Leadership Insights With Prashant Prashant Handoo

An accomplished business leader with over 30 years of experience in managing and coaching young leaders and getting things done by delivering strategic customer experience initiatives, driving operations excellence, and re-imagining products & services in the airline and airport business.

He effectively manages medium to large workforces to deliver outstanding service and operations excellence. He has worked at the top 2 best airlines in the world (Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways) as well as India’s Jet Airways. Currently, he is the Chief Operating Officer of Bangalore International Airport Limited.

Throughout my career, he has effectively blended the 3 P’s of Customer Experience and Operations Excellence- People, Processes, and Performance - to create value for the companies that he has worked with. He engages in a people-oriented management style because he has witnessed its ability to increase employee engagement and drive them to provide outstanding customer experience.

He is also passionate about coaching and mentoring young leaders as he loves teaching and it's also what I am very good at.

He has extensive experience and skills in the following areas:

- Getting Things Done
- Customer Experience Strategy & Execution
- Service Process Redesign
- Customer Journey Excellence
- Aviation Commercial Strategy
- Marketing and E-Commerce
- People Development and Training
- Performance Improvement
- Delivering Results
- Mentoring & Coaching Young Leaders
- Building and Nurturing High-Performance Teams

He has consistently achieved his company’s business objectives through high-level competency, reliability, and focusing on strategic execution. His scope of work encompassed both B2B and B2C interactions and business dealings.

Working overseas and managing multi-cultural teams in the United States, Russia, India, Middle East, Europe, and the Asia Pacific has given him extensive hands-on experience in Customer Service & Customer Experience Innovation, Operations Management, Business Strategy, Sales, Marketing, Human Resources, and Financial Administration.

As a leader, he is self-aware with strong personal values and integrity. His leadership focus has always been on results achievement, relationship-building, and creating a vision for teams to strive for. He has spent a lot of time on creating a community of leaders, cultivating collaboration, and encouraging individuals and groups.

He has held several senior-level positions, including Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Operating Officer.

Senior Vice President and Global Head of HR and other enabling functions at CIGNEX Datamatics. Ankita has over 22 years of progressive experience in managing and leading various aspects of Human Resources spanning across high-paced business domains of ITES. In addition to all functions of HR, Ankita overseas other enabling functions like Administration, Travel, and Resource Management.
Ankita holds a Ph.D. in Management and is a Gold Medallist in BBA as well as MBA. She has done HR and Business Strategy-related Executive Management Programmes from IIM-A, ISB- Hyderabad, and XLRI. She is a certified PPA (Thomas Profiling) Practitioner.
She has excelled in establishing innovative and competitive initiatives and institutionalizing a strong performance-driven culture at CIGNEX Datamatics which has resulted in the company being certified as a “Great Place to Work 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20 & 2020-21”.
Recently, she has been awarded amongst Forbes India’s Top 100 Great People Manager by the study conducted by GMI India. Apart from this great recognition, Ankita Singh has also successfully completed one of the most prestigious certifications from Harvard Business School Online – “Sustainable Business Strategy”.
Her expertise includes transformational change management and M&A initiatives. She has extensively worked in all facets of HR with a special interest in the field of leadership Development, Organizational Behaviour, Culture Building, and Employee Engagement.
She has been recognized in different prestigious platforms for her contribution and excellence in the field of HR and leadership. She was awarded “CHRO of the Year 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017” “Women Personality of the Year 2019 and 2018 by Femina”, “Business Person of the year 2020, “Most influential Corporate Personality-2019”, “Indian Business Woman of the Year 2019”, “Indian HR Champion of the year 2019”, “Women Leader of the year 2019”, “Inspiring personality of the year 2019”, “Most Influential HR Leader of the year 2019” “Best employee engagement project designer of the year 2019” just to name a few.
She believes in driving organizational culture and values through PEOPLE, not processes alone.
Apart from her professional excellence, Ankita is very active in supporting social causes by working closely with various NGOs’ on Child Education and Development. She is an avid traveler and passionate photographer.

In conversation with Atul Raja.

Atul is a marketer, brand builder, and strategist with 28-yrs high octane cross-industrial experiences across some leading organizations like Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, Shaw Wallace, Videocon, Bennett & Coleman, Biocon, and Daewoo Motors. Specializing in business planning, strategic marketing, branding, product management, and marketing communications, he has launched and managed leading FMCG brands like Airtel, Royal Challenge, Daewoo Matiz, Tata Indicom, and Kenwood, and his long marketing stint is marked by success stories on corporate branding and product marketing.

Equipped with a Management degree, he has honed my marketing & branding skills at Marcus Evans, London, Indian School of Business (ISB), Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), and Tata Management Training Centre (TMTC). He is an avid writer and a regular columnist in leading publications. Frequently warded for marketing initiatives, He is a member of the US-headquartered International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

In conversation with Neeraja Ganesh.

After a successful career in the Information Technology industry managing large teams, delivery of IT projects, Operational excellence, and customer delight for large banking captives for 25 years,
She switched her career to work in the space of gender diversity and headed the JobsForHer Foundation. In the 18 months that she single-handedly headed the not for profit foundation, which was set up to bridge the gender gaps in India, she built a unique brand, numerous partnerships, and a large community of women who experienced a variety of learning interventions through workshops, conferences, trainings and hands on projects. While she was able to bring about a positive mindset shift among the women, she turned her attention to the need of the youth of the country. She went onto serve as the Director – Relationships at National Education Society of Karnataka. Her focus in that role was to work closely with the industry veterans to build the industry-academia connect to ensure the curriculum of the institutions was relevant to the current and future industry needs.

She is now a freelance consultant, and conduct various training programs and workshops on leadership and behaviors. She also coaches people to progress in their careers.


Awards received -
2017: TEDx Women award by the Dayananda Sagar Institutions for my 25 years of achievements in the corporate world
2019: JobsForHer HerRising award in the Women Professionals category for my contributions to the work of gender diversity.
2020: HerRising Award in the Women in Education category, Women’s Web Orange Flower Award for Writing on Women at Work
2021: HerRising Award in the Women in Impact category

In conversation with Kanishka Sinha.

Kanishka is a Leadership development, Executive coach, Former ISB Professor of Communication and Ethics.

In conversation with Jaya Bhateja.



A student of a life dedicated to creating tangible results for organisations, teams and coaches.

Her journey of self-accountability, reflection, self-coaching, education, learning, unlearning, building the expertise and creating an entrepreneurial setup as a first-generation entrepreneur has created more passion in me to support others achieve their best potential.

Received recognition from several corners of the world, That's what passion does to you :-) some of the prominent ones are the 100 Best Global Coaching Leaders Award by the World HRD Congress (Feb 2017) & second was the Young Leader Award (International Coach Federation) in 2019.

She runs a boutique Executive Coaching and Coach Education firm with the name Abhyudaya. Abhyudaya is a sanskrit word Abhay = Sun, daya = rise. Through Abhyudaya Global Coach Circle, I along with a talented team, support organisations to build coaching cultures, discover innovative solutions, for the employees to have the best of corporate experiences, inspire them for greater self-confidence, output, leadership, peace & mindfulness.

With methodologies, interest networks, we lead teams effectively with CARE being our core thought for the programs. An acronym that summarises the kind of cultures we create through Abhyudaya by promoting positive Conversations, Accountability, Reflection & Empathy through our work.


She has worked with renowned corporates like BCG, Flipkart, TATA Group, PWC, Microsoft & more promoting our leadership coaching expertise across the world.