Exclusive Interview Archives

ALPI Associates: Transforming Strategies and Solutions to Sustainable Results

Led by Snehal Shah, ALPI Associates assist organizations in doing factual projects with strategic alliances that correctly make the best use of their time, talent, and budget. With decades of customer service excellence in providing Turnkey and Up-Gradation solutions in high-impact industry sectors, ALPI Associates continues to make significant strides in many parts of the world. ALPI Associates can manage its clients’ projects from concept to creation and help to bring projects back on track that are falling behind schedule or losing steam.

Based in Ahmedabad, Gujrat, ALPI Associates has worked on projects worldwide in accordance with the requirements of the modern world. It strongly focuses on production efficiency, legal compliance, environmental balancing, economy and energy efficiency.

The Farsighted Leader

Snehal Shah, CEO of ALPI, is a multifaceted and successful leader with over three decades of expertise in pharmaceutical engineering, including conceptualization, design, manufacture, utility, process, filtration, aseptic filling, and high-speed packaging equipment with installation to commissioning. He has managed projects and engineering at multiple production plants for organizations and brings a high-level management approach in planning, implementation, and operation.

Innovative Services

ALPI Associates is led by an idealistic management and powered by a team of highly proficient engineers and associate management professionals. The team’s experience and skill set ensure quality adherence at every stage while delivering economical and sustainable designs within the stipulated schedule. This customer-centric approach with the highest level of professionalism has made ALPI a much more demanding organization.

Currently, the organization offer services like

Projects & Project Management
MEPF & HVAC
Engineering and Documentation
2D-3D Design and Drawing
Statistical Analysis
Procurement Assistance

Biodegradable Moulded Fibre (Tableware)

“We at ALPI Associates are a company with associates of having more than 90 Years of Collective Experience in API & Pharmaceutical, Nutraceutical, Perfume & Aerosol, Food & Beverages, Healthcare, Cosmetics (Colour & Personal Care), Decoration (Lacquering, Coating, Metallizing, Printing), Biodegradable Moulded Fibre (Tableware), FMCG & allied industries…”– said Snehal

Assisting Clients

Under Snehal’s leadership, ALPI Associates has evolved into a multi-product, professional and committed organization with a clear focus on providing value-based solutions for its customers. ALPI’s associate team guides its clients through its solution and work with them to offer an optimal product for their need. With its ethos of keeping customers first, ALPI’s associate team guides its clients through its solution and work with them to provide an optimal product for their need.

A dedicated Project Team supports ALPI’s clients and coordinates with them throughout the procurement lifecycle till commissioning. The Project Team also assists clients with much-needed technical understanding and logistics support to ensure a smooth and timely project implementation.

Adding to that, a committed, technically qualified, and principal certified team of engineers provides installation, commissioning, validation, and startup services for all the equipment, which ALPI’s clients can procure under the organization’s Procurement Assistance Service.

“Our essential purpose is Concept to Creation & provides exceptional leadership to transform strategies and solutions to sustainable results. We are dedicated to uncompromising integrity and continuous improvement. Through our dedicated and talented family of professional associates, ALPI Associates provides unmatched quality, caring, and value to our clients,”– explained Snehal.

Mission and Vision

ALPI’s mission is to focus on Concept to Creation and provide exceptional leadership to transform strategies and solutions to sustainable results. Dedicated to uncompromising integrity and continuous improvement, ALPI Associates offer unmatched quality and value to its clients through its dedicated and talented family of professional associates.

Helping Canadians Know the Distant Past and Recent History

Meet Sylvain Bélanger, the Senior Director General, Chief Information Officer, and Chief Data Officer for Library and Archives Canada (LAC), which serves as the guardian of Canada’s distant past and recent history. As the CIO, Sylvain is responsible for leading and supporting LAC’s digital business operations and all aspects of preservation for access of digital and analog collections and digital transformation activities.

Sylvain started his journey at LAC in 2005 as the Chief of Staff to the Librarian and Archivist of Canada. He has also been the Corporate Secretary and Director of Collections Management. He oversaw the business side of digital before 2021 for six years as Director General of the Digital Operations and Preservation Branch. Sylvain was the driving force behind the creation of LAC’s Vision for 2030 during the first two years of the pandemic. Prior to joining LAC, Sylvain worked in several public safety agencies, private sector companies, and the Canadian Forces.

“LAC was a newly created organization from the merger of the national library and national archives. At the time, I saw an opportunity to apply the experience I had gained from my time in public safety and national defense, as well as my education in leadership, to a very different kind of organization that had a history dating to the 1800s, yet was also one of the newest organizations in the government of Canada following the merger of the two organizations,”– Sylvain remembered.

Presently Sylvain serves as the Vice-President of DPI Canada. This volunteer not-for-profit organization promotes the development of public sector professionals and the effective application of IM/IT in the Government of Canada and other public sector jurisdictions. Along with other positions, he has previously held the positions of Vice Chair and Treasurer of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, and is a a member of the IFLA Section on Information Technology.

