with ambiguous situations where everything is not clear so I think which is why the role of the leader has changed quite dramatically but I'm going to change gears and move into a different dimension because in season four we said that the theme is tech and talent so I'm going to switch gears and go a little bit more on tech but you look at the industry that you are operating in IT and IT services what are you know if you were to pick two or three areas that you think there are going to be significant shifts or you already see those happening you know what are those that you would bring out? Yeah I mean you know obviously there's enough you know visibility in today's world and literature around what some of those trends are and I think some of them are evolving but I was referencing some of the kind of the big tech and the five or nine big companies that we typically talk about I think it's important to look at that I've always you know I kind of even though most of my life and career has been in IT services and sort of you know now what we call as digital and cloud services the underlying kind of software platforms and the technology platforms and solutions that kind of drive some of that is always important to watch out for because these are the companies that set the stage for even services or downstream kind of business so if I look at that from a trends perspective and I think I was referring earlier that you know some 250 to 80 billion was invested by just the five companies you know on the flip side I think there was another statistic on venture capital funding which you know goes to startups that was like 650 billion or something like that right just in one year I'm talking about 2021 and so if you sort of correlate where the investments are going by the big players by the startups it's interestingly falling in five or six kind of areas I mean for the you know there's the 80-20 rule right I'm talking about the 80% of the investments and I think there were like 2,500 AI investments in the startup investments that I was referring to so obviously that element of AI is now permeating across different categories before it used to be a segment by itself now it's embedded in everything but you know everything from autonomous cars to the latest metaverse buzzword to health tech and fintech right you know and of course you know related to that there's the crypto and kind of the blockchain elements and so on so forth and space right I mean if you if you kind of really look at the patterns again I mean I like to look at patterns because that sort of gives you that 80-20 rule and then these are where your investments are going when I say I'm talking about the big players but even that the startups and so if you look at it from that perspective I don't think we talk about it enough but the whole hardware element when I say hardware I'm talking about devices we we talk about the amount of data that generates we talk about that in terms of today's connected world but the the combination of this complete stack right of hardware software services and and how that really has the ability to converge and generate some phenomenal amplification of innovation is going to be really interesting right so even if you look at all these trends right I mean they are in some form right but I was thinking about it's funny just in the last one week you know we always talk about tech stack right you know full stack engineers now there is something called jam stack you know one of my team members said send me something on jam stack which I think is like javascript and api but then there's something called dow stack you know dao I mean this is decentralized autonomous operations right I mean and so so if you look at that and if you look at correlate some of the the other trends it is convergence and intersection of all these things which is actually going to create a ripple effect and so if you take a look at it from an IT services perspective that that shifts I mean if you look at it from three to five years particularly a lens which is a little bit more medium to longer term it actually shifts how customers are going to be thinking about their businesses all the way to what they're expecting from partners like mass tech in terms of engagement models delivery models business outcomes because they are fairly savvy you know I mean one of the things which has changed in the last few years particularly is that customer CXOs have become very savvy and and gone are the days when you know you can have people who you know just kind of manage and and you know have this overall view of things and most of the the CXOs are very hands-on right I mean they actually know their stuff so so how you can interact with them but also more importantly how you deliver value at mass tech we talk about you know trust value and velocity and we feel that these three kind of guiding uh explain these three to me I mean first value velocity velocity I noticed that in the photograph that was there you know which you sent so what what does that stand for you talk to me I mean fundamentally what what we say and believe in is is that when it comes to stakeholders and this applies not just to customers it applies to employees or master cares some of them I think on the show it applies to our community our societies we live in it applies to investors and other stakeholders so so it is that trust that you're building with these stakeholders that that is non-negotiable right I mean you know mistakes happen but how you connect them and how you kind of you know deal with them is is equally important or more important so just the credibility and the trust with stakeholders so that's the trust part of it value is is really about kind of the business value when it comes to customers right but when it comes to I think I got my screen saver but but when it comes to value that you create for your employees you know but it could be career value it could be social value we talked about ESG earlier so that's the value element of it right so one is of course at a fundamental level each person in in Maastec is is valuable that's kind of the first underlying principle but beyond that each person should be adding value you know whether it's to our customers or other stakeholders and and so that's the value part and of course velocity as as you know in today's world with the speed at which things move with you talked about decision making earlier but it goes all the way to how you want to get things done of course you know you want to be analytical about it you want to make the right decisions but velocity in delivery velocity in career paths velocity in how you invest in the future right are all important so that's really in