A conversation with Tarun N. P. Varma, Chief People and Sustainability Officer, Tata Consumer Products, and Devashish Sharma, Member, National Committee for Skills & Livelihood, CII and Founder & CEO of Taggd
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.
