Business Communication & Personal Branding- An Entrepreneur's Take || Guest Lecture By Mr. Nikhil Kulkarni

''While it is wise to learn from experience, it is wiser to learn from the experiences of others.''

 - Rick Warren  

The vision of our Business communication teacher, Prof T Prasad (1/12 Mandi Sir) is not only to make education more fun, but also to make his students learn by being in the real world and understanding its methodologies. Which can't be comprehended by just sitting in the classroom and learning via books and presentations.

In my previous blog, I wrote about one of the most successful B-school events- Mahamandi, which is lead by our very own Mandi Sir. The link to his youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/nitieprasad1

Do check it out for some insightful videos!

In his last lecture, he gave us the pleasure of interacting with one of our esteemed Alumni- Mr. Nikhil Kulkarni. He is the co-founder of Darwin Tech (www.techdarwin.com); a travel technology B2B startup - which works on products for the leisure holiday market. He is a B.Tech graduate in Electronics Engineering and MBA graduate fromN Mumbai. After working with KPMG for 11 years he decided to tread the path of fulfilling his dream of becoming an Entrepreneur,  and founded DarwinTech in 2016.

Their business model is based on integrated planning / booking of itinerary. So, you don’t have to worry about planning your itinerary while going on a business trip. It is currently a B2B Company and will soon diversify into B2C as well.

Business Communication in Consulting

He spoke about the role of communication in the business world, techniques for representing data as well the importance of creating a Personal Brand. He began with mentioning how the tools like Word, PowerPoint, Excel shall remain our best friends. We need to decide which one to use for best representation of our idea. For e.g., business proposals and reports are presented using Power Points and Word document. But for executive briefing, presentations are more apt. For documentation, Excel sheets or Word are the right tools. It was intriguing to understand how  a consultant's mind works.

He stressed on the importance of business communication in the world of consulting by giving a statistic – 80-15-5. Where 80% importance is given to communication, 15% to building relationships and 5% to research

Structuring your content — Pyramid Principle

The concept even goes beyond just talking to executives. It’s applicable anytime you are trying to convey a persuasive argument. No matter the medium of your presentation – whether a client-facing slide deck, an internal meeting, or a marketing pitch – structuring your thoughts with the Pyramid Principle will help you get your point across clearly and effectively, while staying MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive). Key Principles: 

1. Lead with the answer/recommendation
2. Give main supporting arguments as opposed than details
3. Back up supporting arguments with data points

Creating an Impact

He emphasized on how important it is to have the right mix of impact & content in our presentation. For higher impact, we can begin with a startling statistic or image, a relevant quote, a video, a question, or an activity. We can have an impact on people's minds with an Image as people do not remember too many ideas given in a bunch.

Creating a 'Personal Brand' — why, how, when?

Creating a personal brand is not about being a celebrity, its about being recognized for your USP. It helps add value to one's overall personality. And most importantly, it helps in getting things done. And how to do that ?

• Writing blogs
• Creating a YouTube channel
• Using Twitter to express your ideas
• Using Social Media handles to convey your thoughts to a large audience

Lastly, I would like to thank Professor T. Prasad for giving us opportunity to interact and learn from such individuals. Nothing can be compared to the learning gained from experience.