A Unique Organization

Library and Archives Canada, more commonly known as LAC, is a federal government institution that was created in 2004 by merging the National Library and the National Archives.LAC’s unique collection now contains over 20 million books published in various languages, over 250 linear kilometers of government and private textual records, over three million architectural drawings, plans, and maps, 30 million photographic images, including prints, negatives, slides, and digital photos, more than 90,000 films, more than 550,000 hours of audio and video recordings, over 425,000 works of art, approximately 550,000 items constituting the most extensive collection of Canadian sheet music in the world, and national newspapers from across Canada, from dailies to student and community newspapers.

A Strong Team Culture

LAC has a strong professional culture of experts in the library and archival fields, conservation, information management, mass digitization, as well as digital and analog preservation. Under Sylvain’s leadership, the team has coalesced around its vision and the new digital structure. The key has been creating the proper environment for professional growth, aligning working practices across the lines of business, and having clearly defined purposes and goals that they review and emphasize regularly.

A Socially Responsible Organization

As a federal government institution, LAC always considers its impact on communities and its environmental and social responsibilities. For example, LAC’s new Gatineau 2 storage facility project is a sustainable building with objectives aligned to meet the Government of Canada’s priorities to invest in sustainable federal infrastructure and Canadian culture. It is the first Net Zero Carbon archival center in the Americas. LAC also delivers programs and projects related to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nation experiences. This includes funding to support First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nation organizations throughout Canada to identify, digitize and preserve the Indigenous language and culture recordings, and build digitization and preservation capacity in their communities.

Current Market Trends

Sylvain believes change is inevitable to meet the constantly evolving needs of Canadians. For LAC, this involves enhancing its digital capabilities and gradually altering its in-person and online services to enable Canadians to access their national history from any location. The organization released its Vision 2030 in the spring of 2022, outlining the course for the following eight years and beyond.

Vision 2030: Discover. Understand. Connect. -specifies where LAC wants to go, what it wants to achieve, and how it will get there. The concept is entirely based on inviting users to discover the collections, refining diverse voices, interacting with the community, partnering with the world, supporting Canadians, and preserving their cultural legacy.

Looking at the Future

LAC is committed to using its collections to communicate a range of Canadian cultures and experiences through the most diverse stories, and access will play a pivotal role in this.

“As CIO, I can say that collaboration across LAC, our efforts to modernize and replace our legacy technologies and infrastructure, as well as our work with our colleagues across government, the private and non-profit sectors, and key international partners will be the catalyst for change, continuous improvement, and success for us. My team is building a roadmap that emphasizes our unique needs as Canada’s premiere documentary heritage institution while looking at enterprise-wide solutions with colleagues within the government where it is the most efficient and effective way to deliver our services,”– explained Sylvain.

Leading the Charge Against Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is a form of present-day slavery involving the illegal transport of humans by force or deception for sexual exploitation, labor, or other activities that help others benefit financially. Traffickers deceive men, women, and children from every corner of the world and force them into several exploitative situations every day.

Worldwide, one in four human trafficking victims are children. However, in several poorer regions of Africa, they make up the majority of trafficked persons. Women, on the other hand, make up two-thirds of the world’s human trafficking victims. It is estimated that as many as 1,000,000 people are being trafficked each year globally.

One of the most effective ways to identify a trafficker or a criminal network is to follow the financial trail they have left behind. With proper training and guidance, financial institutions and a few non-financial businesses can identify illicit finance related to human trafficking and report potential cases. Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative (ATII) is one such organization assisting Financial Institutions, Money Services Businesses, and Cryptocurrency Exchanges with implementing Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Protection programs within their Compliance, AML (Anti Money Laundering), CTF (Counter Terrorist Financing, Sanctions Screening, KYC (Know Your Customer) Onboarding, and Risk & Fraud departments. ATII provides them with typologies, training, and assistance with integration in their daily process and procedures.

ATII also provides the necessary training to several law enforcement agencies in advanced concepts like Digital Forensics, Blockchain Forensics, Darkweb Intelligence, Open-Source Intelligence, and various other investigative techniques.

A Veteran Leader

With over two decades of experience in the technology industry, Larry Cameron is the Chief Information Security Officer at the Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative (ATII) and an OSINT Investigator for the National Child Protection Task Force.

Larry says, “I was already in the Child Protection field prior to joining the company. It just made sense to be doing it with other like-minded individuals. Anyone with a different thought process is not in it for the right reasons and should re-evaluate their career path.”

He is also a certified Digital Evidence Investigator, Mobile Device Investigator, Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator, Triage Investigator, CipherTrace Certified Examiner, and holds over 50 other Industry, IT, and Security certifications.

Larry started his career in Electronic Data Systems and worked on several contracts, including MCI/Worldcom, Hewlett Packard, and Bank of America. Then he moved on to work for Research in Motion (RIM), 2011 Canada Games, and then to Data Center, Cloud Computing (IaaS & SaaS), Consulting, Forensics, and Virtual CISO engagements. Besides serving Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative as CISO, he also serves as the Blockchain Forensics lead for the National Child Protection Task Force, a Computer Forensics Professor at St. Lawrence College, and Head of Cyber Security for the Cyber Rights Organization at the United Nations.

