The following is an edited excerpt from the conversation.

 INTRODUCTION

Devashish: Hello friends, a very warm welcome to India Decoding Jobs: Talent Council Lighthouse Series. Today is a very, very special day. I’m sitting in a unique, amazing campus—a student campus. And why is it unique?

Number one, of course, this is a campus that is situated in the heart of a very corporate part of the National Capital Region. Number two, all students here are coached and mentored by industry experts and practitioners. Their entire curriculum is designed, and the way they work and learn is entirely with business leaders. They learn from that experience and gain from that experience.

And a couple of other very important trivia: the employability of this campus is at 71%, which is the highest, especially for their business domain students. And of course, some of the highest pay packages have been offered to students who’ve graduated from this campus.

Any guesses? I’m sure many of you would have guessed—this is Masters’ Union. I have with me none other than Pratham Mittal, who is the founder of Masters’ Union and many other great entrepreneurial ventures.

Welcome, Pratham! It is absolutely amazing to have you in this grand finale episode of this season. You’ve had a very big responsibility on your shoulders. You come from a very pioneering business family which has steered the course of higher education in India, and you had the responsibility of making it big, bigger, better—and I think you’ve done it with a lot of aplomb. Congratulations for that in Masters’ Union and your other education ventures, especially Masters’ Union that we will talk about.

We as business leaders see such tremendous potential and impact that your students are already creating, and that’s wonderful. So today, friends, we’re going to have this very candid conversation. You’ve heard Pratham earlier in several media outlets. Today, on behalf of Confederation of Indian Industry and Taggd, which is India’s largest and most trusted digital RPO, I welcome you very warmly.

Pratham: Thank you so much! Very excited. This is the longest intro anyone’s ever said of me.

Devashish: So, what we’re going to do, friends, today is we have three sections. The first is called “Decoding the Jobs.” The second is called “Spilling the Beans,” and we literally would want to do that. And finally, of course, we’ll have “Expert’s Advice.” And in that section, Pratham will be representing the youth of India, who I believe completely are as big experts in the industry as some of the very experienced leaders.

So let’s begin with our first question.

SEGMENT 1: DECODING THE JOBS

Question 1: The Origin Story of Masters’ Union

Devashish: So Pratham, how did it all start – Masters’ Union ? What is your story, your own personal story behind it?

Pratham: So, I was very privileged to go to a top-ranked business school, University of Pennsylvania. It has the Wharton School of Business. And there I realized that even though it was a very highly ranked institution, I was sleeping through most of my classes. There go the rankings! And I think that was true for most of my friends as well. There were very few classes that truly inspired us. I would say out of the 40 courses I took there over four years, there’s maybe one course where I truly, was inspired to learn.

And in that course, there were no exams, no lectures, no slides, no grades, no attendance, no books, none of that. The teacher, his name was Adam Grant. The way he would teach was just giving us a problem statement and us as a group solving for that problem statement, something very rooted in reality. And because of that experience, one of the projects we got eventually became my entire life. Because that project we got, we worked on it, it became a product. That product became a company. Running that company for almost 10 years of my life.

Devashish: Wow.

Pratham: Right. So one class where the teacher was teaching us more experientially and in a hands-on manner literally gifted me my entire life. And at that moment, I had decided that sometime in my life, I will build an institution where students will not be inspired to sleep, but be inspired to really change the way the world looks for them.

It just so happened that I was back home in COVID, and I had some time on my hands. I said, “Hey, let’s give it a shot right away.”I thought I’d do it when I’m 60 or 70.

Devashish: No, no. We are aware that this idea was born during the COVID times, right?

Pratham: And so we just took up 60 kids. We literally found them online through a couple of news articles and ads that we ran. We found 60 students. Most of them paid absolutely next to nothing. And we started the experiment with a curriculum where, as I said, we go beyond exams, lectures, slides, grades, attendance, books, where students actually learn business by building a business. And then one thing led to another, and today we have almost a thousand kids across all of our programs. And as you mentioned, placements and rankings, etc. Obviously they have improved and incremented over a period of time.

Devashish: Right, right. And it’s amazing to note that we are right in the center of a complete corporate hub, and students here. You have the energy of a campus the moment you walk in, but you’re right in the middle of where business is done.

Pratham: That was another thing, right? So when you go to a medical college, it is always situated next to a medical hospital, right? And real doctors teach apprentices. You don’t have academic doctors and practicing doctors, it’s just all mixed together. The doctors, they’re doing surgeries in the morning and teaching in the evening. And I think that’s the best way to learn from the experts themselves.

That’s why when we were thinking where to build our campus, we thought it cannot be a better place than where we are today. Because here you have BCG, Bank of America, Expedia, Gartner, WPP, Volvo, Siemens, Aviva, and this is just one-third of the names in this building.

Devashish: In this building itself!

Pratham: In this building itself. And so it becomes very easy for these practitioners to come down and teach. It becomes very easy for students to be exposed to half the Fortune 500 within a one-mile radius. Across that window is Udyog Vihar, and across this door is CyberHub. Literally, I don’t think there’s any Fortune 500 that’s not represented here.

Devashish: Yeah, absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. And it’s such a fantastic energy the moment you walk in here.

Question 2: Focus on Entrepreneurship

Devashish: My next question to you Pratham is, Masters’ Union has a tremendous focus on entrepreneurship. I’ve attended this fair, this almost mela kind of setup where your students had these new ideas and all of us were walking, listening to their pitches. I think it was one of the first I’ve ever seen. So how did this idea come to you that entrepreneurship should be such a big forte at Masters’ Union? And also, how do you curate this curriculum for entrepreneurship?

Pratham: So our basic understanding and the premise of this entire institution is that the best way to learn business is to build a business. Build a business, become a job creator. Not even that. The best way to learn business is to build a business. Now, once you’ve built a business, you have enough business knowledge to then become an investment banker if you want to, to then become a marketing manager if you want to, to become an accountant if that’s what you want, to pursue a CA or to pursue services.

I really believe that the best way to learn a skill is to live that skill. Now, how you use that skill is totally up to you. Once I know how to swim, I can swim to save my life. I can swim to win a race. I can do whatever. I can swim to dive. Similarly, even though our curriculum is based on entrepreneurship, many of our students actually choose to go into traditional jobs. But I feel that having learned business the way they have, they’ll do much better at their jobs. They have such a smooth landing. They’re able to weigh the pros and cons. They know the entirety of the picture.

Devashish: The entirety of the picture, the whole nine yards.

Pratham: And one more thing I’d say is that when you’ve lived business by building it, your DNA also changes.

Devashish: Oh, it certainly does, right?

Pratham: Once you have tasted blood, you can’t go back. It’s very similar to that. So I think they become entrepreneurial. That entrepreneur gene gets activated. That spirit gets activated, and then they bring it to whatever job they do in the future. Most of my recruiters come back and tell me exactly this.

Devashish: Yes, I think that belief that in whatever job I am, it’s like I’m betting my money on it and realizing that purpose and taking it to the hill. Couldn’t agree more.

Question 3: The Talent Landscape and Future of Jobs

Devashish: Now, Masters’ Union is an institution. How do you, Pratham, see the talent landscape, and if you relate it to the future of jobs, especially where India is today?

Pratham: How honest do you want me to be?

Devashish: Brutally honest.

Pratham: Okay. I think the world that we are living in and the year that we’re living in is a year of huge change. I’ll give you some data points from last year, and then I’ll tell you my prediction for this year.

We have a large tech team that builds all of our software systems and processes in-house. Last year was the first year we did not hire anyone new. And whoever left for whatever reason, we did not replace them. And yet our productivity of that team is 10x of what it was the year before. And that’s because of agents, AI, whatever it is, I don’t know. But it is because of many different things.

This year, I really feel we’ll reach a stage and I’m going beyond Masters’ Union now, where we’ll see a company getting founded with one employee reaching ₹1,000 crores in revenue.

Devashish: Fabulous.

Pratham: You want to double-click on that as soon as that happens, right? Because one person can now use an army of agents. One smart person can use an army of agents to really build the entire tech team, to build the marketing team, to also do automation on the marketing, to then set up HR processes for those agents, to set up performance management by those agents, set up processes through those agents.

Devashish: Couldn’t agree more.

Pratham: And so once that happens, once that dam breaks, I think this entire hiring economy, this entire employee-employer relationship will come into question. The Companies Act under which people are employed, I think, was written by the British in the 1850s, if I’m not wrong. It has had its updates, but the concept of this relationship is very obsolete. I have a feeling that in 2025, the concept of employment will undergo a tremendous change.

And when the students who start college today graduate, I don’t think in 2029 or 2030 they will have jobs to go to. That is my view of the HR employment economy.

Devashish: Sure.

Pratham: And so that would bring into question your team and your company and my team and my company. What do we stand for then? We’re all part of this HR funnel in a way. Where do we go? So we’ll have to rethink colleges. We’ll have to rethink hiring. We’ll have to rethink everything, and I think we should be ready for that.

Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. And I think a lot of metamorphosis needs to be done within the next two years if you’re looking at a window of just 2030 where this might happen.

Pratham: It might be sooner. It’s as early as when AGI comes. And I just read yesterday that they’re saying, “Hey, 2025 is the year. We will release AGI 1.0.” So then 2.0 will come six months after. 3.0 will come three months after. 4.0 will come one and a half months after because it’s a half-life, right? That means by 2030, we have AGI 10.

Devashish: Yeah. And I hope everyone’s listening to this. This is truly lighthouse.

Question 4: Non-Technical Skills and Critical Thinking

Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. And that comes to my next question. Almost 80% of employers, even in this situation that we’re talking about, are looking at non-technical skills like critical thinking, analytical ability. How is Masters’ Union inculcating this in their teaching methodology as well as the curriculum, their pedagogy?

Pratham: Employers don’t care about what you know. They only care about how you think. And I think thinking is a muscle, and you have to help students train that muscle. The only way to train a muscle is to make it practice, is to make it exercise. So you have to essentially get the students to think.

Now, a traditional school-college system actually pushes students away from thinking—not just in our nation, but for the legacy across the world, I would say—because they will say, “Hey, here’s a syllabus. Don’t think. This is the syllabus I’ve given you.” Here are questions at the back of the book. That’s how you and I have studied, right? Out of these 100 questions at the back of the book, 10 will come in the final exam. Don’t think.

Devashish: True, 100%. Yes.

Pratham: And you have to get 80-90%. By the way, there are past papers. You could refer to those. So till now, our thinking was about using past papers to pass tomorrow’s exam and cracking that score. That’s what’s been happening. Now, that does not train your thinking muscle. That trains your examination muscle. That maybe trains your cramming muscle. That’s not your thinking muscle.