a nutshell it's an all encompassing how we want to think about us as a company as Maastec but also how we engage and transform experiences with all stakeholders that that we do so you know you had mentioned something earlier that you you've Maastec has been working in healthcare and you know preventing crime and so I they have a number of interesting areas that we could explore but you know when you look at which I want to sort of structure this conversation the question around two areas one is you know healthcare as you see it sort of evolving it's one of the big areas which I believe you know is going to sort of grow in the future the other piece that I think which is getting reshaped in multiple ways which is you know retail and the consumer space and I know that you spend a lot of a number of years on that so these are two areas that I'm going to sort of say that just as much as you know when you looked at the pivot and trends you talked about artificial intelligence software platforms or you talked about the VC money which is going in for the IT services those are three big takeaways at least that's what came to my mind yeah how do you view healthcare and potentially consumer retail kind of you know these two sectors yeah and you know of course while there is some underlying themes that might be common but but these are you know giant sectors and clusters of industries as a whole I mean it'll be interesting to I mean you know when you look at some of the I mean healthcare itself I mean healthcare life sciences there's so many different sub-industries but if sort of look at it holistically and a little bit more on the healthcare side there is the reality is that we have an aging population right particularly in the US I mean the number of people are going to be about 65 plus it's going to double I think in like few years the costs very interestingly you know we did some analysis fairly recently from one of the analysts actually helped us with this but if you look at the costs in healthcare very little is actually IT and administrative costs a lot of it is you know prescription drugs you know inpatient outpatient type of costs maybe physician costs I mean that's really making bulk of the again the 80% or more of the cost so if you look at that if you look at kind of what has happened through this COVID timeframe where of course there's a lot of suffering and pain through these challenging times but also a lot of innovation in healthcare that has happened at the same time with respect to you know whether it's virtual healthcare or home care and looking at you know just personalization of that care right in terms of patient experience so I think it's such a massive massive industry we are actually mathematic very focused on it in at least few of these segments in fact we have some really cool case studies I mean I gave you some examples from historic but just even more recently some of the work that we do for a company and organization in the US which actually provides healthcare related services to you know local care and hospitals and home for senior living you know just kind of how does that get transformed not from just from a cost and optimization and efficiency perspective but there's regulations there's compliance interestingly one thing that has changed significantly in the last three years is that even healthcare companies in highly regulated environments have been much more open to look at some of these emerging technologies so that's a good sign so I would say that if you look at you know going forward if I were to pick one it's interesting you pick healthcare but this is the industry that we are actually betting on and a lot of companies are betting on right in terms of how it's going to get transformed through these technologies that we talked about earlier but even just the whole business models of care and well-being we talked about right instead of preventative I'm sorry instead of just sort of after the issue has happened one of the things one of the large deals kind of we actually one recently publicly announced was helping with these side effects that patients would have after there is a medical device and an implant made was actually one by UK team phenomenal job at NHS and and there that's an example of again preventing thinking about how you would prevent something right from happening so that that again just giving that example but that permeates across you know every interaction that you want to have with the patient and so you know relating it back to some of the big platform players and kind of how we look at it also there's a lot of investment that's going into what we call as industry clouds and there's you know for those of interest there's a lot written on this as well but the view that organizations or bigger platform companies have taken the likes of Microsoft and Salesforce and Oracle and others is they want to really create those turnkey solutions and of course there's always going to be some level of customization and tailoring of that and this is going to be like a 500 to 750 to have a billion dollar industry in just industry clouds right and so healthcare probably going to be a big part of that journey now retail consumer Abhijith is different I mean you I think have spent some time there as well and there you know I was reading something I think it was last month maybe towards the December time frame when you typically catch up with some of these things but a company called Wright Aid which you know frankly I don't think of them as innovative but but they they I was very surprised that's why I'm sort of mentioning that example they said that they've changed I mean this is a for those of you don't know it's a pharmacy it's like CVS but it's like a smaller conglomerate and chain you know headquartered apartments we have done some work with them in my prior years but they said that they've changed 75% of their merchandise later to Gen Z's wow right this is the right thing we're not talking about some e-commerce site or I mean you know we work with a lot of men devised companies who've done the same or non-men devised companies some of the retail fashion companies who've done the same and but we're talking about Wright Aid so so my point is that the changing consumer which we all know about I mean one is of course on the talent side in terms of flexibility of work it's also but even when it comes to buying and and shopping habits and looking at how the preferences have changed and and obviously again you know we do as Mastic we do a lot of work in in e-commerce and digital commerce and experience not just with retail companies but even with men devised and manufacturing companies so we kind of see that shift