Larry is a trainer at Interpol for several of their operations, including WEKA II, which rescued 700 victims and arrested over 300 perpetrators. He co-founded the Anti-Human Trafficking Cryptocurrency Consortium to foster a collaborative relationship with companies that generally see themselves as competitors like Cryptocurrency Exchanges, Bitcoin ATMs, and Blockchain Forensics & Analytics companies, as well as local, state, federal, and international law enforcement.

Team Culture

Being a non-profit, ATII promotes innovation and creates new approaches to combat human trafficking and protect the vulnerable. Many of its members have been or know someone affected by these heinous crimes at some point in their life. Everyone at ATII supports each other, the public, and law enforcement, with quite a few volunteers who want to help with investigations, projects, or operations.

Few Thoughts About CSR

ATII’s mission is: We help financial institutions promote corporate social responsibility through increasing awareness, facilitating intelligence integration & technology advancement, and encouraging strategic data collaboration – to combat human trafficking. The whole organization if formed around CSR – it’s in our DNA. Our job is to make it easy, safe, and verifiable for financial institutions to level up their CSR policies and procedures. Without actively practicing corporate social responsibility, businesses are less inclined to put people and planet first.

Working for an Equal World

In the future, ATII will create new tools, curate new data, and train law enforcement. The non-profit aims to build its Fusion Center to provide quick incident response on high-priority cases and find digital breadcrumbs that can help solve cases. It will also develop courses through a grant to train the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Forces. This will give them more advanced knowledge to investigate and respond to these crimes quickly.

Creating Opportunities through Innovation

Meet Samit Chakravarty, the Chief Technology and Information Officer at One Point One Solutions, a market leader in business process management (BPM). Samit’s propensity for innovation has brought several technical developments to life. He oversees all technology needs for the business, including the network, customized CRM, and in-house dialer. Additionally, Samit has taken up the virtualization of all company assets to provide consistent and scalable software services delivery, business intelligence, and security systems.

“I am passionate about technology, innovation, and big challenging tasks on my to-do list, and I believe in pushing the boundaries of customer experience by leveraging tech innovations. One Point One Solutions’ vision to upscale customer experience each day with technology has been inspiring; to be part of this vision & grow together has been the driving factor,”– explained Samit.

Incepted in 2006, One Point One Solutions offer technology, accounting, skill development, and analytical solutions that help businesses build better capabilities and enable them to achieve seamless growth. It serves various industries, including Telecom and Broadcasting, Retail and E-Commerce, Consumer Durables & FMCG, Banking and Finance, Travel, Hospitality, and Insurance. The organization has five service centers across Navi Mumbai, Chennai, Gurgaon, Indore, and Bangalore, with over 5,500 seats per shift basis. One Point One Solutions also offers customer care, lead generation, content management, voice analytics, accounts payable and receivable, SME Management, predictive analytics, Chatbots, IVR, voice analytics, and E-mail management.

One Point One got listed in 2017 and currently boasts more than 40 leading clientele across several sectors. Recently it has also entered into a strategic partnership with Bahwan CyberTek (BCT) to target potential clients in the MENA region and other international geographies.

Standing Apart

One Point One’s team of more than 5,500 young and dynamic professionals is led by industry veterans with decades of experience across various sectors and verticals. This enables the company to provide solutions across industries that support and deliver realistic requirements with a great combination of people and technology. One Point One exposes itself to several different market segments, which allows it to help clients achieve increased market share, improved sales, and higher CSAT while reducing the cost of acquisition. The organisation’s contextual knowledge across industries has enabled it to implement best practices and deliver better value to its clients.

Employee Wellbeing

Samit and his team at One Point One believe employees are the true assets of an organisation, and skilled, motivated, empowered employees drive better results. Thus, One Point One strives to bring out the best in them and help align their long-term personal goals with the organization’s strategic objectives. It overhauled its performance enhancement process to provide them with augmented learning and development opportunities.

“Our employees continue to get hands-on experience in emerging technologies as they are part of our work streams. We also help them upskill or reskill in using new technologies through various training programmes. We believe these efforts will help them to upscale themselves and the organisation,”– explained Samit

Looking at the Future

“We pride ourselves as an organisation that is extremely sensitive to our clients’ goals and strives to achieve and sail through these trying times with agility and adaptability,”- said Samit. One Point One’s cognitive assets, coupled with operational excellence, have been able to map the journey in the business operations with precise segmentation. By harnessing the power of technology adaptation like Artificial Intelligence, Omni channel solutions at all touchpoints, Social Media governance, Cloud system and communication, Unified communication, Hyper automated systems, etc., One Point One optimizes product development for its clients and helps them lead on the curve of innovation. With the help of AI, the organisation can accelerate growth & achieve better results in client’s project delivery by including RPA (Robotic Process Automation), Chatbots, etc.

Lito German: Bringing Filipino Brands to the Middle-East

SandBox Middle East is the largest Filipino-owned import and distribution company for grocery items in the entire Gulf region. It is the exclusive distributor of several legacy brands like Delimondo, Arce Dairy, B Coffee, and Frabelle Snacks, as well as upcoming Philippine brands like Plantation Prime, Pacquiao Coffee, and GreenFood.