Thinking means that you’re taking something that exists today, manipulating it, moving it around here and there, and creating new knowledge out of it. So here, our curriculum is structured in a very interesting way. In Term One, all of our students—without having any knowledge of business—have to build their own e-commerce stores and actually sell online.

Devashish: Brilliant. This is Class 12 kids finishing Class 12. They’ve come here. Any anecdotes that you could talk about?

Pratham: I can give you 20. Please, please, happy to.

There is a student team. They have built their own candles, and it’s done in such a way that the candle wax doesn’t fall and it gets contained. I believe they have sold ₹6 lakhs worth of candles in like two months.

Devashish: Wow.

Pratham: We have students who have these pens—like a clicker pen—which is actually like a hidden camera, and they sell those hidden cameras online. I think they’ve crossed again ₹13-14 lakhs. If you just see across the room—and if the camera can move—you see Zeller over there. That’s another student team. They sell crystals online because he said that, “Hey, Swarovski is the only crystal company in India. There’s no Indian version of Swarovski. I’m going to build Zeller.”

Devashish: Fantastic.

Pratham: So he sells crystals online. ₹47 lakhs of revenue in three months because these students ideated, they thought: What is the market? Where is the gap? Train their thinking muscle. Let’s build a brand. Let’s figure out ads. Let’s figure out the website. Oh, it’s not working. Okay, we have to change now. They are training their thinking muscle.

There is no syllabus.

Devashish: There’s no syllabus.

Pratham: There is none. I tell them, “Hey, listen, you have to build a business, get revenue, get profit, get margins.” Now, as they are building their business, they realize, “We have to maintain books of accounts. We have to maintain records.” And now they are self-motivated to learn accounting because they know they have to file for taxes. Currently, in any business school, getting students to an accounting class is the toughest thing. But here, because they have to do accounts, they learn themselves. They’re thrown into the swimming pool—you have to learn how to swim.

Devashish: You have to swim. Absolutely.

Pratham: So that is how the thinking muscle gets trained. In Term Two, they all have to build a YouTube business.

Devashish: Oh, right. Any ideas on what students have done?

Pratham: Oh, so many. So many. I mean, we have a student who’s building content on K-pop.

Devashish: Right. Oh, my son would love to hear that.

Pratham: We have a student who’s building amazing content on branding. We have a student who used to run this page called “Business with Bansal”—Anurag Bansal—and he used to talk about interesting business news. Now he has his own podcast with Zerodha. And I have tens of examples like these. If you just go to Instagram and search for Masters’ Union, they’re probably tagged on our channel, and you can see all of them.

Devashish: I have seen a few. Amazing students.

Pratham: And their grades come from the number of subscribers they have, the engagement rate they have, the comments rate they have, the average view duration that they have—all the real metrics that you will judge your own podcast on. Do they get brand deals? If they get brand deals, what kind of brand deals? That’s what matters.

In Term Three, they have to build a cloud kitchen—actually sell on Zomato and Swiggy. So these are real ways to train your mind. These are real ways to keep them fresh and exercise them and not stick to a syllabus.

Devashish: Almost real-life projects.

Pratham: Much more than that. It’s real life. It’s not even a project. Jumping into the profession right away. You talk to any medicine student, they’ll tell you that they started learning medicine once they started doing OPD.

Devashish: Yeah, true.

Pratham: Before that, it’s all theory. It’s only when you start seeing patients do you learn anything about medicine. That’s the reality.

Devashish: Thank you. Very, very enlightening.

Question 5: Key Industries and Talent Preparation

Devashish: Masters’ Union focuses on some key industries. What are those? And in your mind, how are we getting talent ready for such roles that Masters’ Union is typically focusing on?

Pratham: No, we are industry-agnostic.

Devashish: Okay.

Pratham: Fully. Students go into 20 different industries. We have students who’ve gone into space science. We have students who have gone into consulting. We have students who have gone into crystal manufacturing. We have students who have gone into towel manufacturing, they’re working with Trident. So students go to different kinds of companies, different industries. Fully agnostic.

I think what we really want is our students, wherever they go, they’re able to turn heads with their energy, with their zeal, with their knowledge, and with their risk-taking ability and with their communication.

Devashish: And how we prepare them is how I said earlier, throw them in the pool, let them practice their muscle. Once they’ve practiced their muscle, they’ll be able to use it.

Pratham: One thing I will say is that if you meet any Masters’ Union student, the common thread you’ll find between all of them is just the sparkle in their eye.

Devashish: Yeah, I can see that.

Pratham: They will be alive. You will not see them sitting in a corner with their book and going away writing something. They will have this energy of like they’ll be hopping. They’ll be like, “Okay, what’s next? What’s next?” They might be a little bit impatient also, which is not necessarily a good thing. And they will bring that energy to whichever company they go to. That’s what we focus on.

Devashish: Fantastic.

Question 6: Working with Practitioners

Devashish: And they’re working with practitioners—people from the corporate world. And on live projects even through their student life. How are they able to deal with the upheaval of what comes with that role? Because they are getting real targets. They’re getting real deliverables they’re not able to meet sometimes.

Pratham: I think 80% of them don’t succeed. When you’re working with practitioners, that’s how you learn. You fail more often than not.

Devashish: And how do they take flak? Because they’re getting real feedback from real business leaders.

Pratham: How do they take flak? I mean, there are students who work with me, and I am—I don’t know if you saw earlier—there were some students who were shadowing me, and I would, to put it mildly, make their lives hell.

Devashish: Yeah, absolutely.

Pratham: And it’s controlled hell. So in a way, I’m nurturing them but pushing them to the edge. And I really feel that’s a great way to learn—to fail, to be pushed. And I think that’s the way practitioners love to teach. They bring you down and then let you come back up. In the words of Katy Perry…

Devashish: Oh, absolutely! We could play the song here right at the background.

Pratham: Yes!

Devashish: Fantastic. So with that, we come to the end of this first round, Pratham. That was enlightening completely, and I believe what we are doing in Masters’ Union will be pathbreaking. It already is. And I think when we look at 2030 and that question mark, the solution for that will come out of institutions like Masters’ Union.

Pratham: I appreciate you completely.

SEGMENT 2: SPILLING THE BEANS

Devashish: Okay, so my friends, we come to our second segment. It’s called “Spilling the Beans,” and we will expect Pratham to spill the beans literally!

Question 1: Skills Above Degrees

Devashish: And my first question to you in this section: What needs to change for corporate India to accept skills above a certain degree?

Pratham: They have to get over their obsession of tier-one institutions and tier-one degrees. And I do not think that they are good predictors of anyone’s success. Some of the best performers in my teams across have been people who went to colleges that you wouldn’t even have heard of. And I think corporate India has to move beyond labels.

Devashish: And how do we demystify tier-one, tier-two. This whole labelling that is done?

Pratham: I don’t think we should look at CVs while hiring.

Devashish: Yes.

Pratham: Throw the CV out. As simple as that. Meet the person, give them an assignment which simulates what will be required of them in their job, and then hire completely on the basis of that work product.

Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. There’s proof of work rather than proof of history. Couldn’t agree more. Just I was interviewing somebody just the other day, and it was for a senior position. This gentleman came in having done entire research on what is going well, what is not going well with my organization, with numbers from wherever he got it and he created an entire presentation. That was one of the best presentations I’ve had about my own organization.

Pratham: And those are the kind of people you want. Absolutely. And I’m sure somewhere he would have had someone telling him and throwing him into the deep end.

CVs are a huge source of gentrification. They are. CVs are the modern-day caste system.

Devashish: It is. It is.

Pratham: LinkedIn…

Devashish: Yeah.

Pratham: LinkedIn empowers today’s caste system. That if I went to X school, then I am Brahmin. If I went to Y school, I am… You know. That is what’s happening today. So you have to look beyond those labels. And this is only going to happen more and more. So I think CVs should be outlawed. I haven’t made… Just like the caste system was outlawed, the CV system, it is the same thing. A CV decides how much you get paid. It’s a label. It’s a bunch of labels.

Devashish: At least it’s a starting point from where you start getting evaluated.

Pratham: Which is what caste was, right? It was. If you come to look at it in that way, yes, absolutely.

Devashish: Great. So that had a bit of philosophy but so true to that completely.

Question 2: Talent from Smaller Towns

Devashish: What are your thoughts, Pratham, on tapping into the potential of talent from smaller towns? Now, India is India, and then there’s Bharat, right? I was just talking to one of your colleagues in Masters’ Union, a brilliant colleague, and he comes from Indore. He comes from a family whose grandfather set up some kind of microfinancing in the rural areas. How do we firstly get these stories in? And how do we make sure that talent from tier-two, tier-three towns. Again, there’s branding there, but I believe there’s a lot of reality behind that, how do we make sure they get opportunities like in institutions like Masters’ Union?

Pratham: I’m from Jalandhar, by the way.

Devashish: Yes.

Pratham: Which is a tier-3.5 town. But that’s my nana, I don’t know if anybody understands Punjabi, but my mother’s side of the family is from Ludhiana, Phagwara, Kishan Chand, and all those places.

Devashish: Understood, understood. Yeah.

Pratham: Sharp. What percentage of India works for corporate India? What’s the number?

Devashish: No, let’s do a guesstimate. I don’t know the exact…

Pratham: Yeah. I’m guessing maybe 2-3 crore people.

Devashish: Yeah, not more than that.

Pratham: 2-3 crore people. I was thinking a percentage of about 2%. So let’s say 3 crores is 2% of India works in a job employed by corporate India in tier-one, maybe tier-two cities, not till tier-three, I’m guessing. So a very small percentage of India.

Devashish: Very, very small.

Pratham: And I would maybe even venture to say that probably not the happiest India.

Devashish: Yeah.

Pratham: We continue to be largely an agrarian economy even today. Agrarian and very entrepreneurial. They’re probably, if you were to count all the people who run chemist stores plus local gold stores plus local kirana stores plus local tapri (tea stalls) and the rest of the unorganized sector, keep that aside. I’m saying only these four: chemist, local gold/sonar, tapri, kirana. In total, there are probably 2 crore establishments in India. That means these four jobs or these four entrepreneurial pursuits are as many in number as all corporate India. If I was to just count the heads there, they could outnumber this 2 crores. I am saying just count the owner. Forget about the people who he employs. Those come under that 3 crores because they’re employed.

Interestingly, it’s a very small percentage. So I don’t even want, very honestly, the tier-three Bharat to work for corporate India. Why should it? Why is corporate India the gold standard?

Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. And I was just discussing with someone just the other day, what opportunities can come if we are able to just bring opportunities within rural sectors? There is huge potential. Jalandhar people should work in Jalandhar. Why do they need to move to Gurgaon?

