A Star-studded Inaugural Business Leadership Summit Successfully Conducted at IIM Amritsar

Amritsar: Indian Institute of Management Amritsar successfully conducted their Inaugural Leadership Summit, Aarohan’22 on the 30th of January 2022 in Video Conference mode.
Aarohan’22 provided the student fraternity a holistic view of how a manager can handle different situations to respond to a cohesive and competitive market with varying conditions. In line with the idea, the theme of the Summit was “Rise Like a Phoenix”, focusing on how industries took up the challenge posed by the pandemic and evolved themselves to not just survive the market, but to reinvent their services to serve the people better.
During the summit, Prof. Amit Gupta, Dean, IIM Amritsar addressed the gathering, and emphasized on the importance of qualities like consistency, perseverance, etc. He insisted that while concepts pertaining to management best practices can be taught, the ultimate step has to be taken by the people who are taught, so that they can go on and become exceptional leaders. He urged the students to learn from the esteemed panelists about the various challenges their organizations had faced and how they managed to rise amidst them.
The speaker list for the Summit was a star-studded one. The industry-exponents who addressed the students included; Ms. Aradhika Mehta, CMO, Ex-Lenksart.com, Mr. Lalit Agarwal, Founder and Managing Director, V-Mart Retail Limited, Mr. Vipul Sharma, Managing Director, Ducati India, and Ms. Seema Nayak, Chief Compliance Officer, NCDEX.
The first speaker for the day, Ms. Aradhika Mehta commenced her address by giving the audience a backdrop of the situation from her previous organizations during the beginning of the pandemic. She then emphasized on the challenges faced by the company due to the pandemic- ranging from the reduction in sales to supply-chain issues. She further elaborated on the business opportunity the company had, and how the company made use of them. The address then revolved around the 3C strategy to face any disruptive situation; Connect, Creative Solutions, and Collaborate. She explained the points with anecdotes from her professional career, and made the talk interesting and enjoyable for the participants. Replying to various questions, she was generous to provide various nuggets of wisdom, like “The tools in the industry have changed; The rules remain the same”, and was able to create a great impression in the minds of the listeners.
Following Ms. Mehta, it was the turn of Mr. Lalit Agarwal, and he started his speech by talking about understanding one’s consumer. He spoke about the fundamental things that one should keep doing to overcome challenges. “To serve the Indian consumer, you need to be very analytical” was how he broke down the various challenges in being in the Fashion Retail domain in a diverse country like India. Keeping his address short and giving more time to the interactive session with students, he answered various topical questions posed by the students such as the impact of the Union Budget on Businesses, very eloquently. He concluded his address by wishing the students in becoming eminent entrepreneurs in the future.
Emphasizing the importance of having a “Never say die” attitude, Mr. Bipul Sharma commenced his address with stating how we have to be focused on what we are supposed to do. He proceeded to talk about the long and prestigious history of Ducati- the organization he represents- and asked the most relevant question; “Were all these successes without challenges?” to invoke a thought in that direction, in the minds of the listeners. He went on to say that “Human beings are not hard-wired to understand failure”, and emphasized on the importance of taking failure as a companion for life and learning to live with it. He made his address interesting by adding various anecdotes from his company, including their MotoGP 2021 Constructors’ Championship victory.
If there was one thing to take away from Ms. Seema Nayak’s address, it would be “Be different, be you, and leave a trail for others to follow”. She drove home the point by citing various anecdotes from her personal and professional career, and was able to captivate the audience. She further talked about the challenges faced by her organization during the initial phases of the pandemic; of how some teams had to work from office premises and some others were just not ready for a Work from Home model. She spoke on how the teams were made ready to work online in a short span of 3 weeks, and further elaborated that the era of social distancing has brought people closer in some regards. How in these times of disruption focus should be given on empathy was also talked about, along with topics such as financial inclusion and impact of regulations, among others. Her enthusiastic answers to the students’ queries was well received by the attendees of the summit.
The students of IIM Amritsar showed great enthusiasm post each address. The discourses were made highly interactive through a healthy Q&A session between the speakers and students.