At the same time, SandBox is the marketing and distribution partner of PDLT Global, the largest and oldest telecommunications company in the Philippines, for its proprietary platform named BayaDIRECT. This service allows Filipino expats living in the UAE to directly pay for their Philippine-based bills, mobile subscriptions and purchase e-gifts and vouchers for their families back home – all in the convenience of strategically located payment centers across the Emirates.

The Steadfast Leader

Since childhood, SandBox Middle East CEO Lito German was always fascinated with Marketing thanks to the influence of his father, a renowned spin doctor and advertising guru. So, as Lito grew up, it was no surprise that he pursued a career in Public Relations and Marketing.

I started in the family business for the practical reason that my parents insisted that they get their money’s worth after paying for my education”, he says with a smile.

“I had taken this as a given anyway, as I had spent a lot of my free time during my university days hanging out at my father’s PR and Marketing agency, being a casual observer and learning the ropes”, he explains.

Eventually, Lito jumped from the agency side and from working for the family business, to the client side after receiving an offer to join the BMW subsidiary in the Philippines as its Marketing and Communications Director. This step spearheaded Lito’s 15 year-long career in the automotive industry.

“Through the years, I was privileged to work across continents for the world’s leading car brands such as BMW, Toyota and Lexus. It was a magical ride”, Lito recalls.

Later in early 2021, Lito made another leap of faith by joining SandBox Middle East, a Dubai-based import and distribution company primarily focusing on various food and grocery items from the Philippines.

“For me, the main challenge of any CEO is being able to jump into different positions seamlessly and authentically, depending on what’s required by the moment. These days, I find myself switching from being a cheerleader to being a coach, from being a referee to being the squad captain. I stand in front of my team when there’s trouble ahead, beside them when there’s work to be done, and behind them when there’s praise and acknowledgment due,” Lito says.

A Fundamentally Different Organization

“We are not just traders we’re brand builders,” Lito emphasizes. As a Filipino owned and operated organization, we care about the brands we carry–more so because we grew up with most of them,”explains Lito. He adds that he was surprised to find that most of the importers and distributors of Philippine-made products in the Middle East have little or no connection at all to his country. “Most of the time, they view our country’s products as mere commodities to sell at the highest possible margin,” he says.

As opposed to that, Lito explains that SandBox Middle East carefully curates brands that they distribute, in order to present the very best products that the Philippines has to offer to a wider audience. This is the reason why his organization invests heavily in marketing efforts to create appreciation for Philippine products beyond its captive audience of Filipino expats.

A Breakthrough Year

Lito feels that 2022 has been a breakthrough year for the company. Not only has SandBox widened its product range by adding several brands like Plantation Prime and Veega, it likewise expanded its sales channels by reaching out to new markets across the Gulf region. A major milestone this year was also achieved with the launch of the BayaDIRECT payment platform, in partnership with PDLT Global.

“2022 strengthened our belief that we have what it takes not only to perform, but even to lead in the Big League,” Lito added.

Getting Ready for the Future

SandBox Middle East continues to aggressively expand to several markets across the Gulf region as evidenced by its recent start of operations in Qatar and Bahrain. At the same time, the company is diversifying beyond its offerings of processed food and grocery items by launching more BayaDIRECT payment centers across the entire Middle East through strategic partnerships with money exchange and remittance companies.

Additionally, it is launching specialty retail stores that offer direct B2C sales of its top-selling products, while serving as BayaDIRECT payment centers. SandBox Middle East intends to initially set up its stores in the UAE starting at the end of 2022, with the mid-term goal of establishing its retail chain across the entire GCC region.

Unleashing the Power of Technology

Prasad G Palla is a technology executive bringing new business strategies to life through the application of people and technology. With over two decades of experience in technology at leading global enterprises and early-stage companies, Prasad now serves as the Chief Technical Officer at Mahindra First Choice Wheels Ltd , which is India’s largest used auto platform business organizing the market by demand and supply. Presently Mahindra First Choice has the largest pan-India used car retailing network and several fast-growing partnerships to procure used vehicles efficiently.

Since the start of his career, Prasad has led several digital transformation initiatives across multiple companies to leverage technology for new solutions and enable data-driven decision-making. He has also managed technology teams across 8 different countries and set up a 200+ engineering team in India, which consistently ranked among the most motivated teams in multiple internal surveys, with a lesser attrition rate than the industry standard.

Prasad started his career with i2 Technologies and went on to serve several other companies like Microsoft corporation, Talisma, Ocwen Financial Solutions, Informatica, Avagmah, and QS Quacquarelli Symonds. He played a key role in the core company leadership at Informatica, Avagmah, and QS. In 2013, he moved back from the U.S. to India to establish Quark Science and Technologies, a science education company to provide world-class science education at affordable prices for lower-middle-class Indian students. However, after spending two years on his venture, Prasad moved back to the technology sector and joined Avagmah as its CTO.

Currently, at Mahindra First Choice, Prasad is a part of the management committee and the group-level Technology Leadership team for the 19 billion Mahindra Group of Companies.