Pratham: And I strongly feel that Jalandhar has amazing opportunities. Agriculture is one. Mining, I didn’t know that Jalandhar had such a huge sand mining economy. It’s super interesting. My own dad and his brothers, as they were growing up, they were working in a mithai factory (sweet shop). I feel they learned more about business by working in that mithai shop that my granddad used to run than any IIM could have ever given to them. Again, the book of accounts, managing customers, managing supply, hustle and managing real customers, not case study customers. Managing the real government, not what is written on paper.

Devashish: Couldn’t agree more.

Pratham: Suddenly, when the bulldozer comes in the front and is breaking your entire shop in front of you, what do you do? How do you manage that? All of that. So tier-three India has enough opportunities in tier-three. I don’t think they should come to Masters’ Union.

Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. I don’t think they need to necessarily or there could be outlets of institutions like Masters’ Union in smaller towns.

Pratham: And they already exist, which is called family business.

Devashish: Ah, yes! In fact, I was listening to somebody in the new Trump administration talking about why India’s family businesses are so vital to India’s economy.

Pratham: Absolutely.

Devashish: I don’t know if this is what you were looking for, but absolutely.

Pratham: And thank you for spilling the beans on that.

Devashish: My next question—can I give you one more metric, please?

Pratham: Please.

Devashish: How many students graduate from a college every year?

Pratham: We have about 1-1.5 crores.

Devashish: Exactly. 1.4 crores. Exactly right. Students graduate from college every year. How many new white-collar jobs are created in India every year?

Pratham: That’s a big gap.

Devashish: How many white-collar jobs are created? New white-collar jobs—not just for freshers, but for anybody.

Pratham: I read this number in Times of India, Economic Times. It said 15 lakh.

Devashish: Yeah. All new jobs. All new jobs because of new companies getting founded, because of existing companies expanding. Just the jobs themselves, 15 lakh new openings that did not exist last year. That did not exist last year. So that means even if all of our students are very well trained, even if they are fully skilled, we say they’re not skilled right now. I’m saying skill them. Assume that every university in India is a Harvard and it skills our people perfectly. Even then, 1 crore 35 lakh kids don’t have a place to work at.

Devashish: Huge gap.

Pratham: Huge gap. I think corporate India can’t take care of India in that sense.

Devashish: Certainly not. And again, I think how do we grow the stories of those smaller entrepreneurial ventures so that they themselves do well and are able to give those opportunities in smaller towns, making those economies thrive? That’s the future for this nation.

Pratham: Couldn’t agree more.

Question 3: The Masters’ Union Logo Story

Devashish: One question in “Spilling the Beans.” There’s a story behind the Masters’ Union logo. Could you tell me that?

Pratham: Yeah. The logo is nothing but a scratch. And the scratch keeps changing. And the reason we made that is because we really feel that every new idea starts by scratching out the old idea. Every iteration requires you to scratch out the previous iteration. And I think “scratch” denotes restart, and it denotes iteration. It denotes “clean the whiteboard.”

Devashish: Clean the whiteboard. Yeah.

Pratham: It means so much to me. Change is constant.

Devashish: Change is constant. Yeah. Stay relevant.

Pratham: Those are the words. I was very lucky enough and very privileged to see the Prime Minister from afar. And he was talking about how he was designing the Skill India logo. And if you know, the Skill India logo has a computer. And he’s like, “I was looking at it, there’s a computer that does not get used anymore. It’s a very old…” So, “I have to redraw a new logo for Skill India for now.” So he was trying to be funny, and it just made so much sense to me.

Devashish: Yeah. Yeah. He’s a brilliant guy, though. I’m quite a fan, of course.

Question 4: What Are You Most Proud Of?

Devashish: What, as an entrepreneur, are you most proud of in the Masters’ Union story?

Pratham: A student.

Devashish: Your student.

Pratham: Yeah. I think lots of them. I can tell you three stories, maybe?

Devashish: Please. All right. You want to listen to this?

Pratham: The first story is of a couple, a husband-wife duo who met at Masters’ Union for the first time. They started a very interesting company where they were trying to help people order better on Zomato and Swiggy. They built this platform which will tell you exactly what you should order today because you spend a lot of time thinking about what you want to order. So it’s a real problem. They failed at that. They built something, but then Zomato changed their APIs, and they couldn’t… Because they were so dependent on them, they actually failed a couple of times. But then they kept at it, kept at it.

The husband actually got a job at Zerodha, but they still kept at it, kept at it. And now, together, husband-wife, they started another company where I think the wife has started and the husband is helping her in e-commerce. They’re selling ethnic Indian clothing. The reason I really find them inspiring is that sometimes they got a really nice job offer, and then sometimes this happened and that happened. They’ve gone through ups and downs and this and that, but eventually, when they got married, I got their card, and it had the name of their website under it. And I was like, “This is awesome!”

Devashish: Lovely, lovely.

Pratham: I think that’s a very cool story. There’s another very interesting story about these two students. 

Devashish: No worries. He still loves you.

Pratham: They’ve started this gaming company that rewards loyalty points to games across studios. They used to run a software company before. They actually sold that company, and they had the humility to come back to school after having an exit. And then restarting a company from scratch.

Devashish: Wow.

Pratham: Not a lot of people would be able to do that.

Devashish: Glass half full.

Pratham: I really respect them for that. Now I have another very interesting story of Mayuresh and Ishita. They’ve built this chips and dips company called Eat Atlas. And they have these dips that they have curated from all over the world. So today, if you feel Italian, you can go for an Italian dip. If you feel Greek, you go for a Greek dip. It’s very interesting. It’s like all cuisines in one box. They’re doing a really good job as well. Completely bootstrapped but doing it really well.

There’s another AI company that two of my students have started. You have examples in every industry, and they never stop to amaze you. Every time I get an update from them, it’s something I could have never expected to come out of my students in just year one of their graduation.

Devashish: I can actually feel. Your feeling of pride is so palpable, and it’s absolutely amazing. I think it is students like this that will make all this change happen in our nation.

Pratham: Exactly.

Devashish: And in our talent landscape too, going forward, in the way it is perceived. Thank you so much, Pratham. That was “Spilling the Beans,” our segment two.

SEGMENT 3: EXPERT’S ADVICE

Devashish: We move to segment three, which is “Expert’s Advice.” And our first question here: One advice you will give to budding entrepreneurs in Masters’ Union and otherwise?

Pratham: Don’t think, just start. I think we think way too much about “Is this the right time to start? Is this the right business to start?” Risk-taking ability—I think India has risk-taking ability. But we just spend too much time thinking about that risk, contemplating. I think if that much time was spent just doing it, we would be much better off.

Devashish: The colonial era just made us so risk-averse for some reason.

Pratham: No, I think India is still the most risk-seeking. I think the US is way more risk-averse. Britain is so risk-averse. Think about it. The Europeans are way more risk-averse than we are because they also have a lot to lose. I don’t think it’s the colonial hangover. If anything, I would actually appreciate the colonial hangover. I think it actually makes us take more risk. But it could still even be more because the cost of starting up today is near zero. As I said, you don’t need to hire anybody now. A $20 agent can do more than an army of 20 fresh grads.

Devashish: Absolutely. I think at Taggd, we’re training a lot of these AI-enabled agents to do some pathbreaking work.

Question 2: Managing Multiple Ventures

Devashish: Pratham, you’re a serial entrepreneur yourself. You manage two of your ventures currently, Masters’ Union and Tetr, right? How are you able to? 

Pratham: They’re the same. For me, they’re the same. They’re just two manifestations of the same thing.

Devashish: Yes. You want to tell us about your other venture too?

Pratham: It’s the same thing. So Tetr is Masters’ Union across the world.

Devashish: Masters’ global footprint.

Pratham: Global footprint. That’s about it. It could have been Masters’ Union International.

Devashish: Fantastic.

Pratham: I don’t look at it as two different things. The students are here right now. The Tetr kids are in Masters’ Union campus, and the Masters’ Union kids are in Tetr’s campus.

Devashish: It’s so good to know that an Indian brand grown from India is taking education to… I really feel, you know, how India became the center for software services, there’s a very good chance that in the next 5-10 years, we’ll also become the center for education.

Pratham: Once again. Once, because education is a services economy. It’s a services project. So what are the three or four largest services? Software, hospitality, health, and education. Other than education, India is leading everywhere else. So what is to say that this is the next bastion India will conquer? I really think it should. I think because the cost of servicing of education in India is lower, arbitrage-wise, that benefit the education industry has never utilized. And I feel people will see it now, and this opportunity will get utilized because college in America is expensive. College in India can be cheaper, only if we can just bring up the quality a little bit. Why can’t we have a New Yorker coming to Bengaluru to study if he’s getting the same skills, better skills, at much lower cost? I feel that’s going to be the future.

Devashish: And real-life business opportunities.

Pratham: Many more. Yeah. Sure, that too. Yeah.

Devashish: Fantastic.

Question 3: Personal Lessons in Entrepreneurship

Devashish: Your personal lessons in entrepreneurship that you’ve learned the hard way, Pratham. I’m still learning. I think in the journey so far, any place where you’ve stumbled, fallen, picked yourself up again?

Pratham: I think we take ourselves way too seriously. And we think that every issue that we face in the company is an existential issue, and we make a mountain of a molehill. And that leads to a lot of stress, and that leads to a lot of anger, and that leads to a lot of wrong decisions at work. So I think if you just take yourself less seriously, know that you’ll be fine.

Devashish: Did you ever find yourself taking your own self less seriously, or you took yourself too seriously at a point, and you felt you wanted to change?

Pratham: All throughout. All throughout. I think in the last 10-15 years, I’ve just been a very angry and a very negative presence in my own team.

Devashish: And what made you change that? How have you changed the paradigm for yourself?

Pratham: Because I’ve realized that doesn’t do anything. So something is wrong—you fix it. And I’m realizing that it’s not doing well for my team. It’s not doing well for the productivity. I think that if I’m scolding somebody, hopefully that person will do a better job. Now, it usually doesn’t happen like that.

Devashish: It does worse.

Pratham: Yeah. So I think I have to change that about myself, and I’m trying to. Gupta has been helping me quite a bit.

Devashish: He does that to everybody.

CLOSING

Devashish: But thank you, Pratham. This was a fantastic session, and I personally have learned so much with this conversation. And I believe what you’re doing at Masters’ Union and other entrepreneurial ventures—this is going to change the way education happens in our country, not only in higher education but how students perceive how they need to be educated. And I congratulate you for making this start. Thank you so much, Pratham, and I wish you all the very best.

Pratham: Thank you.

Devashish: Thank you, friends. I hope you enjoyed this session. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Pratham: Thank you.

The post Reimagining Education and Talent for the Future of Work | India Decoding Jobs: Talent Council Lighthouse Series appeared first on .