in terms of how the not just the volume of transactions that happen or the mobile devices and the how shopping gets done but in terms of conversion in terms of preferences in terms of the the different buyer right particularly keeping in mind Gen Z's are going to be the future you know workforce but they also can be the future customer right so sure sure and if I were to just sort of really summarize here there have been a whole lot of questions and comments which have come up so I think even a company like Apple is going to be a healthcare company going forward it's going to move away from the devices that we look at them as and I think privacy is going to become one of the big areas where you know organizations are going to focus on because as work moves into the metaverse and one of the ways to think about it is you know you take a game like Roblox you know you are likely to see work moving more into that kind of a space where people can sort of do different kinds of activities in that simulated environment in a far more realistic way today the graphics there are you know really childish it's pretty much like early days of video games those kind of things even NFTs have some really sort of back graphics and all that that's all going to change and that I think is going to be where a lot of work is going to get done etc so we expect to see that and I want to sort of move to a different kind of less serious kind of an area and say that when you think about the next 90 days you've spent 180 now in the company what are you going to focus on in the next 90 days what was that going to look like you know I mean actually what I said earlier I really meant it I mean it is always I'd like to kind of make this always the first 90 days I mean that you're sort of looking at it in in truly those kind of blocks but the underlying elements that make up that right in terms of people and time you're spending on talent and leadership development and looking at how the future workforce is going to evolve so that's of course one element of it I talked about the external elements of customers of partners that I'm going to ramp that up a little bit in terms of the amount of time I spend and hopefully with some of these variants of variants I don't want to say behind us but slowly trying to get behind us there's not more interaction in person as well but that's really where we believe is important I mean not just for me for that matter but for our leadership team and for our entire workforce in terms of thinking about the customer thinking about our partners and our ecosystem stakeholders will continue to be important right you know and like I said a fortunate to have a great board some really good founder promoters who are passionate about the company even today after so many decades and and also looking at how we can add value to our stakeholders we do a lot of work actually at Mastic even with the academy in fact one of the founders who's not active in the company anymore but he's got a passion for you know academy as we run this thing called deep blue with the universities solve challenging problems we do that we do who have a foundation you know our you know vice chairman MD has his own elements of what he does for social causes and universities so there's a lot of other things we do for stakeholders even outside our customers and investors right that's the point I'm trying to make so that's important in terms of how we look at it holistically but but fundamentally Abhijit I mean it's it's not a very earth-shattering answer it's really those three elements of of people and talent the evolution of that how to get the the workforce ready for for the next three five years and then customers and partners ecosystem that I talked about which is finally what drives the business and then the strategy then execution of that and then then our stakeholders are beyond you know investors in society as a whole and the impact that we can make and the value that we can create for them. Perfect I'm going to end with a couple of you know quick rapid fire questions okay favorite cuisine. Favorite cuisine is Mexican but but you know I'll caveat that with you know only in certain places you mean you know I think the best Mexican food I've had is in Albuquerque in New Mexico okay favorite sport tennis yeah I mean you know although I've been watching more soccer football for you know others but then then any other sport in the last maybe 10 years mostly because our son so passionate about it but yeah I would say soccer and tennis your role model wow you know this is some a question I actually get asked and and I I've given a very vague answer to it for various reasons but but there are so many mentors and influencers I've actually been very fortunate truly to have had great bosses great friends great colleagues you know great team members so I you know it would be just a shame if I picked one role more I mean it's truly been for me a 360 degree view of how how it's helped me evolve and get inspired. You know your favorite kind of location to take a vacation in is it a mountain sea jungle city? We've gone to Spain three times so I would put that you know at the top just had had different places in each of those trips but it's been fabulous every time we've been there. If you had to write your own biography autobiography what would the title be? What would it be called? I haven't thought about it I mean I think I haven't achieved as much as some of you and many others have done and I think it's too early for an autobiography but you know if I were to sort of leave and thought it was it would be impact that have been made been able to make on people and our customers right I mean in the end if that's the one takeaway saying that hey that had a long lasting impact on people and who worked with us or worked with me and the customers that I've done but I think that that would be satisfying. Thank you thank you so very much we've come up to the end of the hour and you know we've covered such a huge range of topics it's been fun talking to you. Yeah I know I mean Abhijith I know it's I thought this was going to be first 90 days and I think we kind of touched on everything from tech to industry to all the other things so yeah it was great enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so very much and you know for the benefit of our listeners I just want to say that you know the next conversation is going to be on the ninth and where I'm going to talk to two people who've written a book which talks about the importance of sleep and we're going to talk about the five big myths that you know we have around sleep so don't miss it on the ninth at 7 p.m IST and until then take care thank you.