“Mahindra is one of the most respected brands in India and has the highest levels of trust and integrity as part of the work ethic. I relish working in such an environment,”- he said. “This company is at an inflection point and has started a journey to leverage technology to become the dominant player in the market. This is an exciting opportunity for me as the CTO of the organization.”

Over the years, Prasad and the products he managed have received several awards, including, SIIA CODiE Award, Startup 50 best technology award, Informatica R&D Innovation Prize, Informatica Cloud- Excellence Award, Informatica Cloud- Extreme customer focus award, Informatica R&D labs award, Truss Award etc.

Serving the Growing Automotive Sector of India

Mahindra First Choice Wheels is one of the key companies of the Mahindra Group, which is a $19 billion conglomerate. It operates in after-market services of the automotive sector and is mainly focused on the used car industry, which is a largely unorganized sector in India, with a market size of around $23 billion.

Mahindra First Choice is working on organizing the used car market by aggregating demand and supply by leveraging technology.

Currently, it has the largest pan- India used car retailing network, large and fast-growing partnerships to procure used vehicles efficiently, and the major share of the enterprise solutions market for banks, NBFCs, OEMs, and insurance companies.

Mahindra First Choice now offers various services, including used car sales and procurement, E-commerce for new and used vehicles, support for launching electric vehicles, yard management solutions, auto inspections, an auction portal for sales and procurement of vehicles, India Blue Book, and Carandbike, a major Autoportal in India.

Creating a Sustainable Model

Currently valued at $23 billion, the used car market in India is projected to grow at double the rate at a CAGR of 19.5% till FY 2026-2027. Key factors contributing to this massive growth in the next few years are the rising middle class and the growing youth population. This massive growth in the used car market has prompted multiple organizations to enter the sector. However, the primary issue with the used car market in the country is the lack of organized players. The unorganized and Semi Organized participants take up nearly 45% of the total market share, and Consumer to Consumer sales take up 35%, leaving only 15% market share for the organized sector, which often leads to a highly supply-constrained market. This also means there are no set standards for vehicle inspection, and the price of a car gets determined in an ad-hoc manner with little or no clarity. In most cases, buyers are robbed of the satisfaction and excitement of getting a fully certified car with a detailed inspection.

So, Mahindra First Choice strives to transform the used car landscape in India by making transactions simple, efficient, transparent, and equitable.

“Most of our competitors do not have a good revenue model and rely on investor money to scale operations and become profitable. This might not be a sustainable model in the current macroeconomic environment,”- explained Prasad. “Mahindra first choice has multiple businesses that are generating revenues and can create an organic growth engine for the company to grow in a reliable and organic way. It is also backed by Mahindra, which inherently adds trust to the customers.”

Looking at the Future

Mahindra First Choice aspires to become the most customer-centric auto tech company. As the CTO of the organization, Prasad is working on creating a series of digital transformation steps to integrate the islands of technologies and operations and create an efficient suite of applications, built technology platforms that allow for agility for operations and automate a lot of repetitive tasks, standardize the data definitions and build a data platform for data-driven decision making at every stage, and develop the teams into agile and self-managed squads to speed up development.

Anish Daryani: Accelerating Commerce for Brands

Anish Daryani established M&C Saatchi Indonesia in 2018 to Disrupt the communications industry in Indonesia. Born and raised in Kolkata, India, Anish went to St. James’ School. He later attended St. Xavier’s College, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree. Initially, Anish was chosen by a modeling agency that had come to his college campus looking for fresh talent, and after joining the agency, Anish landed a few modeling assignments.

However, he soon recognized an opportunity to start a business in the same space and launched his modeling agency named ‘Creations’ at 19.

After establishing ‘Creations,’ Anish also had his first brush with advertising professionals, where he became fascinated by how they worked with consumer insights. In a heartbeat, Anish realized this was what he was born to do and exited the business to get an internship in an agency.

Since then, advertising became the only profession Anish has been in. He says, “I do it all day, every day. A career in building brands has taken me places, literally… as I got to work and live in Mumbai, Nairobi, Lagos, Bengaluru, Ho Chi Minh City, and now Jakarta, where I’ve anchored my ship.”

Establishing M&C Saatchi Indonesia

As a veteran advertising professional, Anish had the privilege of building his professional career with several big network agencies, including Ogilvy, Rediffusion Y&R, Leo Burnett, and Lowe. This eventually gave him the chance to get a closer look at the industry and understand that it was slowly crumbling. Advertising is all about people and their talent. However, many traditional advertising agencies had forgotten that, and finance professionals started running the show, and soon people became numbers on an excel sheet. Upon realizing this, Anish decided to build a new-age, future-proof agency focusing on people and talent, both within the agency and its clients.

On establishing M&C Saatchi Indonesia, Anish positioned the agency as an “Accelerator of Commerce”. Its advertising services translate Brand Purpose to Commerce. Its digital services convert Content to Commerce. Its Shopper and Experiential services elevate Brand Experience to Commerce, and its PR Services transform Brand Reputation to Commerce.