The following is an edited excerpt from the conversation.

Devashish: Hi friends, welcome to this season’s first episode of India Decoding Jobs, Talent Council. This is the lighthouse series, and it gives me great pleasure in welcoming you. 

We have with us Mr. Tarun N. P. Varma. Mr. Varma is the Chief People and Sustainability Officer of a fantastic brand. Before I go any further, look at your pantries and grocery lists. If you see Tata Sampann spices, Tata Tetley tea, bottles of water like the ones we have here, and so many coffee brands, you know what I’m talking about. It’s TataConsumer Products that aggregates all these amazing brands in our daily lives.
So welcome, Tarun. You do a fantastic job on the talent mandate, bringing in great talent that runs this organization and sustaining it, helping bring out the best in a company growing rapidly, both organically and inorganically. It’s a pleasure to have you. Just so you all know, Tarun has spent many years in large FMCG brands, the telecom space, and tech organizations, and today leads the people agenda at Tata Consumer Products, a global organization with deep roots in India and strong presence abroad. Welcome once again.

Tarun: Thank you, really appreciate that. We should probably hire you for our next marketing assignment.

Mr. Ratan Tata’s Enduring Legacy

Devashish: There’s a reason why this first episode features a company like Tata Consumer Products. It comes in the wake of a great loss for our nation—Shri Ratan Tata. God bless his beautiful soul. He may no longer be with us physically, but his guiding principles and value system continue to lead not only the Tata group, but also this nation—showing how business should be done with compassion, integrity, excellence, a never-say-die spirit, and a deep understanding of the ground reality. 

So, Tarun, you lead the people agenda for a brand that’s growing rapidly, penetrating Indian households and carrying the Indian story abroad, while embracing local stories overseas too. How does Mr. Ratan Tata’s legacy inspire Tata Consumer Products?

Tarun: Firstly, thank you. I really appreciate it. Everyone I’ve met has said Mr. Tata’s loss feels personal. That’s the mark of the man. I’ll point to two values and three examples.The first is Integrity. Anyone who has come across Mr. Tata or the Tata group says the same thing: “Tata means trust.” It cuts across everything we do. The second is Pioneering. A personal example: I studied in Jamshedpur, which is home to much of what the Tata group has pioneered.

Devashish: Absolutely!

Tarun: Another example—from 1999. One January morning we were told someone special was coming to our campus at TISS, Mumbai. It was Mr. Tata, Mr. Deshmukh, and other senior leaders for the groundbreaking of the new campus. Those who studied at the new campus, trust me, I’m from the last-millennium batch of ’99. I witnessed Mr. Tata inaugurate it. For me, TISS is another example of the group’s pioneering spirit.
A third example is closer home: an Indian company (Tata) acquired and integrated a global company (Tetley) twice its size. What better proof of pioneering spirit? Almost two decades later, we still benefit from that vision. As you said, we are a global organization with strong locally entrenched brands. Just the other day, my colleague from international business mentioned that one of the UK cricket clubs, Surrey County, has begun serving Tata Tea, not Tetley, in the club.

Devashish: Fantastic!

Tarun: So, two values—and a few personal and business examples.

Devashish: I also recall an interview years ago with a teary-eyed British journalist after the Tetley acquisition. He asked how a brand so British, on every breakfast table, could now belong to an Indian company. Mr. Ratan Tata responded with empathy and quiet pride: we understand what the brand means to Britain, but remember, the tea is Indian. He even said the Jaguar–Land Rover acquisition would perhaps hit harder for Britain. It’s Indian tea, loved by British people, and we will make sure we don’t dilute how it’s consumed there.

With this, we move to our first segment: Decoding Jobs.

Decoding the Jobs: Tata Consumer Products’ Growth and Vision

Devashish: My first question in this segment, Tarun. Tata Consumer Products has grown immensely inorganically and by penetrating Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns—the hinterlands. How do you see the future for Tata Consumer Products with this kind of growth?

Tarun: Our name says it all. We’re tasked with creating a global, premier FMCG company from the house of Tatas. Break the name into four parts:

• Tata up front—the family name. Upholding that reputation is non-negotiable.
• We are Consumer products, not “customer” products, clear messaging that we build products people trust because they come from the house of Tatas.

Devashish: For better.

Tarun: Exactly. These are products consumers choose because they believe they’re for better. I trust them; my family uses them. That’s the best indicator of quality.

• These are products, physical goods that must reach homes and retailers. E-commerce is a vehicle, but the product must move and reach someone.
• We’re a public limited company, so the standards of governance are high.

That’s why we say “For Better.” Four pillars:

• Better Planet: Reduce carbon and water footprints. Packaging is our lifeblood in FMCG. But it puts plastic out there. As a Tata, consumer-products, public company, what’s expected of us, and can we do more? That’s “for better.”
• Better Products & Nutrition: We’re not claiming to be “the best”; we’re committed to getting better every day, employees, partners, everyone working for the consumer.
• Better Sourcing (Traceability): Do we trust the source? Are social norms upheld (e.g., no child labour)? Is the value chain traceable? We pursue traceability not just for compliance, but because it’s right.
• Better Communities: Our founders said we exist because of society. The biggest stakeholder we work for is society, and our actions must flow back there. That’s what we stand for—For Better.

Devashish: Fantastic. I can vouch for it at home: my better half insists on Tata Sampann dals and turmeric. It may look a lighter yellow, not flashy, but she trusts its purity. I remember the 70s, when India faced a WHO red flag for goitre due to lack of iodine, and Tata Salt with “iodine-yukt Tata namak” changed that curve. Fantastic!

Thank you so much, Tarun. I’d now like to come to our core aspect. India Decoding Jobs is an annual report, one of the most important, bringing together academia, industry leaders like you, and government to decode a critical national topic: jobs and employment.Segment: India Decoding Jobs 

Talent, Culture, and Performance at TCP

Devashish: Tata Consumer Products hires across a wide diaspora of talent for various segments and brands. What jobs are coming in, which are going out, and what’s the latest trend within Tata Consumer Products?

Tarun: This is a topic of deep interest. I often tell colleagues that sometimes TCP stands for Talent, Culture, and Performance, the mix that makes us who we are and who we aspire to be. I’ll be mindful not to make forward-looking statements as we’re a listed company, but I can say we work on two axes, growth and transformation both organic and inorganic.
For years we were primarily Tata Tea. The tea industry brings certain skills and jobs. We still run plantations, so we have plantation workers and factory teams. From there, we’ve upskilled into better packaging and value-added products, moving from loose tea to packaged tea, to premium tea, and now into Organic India offerings. 

So, it’s a combination of organic evolution and inorganic acquisition, bringing us to the cusp of traditional Indian wellness and Ayurveda. You’ve got Tulsi Green Tea, an awesome product to try.

Devashish: Tulsi Mint!

Tarun: Exactly.

Devashish: That’s my regular—first thing in the morning. I’ve replaced my morning tea with that; I have heard it’s a healthier option.

Tarun: Imagine the skills we now need, from running a tea plantation to growing herbs. Last week in Lucknow, at one of our farms growing Brahmi, I was learning about it. Our Ayurvedic doctor there is experimenting with formats like Brahmi ghee. From there, we move into nutraceuticals, Ashwagandha, Moringa, all from the house of Tatas, so no shortcuts. We’re present across need states, and that’s just beverages. We’re becoming a multi-category FMCG company, still primarily in food and beverages. So imagine the opportunities ahead.

Now, double-click on the skills. Take your spouse’s switch to Tata Sampann. Thank you for that! Ensuring she consumes a product she trusts is the culmination of the right people in procurement, quality, brand/category, distribution, and supply chain planning. Planning is complex. At every part of the value chain, you need skills, and therefore jobs. 

So to me, you read jobs alongside skills and value chain. Too many companies talk jobs, and then those jobs disappear, leading to net employment destruction. It doesn’t all have to be direct employment; there’s indirect too. We have 3,200 distributors, each deploying networks of people. We run our own plants and have outsourced manufacturing as well. The multiplier effect is huge. But the core is: jobs is equal to skills.

Digitization and Upskilling

Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. You touched upon upskilling as a core to an organization growing rapidly with evolving roles. In a nation getting digitized so fast and with TCP’s horizontal inroads across brands and the entire supply chain, how is digitization impacting reskilling and upskilling?

Tarun: If I again kind of go back to the point about our entire talent landscape, honestly, digitization has in terms of landscape changed nothing, all you’ve done is taken the landscape and put roller skates below it. Why am I saying that? I don’t mean to be facetious about this, but my consumer does not pay me because I digitize. My consumer doesn’t pay me because I’ve got some new fancy system in place. They pay because, every day, millions of times, 250 million households like yours can access our products when they want them. If digitization helps us fulfil better, that’s its purpose.

So number one is, are we able to take better decisions? As I mentioned, planning, right? The fact that today we have got an integrated business plan which looks every facet, from demand estimation all the way through to demand being fulfilled, the planning itself getting completely digitalized. 

Take another example, we all tried tea. We’ve taken tea testing to a level, a level where we’ve actually infused knowledge management and digitalization into tea tasting. 

Devashish: Wow..

Tarun: Because, our tea tasters, they make choices. There’s a specific language that they use, that results in a particular price and a declaration of the quality of the product that is captured thousands of times every single day. It is put onto a digital system which gives us a body or as you call it, data lake, that we then tap into to take better informed decisions. 

We have that ability because as an FMCG company, we sell 2,000, 3,000 different products in every single city and state every single day. So you’ve got millions of transactions playing out, that’s one layer. Secondly, you’ve got the data which is coming from that, we’re ensuring that we have put in plugs and sensors to get the data into a particular place. And number three, we are equipping our decision makers to use that data to take better evidence-based decisions. It’s tough because people come with experience, so they want to rely on gut and experience, but how do you marry the two? So it’s a combination of hardcore systems, transactions, putting it into a system and a lake, and then pulling it out from a data point of view, but it’s also about the mindset change of people who’ve got tremendous experience seeing this as being an augmentation and not a replacement of their experience.

Devashish: Fantastic. So digitization is just perhaps a new backbone but it is experience that your customer consumer experiences is what is getting impacted. Amazing. 

I grew up in right next door to a Tata Tea estate, it was a partner tea estate called Terana estate in Siliguri. I remember the shop floor there. I’m just trying to visualize all the digitization that could have happened right there. Fantastic. 

I’ll come to my next part. Thank you so much, Tarun, that was very, very insightful.

Diversity and Inclusion at TCP

Devashish: The FMCG industry in terms of diversity is hovering between 12 to 15% of gender diversity today in India and Taggd is your talent partner. We have diversity mandates which we have signed up for. In today’s growing India and with the focus that Tata Consumer Products has on diversity, what are the goals that you personally are chasing as leading the talent agenda in TCP?

