The Chords of Life - Vineet Tandon Vineet Tandon

Covid Pandemic has changed the world for many of us and Digital Inclusion has become an overnight priority. With schools being shut and classrooms moving to digital, the gap between thos who have access to digital and those who do not have only tells us part of this challenge. So many children that i personally know of have given up studying because they don't have either a smartphone or a laptop or a computer. Those who have also one of these also cannot afford data recharges needed every month to be able to access online education. While this is good news for entreprenuers and telco providers (they have an opportunity to bridget), this is certainly not an encouraging statistic for the nation where few million students complete education and enter the labor market every year. 

It was with this thought in the background, when i came to know of the concept of Digital Daan, i reached out to Osama Manzar, Founder & Director of Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) to understand the initiative and learn more. Osama started DEF at a time when Digital had not yet arrived. His struggle for years at the beginning of his career, leadership in setting up digital initiatives for leading print media houses, experiences in social enterprise, entreprenuership, ability to innovate, experiment and create opportunities are a phenomenal account that one can listen and learn from. 

Listen to this interesting Podcast (Listening Time: Approx 38 Mins) and yes, if you are a reader and listener of this Podcast, you can definitely action digital karma by offering some digital daan here.

In this brand new podcast episode of #TheChordsOfLife, my guest, Shreyasi Singh, Founder & CEO of Harappa Education shares her interesting journey from being a journalist to the CEO of an EduTech company, HARAPPA EDUCATION. Born and brought up in Bihar, she moved to Japan in the early years of her life and her experience of having lived in multiple cities made her agile and adaptable to change. Shreyasi believes that while her past defines her to a point, it is her actions today that have a larger bearing on the life! 

Back in March 2020, when the world was slowly awakening to the disruption caused by #Covid19, Shreyasi and her team were quick enough to realise this and introduced a campaign called #BEAT2020. The campaign is about embracing change, rising to the opportunity and being a role model in the face of crisis. No wonder, the campaign saw phenomenal response. As part of this campaign, her team introduced a free course, Embracing Change and no wonder, over 0.12 million people have logged into this course in last five months. 

Know more about the exciting journey of #SHREYASI and be ready to #BEAT2020 by listening to this episode. If you have questions or suggestions, please visit: www.vineettandon.com and drop in your suggestions! 

This week i have Jaba Menon, an Executive Coach sharing her perspective on our Podcast - The Chords of Life. Jaba has over three decades of experience and in her last assignment was working as Vice President, Marketing Communications at Centum Learning, a Bharti Group Company. A diligent practitioner of Nicheren Buddhism, Jaba consults global clients spread across 14 countries in her new avatar as an Executive Coach.  I was fortunate to have worked with her in early part of my career and I would not hesitate to admit that some of the marketing acumen i developed was under her able guidance. 

Having spent her early childhood days in Ranchi, Jaba emerges as a strong independent woman for whom sense of purpose and work shapes her identity. Music has always been part of her life and whenever she finds herself, overhwhelmed, the song Que Sera Sera, What Will be Will Be offers hope and guidance. Having worked in Corporates for over three decades, Jaba realised that the support system for Senior Leadership is hardly adequate and this was her starting point of her journey into Executive Coaching.  

Check out this interesting episode where Jaba shares her journey through the years and her commitment to reduce what she refers to as "Wastage of Human Potential". If you have questions or suggestions, please visit my website: www.vineettandon.com and write to me.  I personally answer all questions that listeners may have about the Podcast. 

This week i have a very interesting personality, probably India's First Teen Life Coach, Rajat Soni, sharing his perspective on our Podcast - The Chords of Life. Rajat has over two decades of experience and over the years has impacted over 500 families and 20000 teenagers with his coaching programs. 

A B.Tech Graduate, Rajat was working like many of us in corporate sector, when he quit his job and moved to executive coaching. He armed himself with a certification from International Coaching Federation (ICF) and changed his career path. It was during his executive coaching, when a CXO shared a challenge he was facing with his child, that's when Rajat got introduced to Teen Coaching. Since then there has been no looking back. 

Check out this interesting episode where Rajat shares his journey from a B.Tech corporate professional to a Teen Life Coach through his own shares of experiences & learnings from this interesting journey. 

Rajat's book, Un-Judge your teenager is a must read considering that sooner or later we all end up judging our teenagers and trust me, there is a better way to unlock many of those challenges that you will discover in his book. 

If you have questions or suggestions, please visit my website: www.vineettandon.com and write to me.  Will be glad to listen to you and respond. 

This episode of the Podcast, titled "Tum Kya Jaano Dosti Kya Hoti Hai" takes a trip down the memory lane of what Friendship used to mean in the early days of my life, when i was still in the school. Internet has not yet arrived and friendship experiences were all in the real world. We would sit and chat (not text) for hours, spend quality time doing nothing (productivity was yet to be discovered) and fight on things that these days we would simply ignore. 

Today, as i scroll over the list of hundreds of friends i have on social media, i feel that absolute numbers don't really mean anything. What matters is how deeply we have interacted and engaged with a few quality friends from this list and how much value we attach to these real relationships. 

This Podcast Episode is in Hindi and format is Poetry. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me via my website: www.vineettandon.com

Dr. Raj Dravid has over 40 years of experience and has led leadership roles at IL&FS Skills and Centum Learning Africa. Dr. Raj personal career journey spread over four decades is testimony of the fact that success in career is very much a product of hard work and doesn’t happens overnight. Here are a few interesting takeaways from this Podcast – In Conversation with Dr. Raj Dravid:

1) There is no substitute for on-ground experience: If you think that you are from a premiere institution and you can start working on strategy and take high level decisions without working on the ground, you are destined to fail and learn the hard way.

2) Embrace Change: Covid19 has taught the world a few hard lessons and the best one to take forward is to embrace change. If we are not resilient and don’t embrace change, we are going to be left behind. Learn in his own words, how Pager Industry was introduced and wiped out in almost 14 months'.

3) Everyone needs a job & dignity of work: If skills that we provide people with are useful on the job or create employment, there are high possibilities that people will come for it, undertake training and will settle for jobs. The failure that we see today when people are let go with the onset of Covid-19 is because we never created that environment where workers were treated as kind of extended families.

4) Favorite Quote from The Podcast: Ask people one question, “what can you do to help others so that they can in turn help you”.

5) Love for Music: In the words of Dr Raj, “Music gives you oxygen and allows you to extend creative expression in life”.  He enjoys listening to Carnatic Music, Marathi Music, Chamber Music and enjoys Ragas and classical Hindustani as well. He has authored a book titled “Listening to Bismillah Khan” which is a standard textbook in multiple universities.



If you have questions & suggestions about this Podcast, please visit: www.vineettandon.com and share your feedback.