Anish says, “Our’ agility” is the main ingredient behind our success… our ability to lead, create and manage meaningful change, and deliver solutions and ideas with our principle of “Brutal Simplicity of Thought.” We brought in the freshness that the market required. We don’t just identify the problems; we solve them. As a team, we harness our collective energy to give the best solutions to our clients. And lastly, we deliver exceptional results to our clients, which has led to a 90% client retention rate. Our agency model is of the future, and every strategy we follow is always in line with tomorrow.”

Mission and Vision M&C

Saatchi was established to simplify brand building during the age of change by navigating, leading, and creating meaningful change. The organization creates ‘Simple Solutions that Spark’ using meaningful data, actionable strategies, and simple experiences powered by significant changes.

Altogether these have led to the creation of solid agency culture, which Anish is very proud of.

People Power: M&C Saatchi is entirely talent-led, and the agency is all about its people, those who work in the agency, and those who work with the agency (clients and partners).
Diverse Collaboration: From having an agile workplace to simplicity in process, everything Anish and his team does is aimed at harnessing the power of collaboration among internal teams, external specialists, partners, and clients.
Playful Curiosity: As the agency’s founder, Anish encourages his teams to enjoy their work, seek innovation, and empower them to take risks without fearing failure. M&C Saatchi Indonesia ensures complete job security so that no members could be sacked due to a lack of performance.
Performance Driven: As an organization, M&C Saatchi Indonesia ensures all of its services are aimed at generating results for its clients and itself.

The Asian Business Environment

Anish believes Asia is the heart of business and innovation. With the emergence of several significant economies like India, China, and Indonesia, Asian businesses now propel the world forward. Today, any global business will fail to succeed if they fail to perform in any of these markets. Also, several smaller economies like Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines have so much growth potential that they can’t be ignored. While many larger economies are slowly stagnating, Asia still enjoys a healthy growth rate. Even with strong headwinds, the solid fundamentals and self–consumption story make Asia far more insulated from the adverse effects compared to other severely impacted regions.

Preparing for the Future

Anish says, “Since I decided to start this company, I had envisioned a certain place in the world for it. I want to build M&C Saatchi Indonesia as one of the most effective agencies in the world. When operating a business in Southeast Asia’s largest economy, you can access the talent, clients, and resources to achieve that. Making your teams accountable to your clients is the key. This is why we have focused all our energies towards creating a real impact on our clients’ businesses.”

As a young company, M&C Saatchi has won more awards and accolades than many businesses might have earned in decades. As the agency’s founder, Anish aspires to build one of the most reputable agencies, not just in SouthEast Asia or Indonesia but the world. In 2022, the agency was recognized by Campaign UK Magazine as the global Social Media Agency of the Year 2021. It is also the Campaign Southeast Asia Social Media Agency of the Year, Indonesia Creative Agency of the Year (Gold), Southeast Asia Agency for Best Culture (Bronze), and Indonesia Digital Agency of the Year (Gold) for 2021.

Under Anish’s leadership, M&C Saatchi also won Indonesia’s only Cannes Lion in 2020/21, which was also Indonesia’s first-ever Cannes Lion in the Sustainable Development Goals category.

Karen V. Ordones: Leading the change in the Tutoring industry

Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Karen V. Ordones is the CEO and Founder of Tutor.id, which is constantly looking for ways of transforming the education industry, growing tutoring businesses, and enabling novel ways of income for both tutors and their students.

Tutor.id was born as a management tool for tutors because Karen noticed most management software in education was targeted at schools, and the system was too complex and costly for a one-person business. As a full-time private teacher, Karen needed a simpler, more affordable tool to manage her own tutoring business with 100 students. She had more students than she could have comfortably managed with excel sheets, so she decided to create a product for herself and her peers who were experiencing the same problems as her.

Tutor.id’s first version was released in late September 2016. Karen thought it was a big risk for the edtech company as it had no competitors at that point of time, and the team was afraid that they might have launched this innovation too soon. It is always risky when an organization spots a market need even before consumers know it. In cases like these, companies need to educate the customers, which can be very expensive and time-consuming.

After creating an easy-to-use management solution for the tutors to manage their business and students, Karen, together with her co-founder Murillo Ichikawa, decided to add the marketplace to Tutor.id’s product in early 2019, creating a holistic solution never seen before in the tutoring industry. Tutor. matched tutors and students while supporting both throughout the entire learning journey, which paid off massively and led to 900% higher retention than its closest rivals.

Thanks to its history of starting as a management tool for tutors, the edtech platform had built the first marketplace keeping teachers in mind. Tutor.id’s full suite management software (payments, scheduling, lesson tracing tools) helps individual tutors launch and grow their business hassle-free and adds a lot of value to its marketplace.

Presently the edtech firm works with two business models:

20% revenue share from marketplace transactions
Subscription(10-40$/monthly) for management tool for tutors

Currently, the organization comprises more than 7.8k tutors registered from 119 countries.

The Leader

A Brazilian of Italian descent, Karen V. Ordones has always been very interested in understanding human behavior, which led her to study Social Sciences with a concentration in Political Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. This also motivated her to experience several different cultures and societies.