Tarun: So firstly Devashish, thank you for making a more inclusive definition of diversity. The other day, I was just correcting a few of my colleagues that we use – “I’ve hired diversity”, and I was like, you mean that you’ve hired women into your team? 

I think the first part is that are we hiring diverse mindsets? Let me give an example.  As an FMCG company, today sales is not just about going to every single kirana store and, shopping. Today the salesperson has got a digital handset with the latest tech that has come through, you can infuse AI into it, gives you recommendation engine. Now I can give the person all the skills you require, but if that person doesn’t have the mindset to use that to service the customer better, the person will simply operate same old, same old. So do I need to have a diversity in my frontline mindset? Absolutely. Therefore, do I see attrition in frontline as a problem? Yes, but, I also see it as an opportunity to infuse the diversity and diverse mindset in there. 

Now if I flip across to the more traditional answer, which is gender. Our answer has been absolutely unanimous. As an FMCG company, my gender diversity should reflect that of my consumer base. And you know what, the math is. 

Devashish: It’s not, it’s not… [Laughter] 

Tarun: The beauty is where it matters. The team who delivers Tata Sampann, the marketing team, we are 50/50, in fact, more than 50% women in that marketing team. The team that does the R&D for all of that, they’re more than 50% there as well in terms of women there. 

So if I go function by function, we have absolutely fair representation when it comes to gender. There are, however, certain functions, and I’ll now go completely skewed. Sales and some of our manufacturing sites, diversity ratio with to gender is as low as 10%. 

But if I go to my plantations, we still run close to one and a half lakh acres of tea and coffee estates in Tamil Nadu, in Kerala, in Karnataka, in West Bengal, in Assam, suddenly the ratio shoots up to 60% plus. And that is where you can see that there are reasons for that. There are structural reasons in some parts, there are cultural reasons in some parts, and therefore I can’t give one single answer to that, and therefore I’ve decided not to give a target on diversity across organization. 

Rather, what I’ve asked as a commitment to saying, if you in your respective part of the organization can deliver some form of diversity, whatever it may be, it could be industry skills, backgrounds. We have a fair range of, you know, on-roll, off-roll people coming together. Simple things like, do I discriminate between, you know, training of people who are on-roll different from off-roll? Why, right? So don’t let legal barriers come in some of these measures. So that is the kind of, I would say, pluralistic definition, more inclusive definition of diversity that you have tried to fulfill out here.

Devashish: Amazing, amazing, Tarun. And I think my very profound takeaway is what you just said about diverse mindset and if I may just add on heart set. I think that is, if that will get us first time right in the way we think. So, what I hear you say, you will want to get people who are culturally attuned to thought of being diverse within in their mindset and heart set. 

Fantastic, fantastic. And you also said that you would want to replicate your consumer based diversity within the organization. How fantastic is that? Thank you so much. 

With that, we end section one and move to Spilling the Beans.

Spilling the Beans: Industry Challenges and Solutions

Devashish: I am going to ask you, what is that one thing where you believe we as organizations and as industry leader this time, we are contributing to certain talent challenges. What is it that we are not doing right as India Incorporated when it comes to the way we look at talent and what is it that we can do to get it right? 

Tarun: This sounds like a rapid fire, but I, I’ll just say, we talk inclusion and diversity and we practice discrimination and differentiation. I used to work for a global energy major. Take the small example of campus hiring, I’m sure every company does it. The fact that we have a tier-ing system and we have almost a class system of colleges. We only hire from college X and college Y, and from so and so, immediately limits your access to talent structurally. And I think we have not done enough to overcome that. I think there are some amazing organizations out there who have chosen to do away with this kind of a system. I myself am working within my organization on changing that mindset. If we don’t get people from beyond these so-called…

Devashish: yeah, coveted colleges 

Tarun: Ultimately, where do they come from? Where do all our engineers go to? They go to MBA, from MBA they land up in our company and they come up with fantastic analysis and then what we do kind of miss out. Picking one example, we miss social relation skills. And in a marketing organization, do I only work on consumer and insights or do I work also on empathy and design thinking, all the softer factors, consumer behavior. And that’s one place where I would say, you know, as an industry, and this is specifically India. I also have a global organization, thankfully we’ve, I think we’ve done away with that across many other parts of the world. I leave out of course the, the Oxbridge part of it, but yeah, I think that’s probably where I would just say we have got to do better.

Devashish: Amazing. So, Tarun, what I heard was a socially diverse mindset. We would hire people, we would get in colleagues in our ecosystem who understand social diversity. The institutions that we go to, we would want that anyone who’s hiring is able to relate to the consumer on ground and that necessarily may not be somebody from a crème de la crème institute. 

Tarun: Yes! 

Devashish: You need someone who has experienced the last mile perhaps, and whoever does that the best is the person, go to person for you. Fantastic. 

Tarun: If I may just add just one example, which is a live one. I quote it very often. You know, one of our large tea estates in South India, that Kanan Hills, actually today even now, I think it’s one of the first. 

Devashish: This for the Nilgiri tea? 

Tarun: yes, yeah. It’s one of the first which has practiced workers participation in management, So the board comprises of two workers. Imagine me having to present, let’s say for example, the CEO’s compensation in front of the NRC and you’ve got your frontline tea pluckers who are on the board. So therefore you have to kind of keep that factor in mind. If I begin saying, oh you’re a plucker, you have no business. But we stood by this point about being inclusive and practicing that. 

Flip aside to the fact I said consumer base, yes, it’s men and women, but it’s also as you say, India and Bharat, right? So you’ve got rural India, urban India. How can I simply hire from Bombay and Delhi and Calcutta? I have to be able to go to Faizabad and be able to get people from there to come in and join me. I have to get people from Palwal to come in and join me. Because that is where India gets represented. If I start to segment out people, and by the way, we did that study and we realized ourselves that we were skewed in our talent intake to certain parts of the country because of our choice of institution that we were hiring from. 

Devashish: Amazing…

Creating a Compelling Employer Value Proposition (EVP)

Devashish: And with this kind of diversity that you manage within this nation, outside this nation, how do you create a very compelling employer value proposition for talent that is looking at Tata Consumer Products as their future dream employer?

Tarun: So firstly, I think anybody who comes to us, there are two things that clearly stand out. One is factual and the other I’ll just come to in a minute. 

The factual part is that they see the Tata name. And the first thing they expect is I can be myself. I can be in a company where you are able to live your values. It’s very liberating for people. I’ve seen this across meetings and you can separate out those who are saying it for the sake of saying it, and those who really mean it. I truly welcome that. So first part of my EVP, thanks to my family name is done. The second part is to live up to that name, and God forbid if there are colleagues, and I’m sure people who are watching this will say, I disagree with Tarun because I’ve noticed, you know, so and so patches. Yes, we’ve had issues, we’ve had to go through tough choices. This company has grown because of the choices which we made over the last many, many years. We had to be fair and firm in our choices, and therefore before I make a statement on EVP, what I always tell my team is first test your truth before you tell your truth or your supposed truth because if you’ve not tested it and, and like I said, it’s so diverse this organization, our contexts are different, we come from such rich heritage and history of, you know, Tata Tea and Tata Coffee and Tata Chemicals and Smart Foods and then all the companies we acquired from Tetley to Good Earth to 8 O’Clock Coffee to Soulfull to Nourish, I can go on, everyone comes with “in my days in my company”. So we have to live up to that truth and then test it and saying, does it hold true? And only then can I say this is our EVP because if people don’t relate to that, then it’s not our EVP. It’s your or my individual EVP which is thrust upon somebody else. So first one is factual, which is you’re joining a Tata company. The second one is a sense of responsibility saying, please, before you say this is my EVP, test that as it being true and then tell it as it is.

Devashish: Fantastic. “Test your truth before you tell your truth”. I think knowing your truth and then you tell your truth is absolutely the narrative that I’ve picked up for a great value proposition. And that comes to a very core part of what Taggd does as a business, is talent acquisition for organizations like Tata Consumer Products. At the core of what we do, of course, the hiring manager is very important, we are hiring for them, but candidate experience is at our core, where we want to give a fantastic candidate experience because we represent employer brand like Tata Consumer Products. What do you think, Tarun, from where you are, one critical thing that we in the industry need to work on to deliver an exceptional candidate experience?

Delivering Exceptional Candidate Experience

Tarun: Super point. First of all, let me just say thank you for the partnership. We’ve tried to reflect upon this in very many ways. Whichever way you cut, slice, dice it, it came down to the fact that every hiring manager and every leader was a candidate once. The answer there is quite simple, look inward. Rather than trying to preach what should be, why don’t you want to do unto others what you would like to do unto yourself. It could be as simple as micro behaviors, courtesy and punctuality and discipline all the way through. 

How do you plan your organizational workforce? What are you looking for in terms of skill sets? Are you defining them broadly and inclusively so you can hire from a wider talent pool, or are you narrowing it down so much that you’re only looking at one stream of talent?

Now, if that’s your choice as a hiring manager, it becomes even more important to ensure that candidates have a good experience. Because that stream is only as strong as the experience you create. Every interaction you have with a candidate builds a story, a narrative that lives beyond that one hour of the interview and is no longer in your control.

You have that one hour, maybe half an hour before, to shape that narrative. Whether the outcome is a hire or not, what matters is the experience the person carries.

The other aspect is managing expectations. Candidates often come with certain expectations, and as an organization, we must stay grounded. Take our example, we’re a global company from the house of Tata. Naturally, people compare us with TCS, JLR, Tata Motors, and other great companies. But the reality is that we have nine to eleven integrations happening at the same time, it’s a melting pot of cultures, and we’re still bringing the weft and weave together.

So, my message to candidates is: this is not a company where you’ll find a Ferrari waiting in the parking lot with the keys handed over to you. We’re more like a pottery studio, the clay is wet, and if you want to leave your fingerprint on the future, this is your place.

Driving Change in Hiring Mindset

Devashish: Absolutely, couldn’t agree more. Before I close this section, Tarun, this requires a lot of subtle change management. How do you move people away from that one-track “roulette” mindset of hiring, that there’s only one right way for an experience to happen? How do you bring about that change among business leaders?

Tarun: My personal view is that there are many aspects, but I’ll touch on two.

First, remember, we were all candidates once. There’s a shadow effect here,  we often expect that what worked for us must also work for others. That’s an unfair expectation to cast on today’s talent.

Second, it’s about focus and discipline. For example, our CEO Sunil values time immensely. Meetings start on time, sometimes even a minute early, and end on time. If it goes over by five minutes, he’s the first to say, “My apologies, I need to close now.” That discipline seeps into everything, planning, execution, and ultimately results, because we’re accountable to shareholders every quarter.