Additionally, Karen holds a Master’s Degree in Baltic Sea Region Studies from the University of Tartu, Estonia.

Karen’s journey as an educator began with her family, which has been involved in education for at least three generations. Her grandfather and his brothers founded a very popular music school in São Paulo and actively organized Modern Art Week, a revolutionary event that changed Brazilian art forever.

Karen says, “I don’t have a specific event that activated my “Education genes,” because since I was a school kid, I enjoyed teaching my peers. As an adult and having taught both in schools and privately, my positive and negative experiences led me to create Tutor.id.”

Motivation to Establish the Business

Initially, as a tutor, Karen faced several challenges managing students with excel sheets. Her primary motivation was to solve her own pain as a solo tutoring business owner.

She was way too overwhelmed to manage a whole business on her own. She always wanted a professional tool that could automate extremely time-consuming tasks. She wanted to focus on preparing great lessons and supporting her students.

With time and growing demand, Tutor.id’s product evolved into a marketplace on steroids and extended its mission to helping students to keep track of their learning and be more motivated to learn. “It is extremely challenging to bring individual learning assessments to scalable tech, and we are excited to take up this task to figure this out!”– she explains.

“It is time to bring more innovation to Education. We have been digitizing reality, but it is about time to create novel ways for the new generation to learn faster and better to build a better world.”

Karen also wants to empower people to become the best version of themselves. Tutor.id’s primary mission is to make the learning process much easier, faster, effective, and exciting. The edtech firm aspires to help students enjoy the learning process and achieve their academic and professional goals with its qualified tutors. The firm has also built several tools to help students track their progress, gain confidence and motivation to keep learning new things, and succeed in whatever they set their minds to. Karen is aware of the fact that she and her team play a crucial role in helping people learn more about how they can effectively learn at a faster rate and how to retain that knowledge long term. Although challenging, Karen still finds it very rewarding to see people being directly impacted by her products.

Additionally, as a startup, Tutor.id works closely with the community of users. Karen says, “If we change one person’s life with our product, we already feel a huge sense of accomplishment and aim to scale from there. We aim to build something users love and cannot live without.”

With its growth, Tutor.id plans to work with organizations that will enable the company’s impact on different parts of our beloved planet. With Tutor.id, these organizations will have access to remote communities that could benefit from the quality and remote education.

Tackling the Pandemic

Karen states, “My favorite and the most exciting market trend is the Metaverse and any sort of augmented reality technology. Wouldn’t it be amazing to learn biology while walking in the Amazon rainforest with your teacher and classmate?”

Since the first quarter of 2020, the world has witnessed a deadly pandemic, leading to many deaths, lockdowns, work-from-home orders, and closed schools. This pandemic, however, brought an increase in Tutor.id’s access by 4000%, which eventually triggered a series of instability in the product. This situation allowed the CTO Murillo Ichikawa and his team to quickly identify technical weaknesses and rebuild the platform for faster growth. Thanks to its brilliant results and positive impact during such emotionally draining times, Tutor.id closed its biggest funding of 500K EUR from angel investors of Estonia, Denmark, Canada, and the United States.

Preparing for the Future As the organization’s CEO, Karen would love to see Tutor.id as a brand that people recognize and know that its values are deeply rooted in empowering education for both tutors and students. She states, “Our plan to get there is really focusing on providing value. We aim to ensure learning is measured, so students and tutors can track their progress. This is something that has not been achieved by any company yet, so we would like to be the pioneers in adding this value to the industry and create the gold standard of learning assessment.”

Mike Van Pelt: Helping Men Gain Control of Their Lives

Meet Mike Van Pelt, the founder of True Man Life Coaching and the host & Creator of the True Man Podcast. Mike’s passion and experience in coaching, guiding, and mentoring men have come from his earlier involvement in leading Christian men’s groups, along with his own journey to redirect his life journey and achieve success. Mike brings over two decades of deep organizational expertise and thought leadership in account management, consulting, and leadership development. He has a B.A. degree in Business Leadership and a Master’s degree in Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Arizona.

Known as the “Comeback Coach,” Mike founded True Man Life Coaching as a specialized coaching service to help others reach their maximum potential and achieve excellence. Mike’s primary purpose in starting True Man Life Coaching was to assist men who have misinterpreted the directions of their lives. He believes men want success and satisfaction in each and every area of their lives and are looking for a roadmap of discovery back to their true minds and hearts. His goal is to become an instrument of guidance and healing to lift the heavy heart loads that many men carry with them every day.

Helping Men Gain Control of Their Lives

Initially, Mike started his business as a business consultant, helping small businesses plan for success. However, during the Covid pandemic, he pivoted into men’s life coaching, because it offered a much more personal way to walk alongside men and help them find their way in business and life.

Mike works mainly with men who are at the midpoint in their lives. He believes that this is a crucial time in a man’s life because many have regrets or wounds from their past, and they are ready to move in a new direction. Often, they are looking to recover from these past wounds and are beginning to consider their legacy and how they want to make a positive impact. The greatest satisfaction Mike has is seeing the light come on in a client when he begins to understand his full potential.

“If you need help, raise your hand and ask for help. If you have good people around you, they will show up to help you. If they don’t, change the people around you.”

Under Mike’s leadership, True Man Life Coaching offers 1-on-1 coaching, small group coaching, and mastermind groups. It also provides coaching services to businesses and organizations looking to coach their employees from a Christian perspective.

Standing Apart

Mike’s ability to listen to what’s on a man’s heart and mind and help them process the outcome they want during the coaching process sets him apart from other coaches. While this might sound simple, in a world flooded with coaches, Mike seeks out the answers men already have inside them. He helps his clients reflect on and refocus their past experiences and find the answers they need to create a new roadmap.

The Biggest Accomplishment

Initially, Mike had to zero in on how to best connect with potential clients on the True Man Podcast. This podcast helps Mike reach his audience weekly and talk about topics that are important to men on their life journey.

The True Man Podcast has provided an excellent opportunity for Mike’s potential clients and strategic partners to hear, know, like, and trust him before making a business decision to work together. Mike has also expanded this to a YouTube channel to further bolster his outreach.

Currently, Mike is working on his first book and planning for the first True Man Men’s Summit in 2023. Along with his book and the summit, Mike is available to speak at any Christian or business event. In addition, Mike is a regular guest on other podcasts, speaks at business and professional conferences, and strategically partners with other leaders who share a similar passion and focus.

In addition to being a coach, Mike is happily married to Jill, his wife and best friend of 26 years. They are also proud parents of two talented teenagers. When not coaching, Mike enjoys spending time at one of many family activities or getting in a quick round of golf with friends.

Arun Prasad: Enabling Businesses to Operate Effeciently

Meet Arun Prasad, the CEO of Money Convey, a technology platform providing blockchain solutions for institutional and individual clients to meet their financial demands and provide new opportunities to maximize their potential. Money Convey is the Oracle Corporation for Web 3. It offers businesses access to its scalable, privacy-enabled layer 1 blockchain network. The blockchain network’s value proposition lies in its architecture, which enables customization, scalability, and flexibility to deploy low-cost privacy-focussed blockchain applications.

Money Convey’s blockchain infrastructure is designed to help institutions utilize their data most efficiently. It also helps to communicate quickly, solve interoperability problems, and manage digital identity.

The Farsighted Leader

As the organization’s CEO, Arun brings his technical expertise to the table, enabling businesses to operate efficiently and validate data for their process movement. Arun completed his Master’s degree from New York University in Industrial Engineering. During his time at NYU, he served as the president of the Tandon Consulting Club, which incubates students for consulting roles. As the club’s President, Arun organized several corporate events and seminars, which kept him closer to students.

Before pursuing his Master’s degree, Arun managed Priyaa Groups, his family’s apparel business in India, which grew 10x and expanded to multiple new locations under his leadership. Now, as a New Yorker, Arun has his eyes set on helping institutional and individual clients with blockchain technology and founded Money Convey in 2022 to do that.

“My grandmother had Diabetes, and I have seen her go through various treatments all my years growing up. The issue is that the body learns to adapt to the medicines, and in conditions like Diabetes, the number of organs failing increases over time,”- Arun said. “Therefore, physicians need to work on new techniques and technology that could not solve a growing problem. That led me to a quest to find a better technique that could accommodate growing technology to solve new problems. Blockchain was the solution for the quest.”

When the Pandemic Presented an Opportunity

Arun came to the U.S. during the pandemic in September 2020. While the pandemic was terrible for most, it gave him a level playing field. “The Pandemic gave the opportunity for people to explore more technology and learn more about blockchain. The awareness towards the technology we offer has grown exponentially throughout the pandemic.”– He said.

Online networking helped Arun as an entrepreneur as it allowed him to talk to experts through virtual meetups, which would not be possible in person. The pandemic also resulted in massive investments in the healthcare system, giving rise to startups that need Money Convey’s technology. Presently the organization is working with several startups focused on providing a better solution for their users and helping them achieve groundbreaking solutions through its blockchain technology.

“I consider my team as my greatest achievement; building a team based completely out of New York and talent coming from prestigious universities is something that I feel is an achievement.”– Arun stated.

The X Factor

Money Convey’s business works on network effects. With one client, it can engage with other clients of theirs. Moreover, as the company focuses on data management, its network effect will be stronger due to the overall increase in data usage since the pandemic.

Though a startup, Money Convey maintains the standards of an established company in anything it does. The organization spends a lot of its resources on R&D, supporting and customizing tailor-made solutions for its clients. It has built an architecture that serves the needs of enterprises. Lastly, it has a strong management team with prior experience building and managing companies.

Eyeing the Future

Being the founder of Money Convey, Arun is still working on developing the technology that helps businesses grow and thrive without long waiting times and errors while ensuring better security, accessibility, interoperability, and traceability. Under Arun’s leadership, Money Convey aspires to design a blockchain network that is deliberately cultivated so that these networks can forge connections across platforms, spread information, and spark collaborative actions. As a result, the organization can address sprawling issues in ways that none can accomplish.