The same behavior must reflect in interviews too. I won’t say we’ve got it perfect, but we’re getting there. Once your executive committee starts setting that example, it drives change from the top. When leaders remind themselves, “I was once a candidate too, what would I have wanted done differently?” that mindset shift begins.

Do we have perfect processes? No, the Ferrari isn’t in the parking lot yet. I wish we had certified assessments and uniform processes across the board. But we’re still moulding the clay, co-creating what I believe is the evolution of our hiring process.

Devashish: Amazing, fantastic. Thank you, Tarun. You’ve spilled quite a few beans there. And with this, we move to the third segment, Expert’s Advice.

Segment – Expert Advice.

Devashish: This is almost a rapid-fire round. You can choose to answer or skip. After “Spill the Beans,” it’s time to “Roast the Beans,” and maybe even “brew” them too.

Our first question, from an industry perspective, Tata Consumer Products is one of the fastest-growing FMCG brands in India. What are the top three things you would want to ask from national policymakers, things that would make a big difference to how we do business and how we look at talent?

Advice for National Policy Makers

Tarun: There are many, but I’ll highlight three.

First, the quality of faculty education. Not education itself, but the quality of those who teach. We’ve expanded institutions rapidly, multiple campuses, strong brand names, but faculty strength hasn’t kept pace. I’d love to see more faculty internships in organizations so that teachers can bring pragmatic experience into their classrooms while retaining academic purity.

Second, when I look at the job market, I see a U-shape. On one end, you have highly skilled professionals, R&D, digital teams, whose knowledge half-life is six months, so they constantly retrain. On the other end, there are mass-level skills, sales reps, operators, that are also well-supported. But the middle rung is at risk. These are graduates who invest heavily in education, yet land in roles that neither use their full potential nor feel secure against automation and digitalization. We need to build resilience for them.

Third, systems thinking. Too often, we fix one part of the system and shift the bottleneck elsewhere. We take a short-term approach, “let’s plug this hole now, we’ll fix the rest later.” Whether it’s nutrition, lifestyle, or employment, we need to view our ecosystem holistically, not as isolated issues but as interconnected systems.

Devashish: Fantastic. So, number one, focus on faculty quality and industry exposure. Number two, support the middle rung of professionals most affected by digital disruption. And number three, adopt systems thinking instead of quick fixes. Brilliant, thank you, Tarun.

Bridging the Academia–Industry Gap

Devashish: You touched on this earlier. How do we bridge the gap between corporations and academia? Industry evolves so fast, but curriculums take time to adapt. How can both come onto the same page?

Tarun: You said it perfectly. We’re often not even on the same page; sometimes we’re not even in the same book. One’s reading on a Kindle, the other from a leather-bound edition!

The key is to understand where skills are outpacing learning. Some companies have outpaced the market; others couldn’t keep up and no longer exist. The ones that survived did so by building solid foundations, not just structures, but skills that evolve with context.

Academia brings that mirror, that purity of reflection, which helps organizations avoid being too task-obsessed. When both come together, we see real progress.

At the vocational level, we still have a gap between where jobs exist and what’s being taught. But at the higher end, deep science, research, I’ve seen tremendous collaboration. Institutions in India and abroad are forming coalitions around issues like carbon, sustainability, and water. Companies are both part of the problem and part of the solution. That’s where the intersection of academia and industry truly lies.

Devashish: Thank you. A lot more needs to be done, and technology will definitely play a key role in bridging that gap.

Three Things Every Graduate Should Learn

Devashish: My next question, what are three things every graduate should learn before they start looking for jobs, especially that middle rung we talked about?

Tarun: It depends on what the graduate is looking for, but I’ll share three thoughts.

First, remember that earlier generations looked at professors as fountainheads of knowledge. Today, with information everywhere, students look to academia for validation of what they already know. They rely on real-life anecdotes and examples to test what they’ve learned, and that’s a big shift.

Second, align with values. At Tata, we don’t just deliver value, we live our values. I’d urge young graduates to test this when choosing employers. Are these companies truly responsible? Do they stand for something beyond profit?

Third, ask questions. Our education system often conditions us not to question. We’re taught to reproduce, not clarify. But curiosity is key. Don’t assume, clarify. Ask questions, face your fears, and challenge assumptions. That’s how you avoid walking through the wrong doors in your career.

Devashish: Tarun, this part I’m forwarding to my son! So one, check if you’re on the right track. Two, live your values. And three, don’t assume, ask for clarity. Absolutely brilliant.

Academia: Start, Stop, and Continue

Devashish:
One last question, one thing academia should start, stop, and continue doing in India.

Tarun: I’ll answer carefully since I’ve interacted with brilliant minds across institutions.

Stop discriminating between students, even inadvertently. That’s where potential gets lost. In one of my earlier roles, I worked with an amazing team that reached over a lakh school children through “Nexus Thinking”, connecting food, water, and energy. Simple concepts like how using diesel pumps for irrigation affects food and water cycles. It showed me how every student has untapped potential if nurtured equally.

Continue fostering open dialogue and engagement. I see many institutions doing this now, reaching out, collaborating with industry, and I truly welcome that.

Devashish: And what should they start?

Tarun: Honestly, I wouldn’t presume to tell academia what to start.

Devashish: If I may add, some institutions are using strong technology backbones to make curriculum accessible even on mobile devices, but many aren’t. That playbook should be replicated widely.

Tarun: Absolutely. My mother was a professor, and I’ve seen her adopt new practices early on. Academia has that magical power of honesty and purity, the possibilities are vast. It’s up to each institution to decide what to pick and pursue.

Devashish: Thank you so much, Tarun.

The post Tata Consumer Products | India Decoding Jobs: Talent Council Lighthouse Series appeared first on .

The following is an edited excerpt from the conversation.

INTRODUCTION

Devashish: Hello friends! On behalf of Taggd and the Confederation of Indian Industry, I welcome you to India Decoding Jobs’s Lighthouse Series. In the last episode, we brought you an FMCG giant. In this episode, we’re featuring a very young giant in India. A company in a relatively new industry that has done amazingly well and ingrained itself throughout the masses of India. Young, old, very age-agnostic. You would have guessed it right, the company is Dream11.

I have the greatest honor of having Kevin Freitas right here with me. He is the Chief Human Resource Officer at Dream11 and has done some amazing work in enhancing the employer brand for Dream11, building great organizational values. He has done some game-changing work throughout the entire talent lifecycle. Welcome, Kevin!

Kevin: Thank you, Devashish.

Devashish: How does it feel today?

Kevin: It’s amazing. It’s always been great. I think every day at Dream Sports and Dream11 is like a dream come true.

Devashish: Fantastic! I’m just sitting in this amazing room of yours, and I got goosebumps the moment I walked in here. Fantastic team and such a lovely ambience. So, we have three sections, and we’ll start with the first one called “Decoding the Jobs.”

SEGMENT 1: DECODING THE JOBS

Dream11’s Mission

Devashish: So, the first question to you, Kevin. What does Dream11 mean to you, and how is it achieving its mission in making sports better?

Kevin: I think not just for me, but for countless Dreamsters here. By the way, we call the folks that work at Dream11 “Dreamsters,” though our overall larger company is Dream Sports. What does it feel like working here every day? It’s about making dreams come true. You’re fueling dreams not just for the people who work here, but for millions of our fans, millions of our users, and for a billion Indians.

We are Made in India, and we’re taking India to the world. Today, Dream11 is the world’s largest fantasy sports platform. Clearly, this came from an idea that you work on and nurture for a decade or so before it becomes the world’s largest platform.

When I look at “making sports better,” this is something that’s very close to our hearts, not just the hearts of the folks who work here, but all our fans and users. They want so much more from sports. You want sports to be engaging, exciting, and accessible to everyone. What we do at Dream Sports through our multiple brands is make sure that becomes a reality.

For example, at Dream11, it’s not about cheering for one team, it’s about cheering for all the players that you’ve chosen. Even though a wicket might fall, you’d be cheering while other people say “damn.” It’s not about choosing a side; it’s about making sports that much more entertaining. I remember when I was growing up, we’d watch a television screen, and when the wicket would fall, it was the end of the game. But a Dream11 user is engaged till the last ball. You’ve made sports exciting for a billion Indians, and not just one sport like cricket. We have 12 sports on the platform.

Devashish: Genuinely getting excited for the sporting spirit.

Kevin: Exactly! Now you’re focused on all players, looking at all kinds of talent, not just the team that you want to win with.

Devashish: You know, I’m sure this will translate to the Indian sporting arena too. Sports in reality. We have it as a gaming proposition, but sports in India other than cricket has somewhere been left out. I understand that Dream11 is focusing on so many other fields of sports.

Kevin: When we say “make sports better,” it’s about making sure we are able to add to the sports ecosystem in India. We’ve got Dream Sports Foundation that’s helped athletes. We have about 31 athletes that we’ve been sponsoring through long-term athlete development since 2018. Between these 31 athletes, they’ve won about 100 international medals, 200 national medals, and we have three Olympians as well.

Very clearly for us, it goes all the way down to the grassroots. When we say “make sports better,” it’s not about making it better right now, it’s making it better forever. Our investment into this goes a long way through Dream Sports Foundation, which is real grassroots development. Very few organizations focus on grassroots development in sports, and we are very clear that that’s a space we want to play in.

The second aspect is all our multiple brands focused on making sports better. I talked about Dream11. We have FanCode. Today, if you want to see any non-marquee sports event, you don’t know where to go. If you want to buy an authentic jersey, you’ll struggle. FanCode is that proposition which allows people to watch a lot of sports, right from Kho Kho to golf, a long tail of sports, and it’s streamed right to your living room, which is fabulous. You want authentic gear, whether it’s the Indian team jersey or some other team, football teams, you can just buy it on FanCode and you know it’s authentic.

Devashish: It just helps get everyone into that culture. Fantastic! I think you and I will have a shared dream that when we bag more Olympic medals as a nation, I hope that Dream11 gets to play a big part in the sponsorship.

Kevin: Absolutely! That would be fantastic.

Question 2: The Gaming Industry’s Growth and Talent Landscape

Devashish: Thank you, Kevin. I move to my second question. India is emerging as one of the largest growing markets in the gaming industry globally. This industry will hit $7.5 billion in revenue estimates, and by next year, it’s expected to create about 250,000 jobs, which is fantastic for the talent landscape. It’s not been too long since this industry and Dream11 have been around compared to all the legacy organizations in India. With this new entrant and all of this happening in the talent landscape in gaming, how do you see this next decade planning out for the gaming industry and Dream11 when it comes to talent?

Kevin: I’d like to draw out a metaphor here. Imagine all the fans getting into the stadium, it’s getting very exciting. We know the match is going to start. That’s the moment we are at. It’s a tipping point for the gaming industry because, very clearly, as more users are coming in and appreciating the kind of gaming and games that are out there, as well as wonderful platforms like Dream11 that are servicing all our users, this is a tipping point where not just careers, there are a lot of jobs as well.

Five years ago, there wouldn’t have been a job called a fantasy sports analyst. You wouldn’t have found a lot of sports content creators. You wouldn’t have found a lot of people who are product designers focused on gamification and games. You find them today. Clearly, there are thousands of jobs that we’ve created. We’ve created jobs for brand storytellers (you find amazing stories of sports people today). About a decade ago, it would be hard to come by that narrative of great sporting success.

I think the beauty is that it’s not just us, the entire ecosystem that’s there. We’ve been one of the first to step into this, and it’s just come together so well. This next decade is going to be one of amazing growth, hopefully, and also a lot of support from all the fans that are there. Today, we’ve got close to 220 million users at Dream11 and 120-odd million users on FanCode. We clearly see the ecosystem reaching close to maybe 500 million users over the next couple of years, not just Dream11, but for the ecosystem as a whole. That’s fabulous. When you have so many users gunning for sports, excited about it, engaged with sport, there’s no doubt that India can truly be a great sporting nation.

Devashish: Thank you so much! That was so insightful. Looking forward to this amazing decade.

Question 3: Nurturing Tech Talent

Devashish: I move to my third question, Kevin. Dream11 is a born-digital company, and you’ve had to nurture a lot of tech talent ever since your inception. What are the challenges you’ve faced doing that, and how do you retain such talent? What industries are your challenges? We know that there’s a lot of poaching that happens. We’ll of course answer that later, but what are the challenges you’ve faced until now in getting this talent in?

Kevin: I think all talent, especially in tech, wants to work on groundbreaking work. If you have groundbreaking work, anybody will want to come join you. So, communicating what you’re doing, your vision and how you communicate it is very, very important.

For example, out here, an engineer is not just building code, they’re building the future of sports. It’s something larger than us. We’re not just doing this as a daytime job to pay a salary. We are impacting how sports is going to be consumed in India for the future. If you’re able to draw that parallel, that’s when everybody gets excited. Nobody’s going to get excited just because you’re paying a little bit more. Nobody’s going to get excited just because of the designation, but everybody wants significance.

At Dream11, we’ve been one of the first folks to enter the space and deliver a lot of significance, not just for the people who work here, but for millions of our fans and users. I think that’s one space that we’ve been able to occupy quite well. It’s about groundbreaking work every day, challenging work every day. That’s what makes even a stone into a beautiful diamond.

Devashish: Fantastic! This is really a goosebump answer for me. The fact that everyone wants significance, connecting them to that larger vision that it’s much more beyond just coding. You are creating such a large impact in the way sports is consumed – how it inspires everyone to do real sports outside in the sporting arena. Fantastic! Thank you so much, that was an amazing answer, Kevin.

Question 4: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Devashish: My fourth question: We have seen Dream11 promote women’s sports. We have the Women’s Super Smash League, which has become very popular. How does diversity, equity, and inclusion play out within the Dream11 talent ecosystem?

Kevin: That’s very interesting. I’d like to draw a parallel to sport. If all of us were wicketkeepers on the team, if all of us were batsmen, if all of us were bowlers, that would not be a pretty cool team. We do understand that diversity is superbly important, especially to team performance. It’s just natural, and as a sports company, we try and make sure that we have a diverse set of talent. But more importantly, it’s not just about the diversity that you see, it’s about how each person feels. Do they have a voice? Do they feel that they belong? Do they feel that they’re being heard? For us, these three things matter the most. That’s when you end up becoming diverse.

When we started out, I remember this in 2017, our average age was about 23-24, a very young company. Today, the average age is about 28-29, which means a lot of people are married, they have kids. Our policies have changed completely. In 2017, we had a 10% gender diversity ratio. Now it’s about close to 22%. But we haven’t focused on saying that we want to move the needle in this manner. We’ve been meritocratic about it. We’ve been focused on making sure that it’s a diverse set of folks that we hire and diversity not just in terms of what you can see, but how are decisions taken? Are you inclusive when you are soliciting feedback? Are you able to challenge your manager?

We have a “No HiPPO” rule here, which means that the highest paid person’s opinion doesn’t matter as long as you have the data to question them and present the best idea. That’s very, very important because that’s what creates diversity. Diversity is not based on what you see, it’s how you feel every day. As long as we’re giving that to our people, we are on a winning team.

Devashish: Amazing! I just loved how you’ve broadened the entire idea of diversity. Fantastic! Diversity from thought, from ability to participate in decisions, getting your voice heard, your thought tabled, irrespective of what your position might be in the organization.

Kevin: Let me give you this anecdote. This happened in 2017-18, I think it was 2018, the beginning. We had a marketing agency working with the marketing team, with the founders, with the top management team. They came back to us on what the new logo of Dream11 should be. Obviously, this is a team that’s invested in this idea, they’re the closest to it, they have the knowledge, the technical ability to choose something. They had multiple options and they finalized one.

But just before taking it public, we always like everybody in the organization to know, what do you think? Because this is finally something that’s going to be on your shirts, on your mugs, on your bags, on your appraisal letters. How are you going to feel about that? We said, “Hey, this is what we’ve chosen. How do you like it?” And everybody was like, “Thumbs down. We don’t like it at all.”

We were like, “Hey, listen, tomorrow is the ad shoot. We’ve already gotten these shirts done.” We were getting a brand ambassador for the shoot. But this feedback, where you say you need voices to be heard, these are people who are as much invested in your success as you are. Just opening it up to them, getting that feedback, overnight we changed it. We said, “Hey, listen, whatever ad we’re shooting has got to be shot without a logo. We’ll superimpose the logo later.” That’s how this logo came about – this logo of the championship cup.

Like I told you about the HiPPO, that decision doesn’t work. We just don’t go by that. The second is that diversity is also about hearing voices, making sure that not only are you soliciting it, but it’s being heard. I think this is a beautiful story that showcases how everybody commits to something because you’ve actually opened up decision-making and the input to everybody.

Devashish: You not only made sure that everyone feels that they’re heard in such an important decision, literally wearing the employer brand. But also making them feel that they were valued and that everyone has an equal say.

Kevin: That’s the culture out here. My sympathy is with the marketing team at that point in time, which was changing everything. Kudos to them that they could do that, believe in that, and really stick by it.

Devashish: That was an amazing anecdote, Kevin!

Question 5: Learning and Development

Devashish: With this, we move to the last two questions. Dream11 has a diverse tech workforce. It requires, I’m sure, a lot of learning and development initiatives. What has proven to be most effective for you?

Kevin: We look at learning and development like a preseason camp. For cricket or football, you have a preseason camp where there is intensity, focus, and training. But you’ve got to intersperse it also with learning that comes from the outside.

At Dream11, we’ve got a series called “Champions at the Stadium,” where we get some experts to come in. Sometimes they are cricketers, sometimes they are sports folks, sometimes they are experts in their functional fields. They come and talk about what they have done, and we can learn a lot from them.

We also have a hackathon, 48 hours of immense focus where teams build something. The last time we had a hackathon, it wasn’t just a tech initiative, it was everybody in the company. Everyone was on a cross-functional team that had to build an AI solution. You were trained in AI. You had experts come in on how to build an app that can use AI to solve a problem in your department. I remember we built our own chatbot for HR, you could ask it questions and it would answer questions on policies. This is a solution that’s not just going and picking up something off the shelf, but understanding how to build it yourself. That really stretches you. If you’re not being stretched in learning, you’re not developing.

The second is also about holistic development. It’s not just about stretching yourself to learn something new, but it’s also knowing what your strengths are, making sure that you’re focused on the right kind of well-being. If you’re too invested, you’ll burn out. Having the right balance and advising people on the right balance is very, very important. Making sure you’re focused, when you have too many things to do because everything that you touch is exciting in our company, you see an opportunity everywhere, but you need to focus. You need to build the right relationships. You need to make sure that you’re gunning for your purpose because sometimes you lose track of that.

As a player (we also call all people who work here players as well because we are like a sports team), it’s about making sure that you are focused on holistic development of yourself and of your team as well. For us, that’s what matters.

In addition, there’s the usual stuff. There are courses online that you can take. We used to have a budget of Rs. 50,000 per person that you could spend on anything linked to your work. For the last couple of years, we had a learning wallet in place. Everybody in the company could go and spend up to Rs. 50,000 on their own learning and development, just check in with your captain. What we did this year is remove that limit of 50,000.

Devashish: So go and see what’s useful to your own growth?

Kevin: Yes! The beauty of that is our focus is on the ownership that you show. It’s not about the organization or your coach telling you you have to go for practice, it has to come from within. As a player, if you’re not keen on improving, nobody can force you to do that. Everybody is an adult in this space. We’ve seen it countless times, the players that actually want to improve go beyond what the coach tells them. They are invested in their success. They show that ownership and the zeal to make sure that they improve as players because they know that when they are invested in their own success truly, there’s nothing that’s going to stop them.

Devashish: I think all three anecdotes and your organizational philosophy on learning and development. These are best practices, and we would certainly want to quote them in our report whenever it comes out. Fantastic!

Question 6: Talent Acquisition and Retention Challenges

Devashish: With this, this section’s last question, Kevin: What are some of the biggest challenges Dream11 faces in acquiring and retaining your talent? I mean, especially you have such a large tech workforce, and we know how competitive it can be.

Kevin: Everybody out there is like a cricket team, and everybody is looking for a Virat Kohli to join the cricket team. That’s the market out there. The question is: How do you get a Virat Kohli-like batsman on your team? How do you get many of them? And how do you get them to stay?

You can get them because of the amazing perks you have, the salary you pay, the policies that you have, the underlying culture that you propagate. But you get them to stay because of what they experience. I talked about this earlier, you have to provide challenge, you have to provide groundbreaking work. That’s the only reason that they’re going to stay. And whatever promises you’ve made on culture have to really bear fruit. If you’re going to tell a person they have autonomy and they come in and they don’t find autonomy, they’re not going to stay. They’re going to jump to the other team that’s telling them, “Yeah, come. I’m very happy to have you on my team.”

For us, making sure that what we promise is delivered. We’re not making fake promises, that’s absolutely clear. Making sure that happens ensures that we always get people who are here not just because they see it as a pay check, but because they see this as a way to change sports in India for the better.

Devashish: Amazing! And do you create narratives around such success stories a lot?

Kevin: I think anybody who joined here at Dream11 ages ago, 2017 or before, I don’t think they came for a salary increase. These were people who were counting on the purpose. They knew that this is a space nobody has, it’s untapped. Nobody has tried it before. These are the first guys that are trying to do something in the space. “I want to be part of this mission. This is changing things that have never been done before.”

I think you will always have that. Even when a company grows, like Dream11, Dream Sports, FanCode, DreamSetGo, all of them have grown. You’ll always find opportunities where it becomes mission-driven and purposeful for a bunch of people. Even today, it’s still a purpose-driven company. We are still just taking baby steps. There’s still a lot to do. We’re very excited about that.

Devashish: Wonderful! Just fantastic, Kevin, and very, very inspiring!

SEGMENT 2: SPILLING THE BEANS

Devashish: With this, friends, we come to the end of our first segment, which was “Decoding the Jobs,” and we move to our second segment. Be ready to spill the beans because this is called “Spilling the Beans!”

Question 1: Creating the Employee Value Proposition

Devashish: So, Kevin, the first question here: As early movers in an emerging sector like gaming, how did you create your employee value proposition?

Kevin: Lots of EVPs out there. One of the things that we were most inspired by on our journey was Netflix, freedom and responsibility. They truly live it at Netflix. For us, it was about sport.

Just to draw a parallel, what we felt is that we need to be authentic all the time. We are a sports company at our core. A lot of people here love sports, they either watch it or play it. The reason why they’re here is largely because of sport, and the reason why they don’t leave is also largely because of sport.

But sports is not just about work. The reason why people are here is twofold: one is to create an impact, and the second is to really have fun doing it. For us, our EVP is focused on the impact that you’re going to create. You’re going to change sports and the way it’s consumed in India, and you’re going to have fun doing it. It’s not about work because sports has always been about play, right from your school days. You went on the field because you wanted to play. As a sports company, it’s all about play and having fun doing it and being on a winning team while you’re at it.

Devashish: You’ve literally made that old Hindi anecdote, “Khel khel mein,” sound true! Amazing, amazing! Thank you, Kevin.

Question 2: Digital vs. Human Connection

Devashish: You are a born-digital company, Dream11. As the HR leader in this organization, what parts of the employee lifecycle do you think are today still manual or semi-manual, and what are your plans for that?

Kevin: I think you have to have a very focused balance on making sure that there is a strong human connection. It’s very easy to use technologies because you’re a digital-first company. When I say digital-first, it doesn’t mean that other modes are outmoded. It means that you prefer using digital technologies to scale your processes. But there are some things that people absolutely love and adore, and that’s human connection.

When we look at our talent acquisition process—I’ll give you a small example—the talent acquisition team at the company is not responsible for hiring.

Devashish: They’re not responsible for hiring?

Kevin: No. The hiring manager is. Even if the TA team doesn’t do anything, the question is going to be asked of the hiring manager: What did you do? Did you go and meet candidates? Did you go and speak to them? Did you shortlist? Did you prepare the JD? It’s not about the scouts who can get you talent. If the scouts can’t get you talent, it’s still your accountability as a captain to go and find your players. You can’t say you’re helpless because your scout didn’t do something.

When we did that, our jobs got filled faster. Candidates spoke directly to people that they’re going to be playing with on the field. The conversion rate was much, much faster. I think the beauty is that you made sure that the accountability ended up going where it truly had to be.

I honestly think that when it comes to making sure that leaders are accountable, driving that accountability to the core person who actually has to do it is very, very important. Sometimes we lose track of it. We end up saying, “Hey, listen, this team is responsible. This tech is responsible for making sure we can speak to our users.” But the owner is the hiring manager, and you can always use tech. For example, we use tech for reach-outs. We use tech to match candidates to the right position. You can always do that. But when you are reaching out to a candidate—tech can help you navigate swim lanes through your talent process, but the hiring manager is the one who’s accountable.

You have to meet a candidate physically. You have to take the candidate out for lunch. You can’t do it through tech. You have to be present because this is the person who’s going to work with you.

Devashish: And in today’s world where jobs have become location-agnostic, assuming you have someone sitting out of Kerala working for you, how does that work out? How does the lunch happen then? Do you still use technology?

Kevin: We have a hybrid model, but you need to be in the office four days a week and one day wherever you want to be. Very clearly, a lot of folks have realized after the pandemic that true development happens when they’re working with people in proximity. That’s truly worked for us as well. We don’t find this quandary where we’ve got a 100% remote organization.

Devashish: Fantastic, fantastic!

Question 3: Success Story of How Dreamsters Are Made

Devashish: I think the last question in this section: Can you share a success story of how Dreamsters are made?

Kevin: They’re made over decades, I would say, with the hard work of everybody involved. I truly think that everybody who’s been here, who’s dreamed of being at Dream11 and made it here, they’ve truly mastered a couple of things.

One is that they are focused on data and the decisions that they take, but they also have a little bit of gut. What we end up saying out here is “90% data, 10% gut.” That match and mix, you’ll never have all the data all the time. If we had all the data, and this is what our founders also say, we’d never have entered this space. Everybody told us, “Don’t take the risk.” You’ve got to take it. That 10% gut is very, very important.

You have to show ownership. We’ll always pay fewer people, but we’ll do groundbreaking work, very enriched work. You can’t do that when you can’t rely on the next person to take ownership, or if you’re not transparent with them, saying, “I’m expecting you to do this. You’re not doing it.”

The other elements are a bit around how much we persevere. You will never see people giving up. They’re still focused on it. As a company, our beginning was such that we had to go to close to 150 VCs before we got our first round of funding. If you’re not going to be persistent during that, every time something doesn’t work out, you can’t just be heartbroken. You always find us, irrespective of the turmoil, irrespective of the changes that we see around us, irrespective of the speed of the changes, we’re still positive.

The last bit is about making sure that whatever you do, you’re not doing it for yourself. You’re doing it for your users. You’re doing it for sports. You’re doing it for the country. It’s always about something bigger than us. At Dream11 and at Dream Sports, whatever we are creating, it’s bigger than the company. It’s not for us.

Devashish: Lovely, lovely! What a fantastic answer!

SEGMENT 3: EXPERTS ADVICE

Devashish: With that, Kevin, we come to the end of “Spilling the Beans,” and we move to segment three, my friends, which is “Expert’s Advice.” Kevin, all spotlight on you once again!

Question 1: Top Three Skills for Graduates

Devashish: First question: What are the top three necessary things that a graduate should learn before scouting for jobs in a new-age company like Dream11? Some softer aspects on the skill set, cultural aspects?

Kevin: A lot of what I’m going to say right now is a mix of what I’ve experienced and a mix of what I’ve seen young graduates who’ve joined us succeed at.

The first I would say is adaptability. You will always face so much constant change – structures changing, business changing. Every day is in turmoil sometimes. You need to be adaptable because some people are fixated on “this was what was said—how did this change?” But the world’s changing. Your businesses are changing. Your priorities keep changing. The team keeps changing and evolving. Your thoughts keep evolving, and there’s no right answer all the time. People who can adapt to that pace thrive, especially as a young graduate. When everything around you is changing and you’re not, the problem is not with everything around you—, he problem is with you. So change and adaptability is very important.

The second I would say is your fluency with technology. You have to be technology-agnostic as well as fluent with any technology. You can’t say, “Hey, I don’t know this.”

Devashish: Technology-agnostic and technically fluent together?

Kevin: Yes, you have to have that balance. Let’s say I joined this organization. I’m not a person who ever used WhatsApp, I hate to use WhatsApp, and it was a pain. I never used a Mac in my life, and I had a lot of number-crunching to do. I remember in my first two months of joining, my Excel skills on a Mac were slightly different because the tools and the commands are different. But you’ve got to adapt. You’ve got to be fluent in all sorts of technology, and especially for a graduate in a technology profession or as a software engineer, the tools that are going to come your way every single month, the developments in that tool are going to be crazy. If you’re not going to jump on being fluent with that, you’ll soon find yourself outmoded.

The third I would say is entrepreneurship, and that’s where you require people to show ownership. It’s not about complaining about what the world didn’t give you or what happened to somebody else. It’s about taking your own destiny in your hands and acting with initiative. A lot of folks don’t do that. It’s always sometimes about an external force, but the biggest force that you have is the force of self-belief in you. Never lose that.

I think these three, adaptability, fluency on tech (especially in the world of GenAI), and the last one, an entrepreneurial spirit translating to being able to do your own thing with true self-belief, would make any graduate succeed.

Devashish: Absolutely fantastic! Lovely, lovely!

Question 2: Keeping Dreamsters Relevant

Devashish: Last question, Kevin. The gaming industry is ever-evolving in its skill landscape. Technology is its backbone. Like you just said, every week there’s something new. What is working for Dream11 to keep its Dreamsters relevant even today?

Kevin: When you look at just the digital side of it, you end up focusing on all the cool things, “Oh wow, this is a fancy tech platform.” But there’s also an offline part of it. There’s one of our businesses called DreamSetGo, it’s a bespoke premium travel experiences company. It takes about 5,000 to 10,000 people to marquee sports events every year.

When you look at that business and the kind of focus that they have, very clearly they focused on making sure that they give an experience that nobody has ever seen, at least from an Indian standpoint. You’re getting authentic tickets. You know that if you have to go and watch a certain marquee event, maybe it’s a tennis event in the US or in the UK, you can totally rely on them.

When I look at that, what’s working for us and what’s working for all our companies is the strong belief that sports is only growing. Each of our businesses, if you take sports and sports tourism, sports tourism is growing much bigger than tourism itself. You’ve just cited what you’re seeing about the size of the gaming market.

The true belief that you are at a tipping point, it’s a great opportunity, it’s a fabulous place to be, you are a market leader, there’s groundbreaking work still because we’ve just broken stone, the foundation has been laid, we still need to build a castle. Multiple castles. Not just for us, I said earlier, this is for everybody. This is for what we can contribute to the sports ecosystem because as that gets bigger, there’ll be a lot of companies coming in. We’ve just been one of the first, one of the pioneers. But I’m sure there are going to be countless many that will come in, and we’d be pretty happy if we were one of the first to make sure that happens.

Devashish: Wow, amazing, amazing, Kevin! What you said right at the start of this beautiful conversation, that the stadium’s full, everyone’s cheering on, and we’re at that pivot point in this industry for its future, where the match is about to begin.

CLOSING

Devashish: With that, my friends, we come to the conclusion of this episode. I want to thank Kevin Freitas, Chief Human Resource Officer of Dream Sports, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you on behalf of Taggd, the Confederation of Indian Industry. What you’re going to say becomes part of great conversations that come to the trinity of academia, industry, as well as government, and are published in the India Decoding Jobs report.

I thank you, and I want to wish Dream Sports and Dream11 great, tremendous success as we wait for the game to start.

Kevin: Thank you! I’m humbled to help in any way I can. Thank you so much, Devashish.

Devashish: Thank you, sir. Thank you!

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