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Strategic Intent

Strategic Intent

63 articles

Latest in Strategic Intent

Hybrids in an EV era
·Business & Strategy

Hybrids in an EV era

Propelled by the Toyota and Suzuki partnership, the resurgence of hybrids is a signal that the electric mobility revolution in India may take a lot longer than was assumed

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Behind Crotonville’s demise
·Leadership & Organisation

Behind Crotonville’s demise

It is tempting to dismiss corporate universities as a relic of a bygone era. The reality may well be a bit more nuanced

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Tales of transitions
·Leadership & Organisation

Tales of transitions

Many competent leaders from different domains aspire to join public life. But the transition is never an easy one

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Paytm: Emperor’s new clothes
·Business & Strategy

Paytm: Emperor’s new clothes

At the heart of the fintech major’s precarious slide lies the abject failure of its Super App strategy. But that’s just one part of the story.

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Indian cricket’s moment of truth
·Leadership & Organisation

Indian cricket’s moment of truth

BCCI faces a set of crucial decisions ahead that could set the pace for the future

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Why building corporate democracies still matter
·Leadership & Organisation

Why building corporate democracies still matter

In this age of AI, creating an employee-first culture may seem counter-intuitive. But not if you believe in the primacy of building human relationships at the workplace

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Behind ITC’s hotels demerger
·Business & Strategy

Behind ITC’s hotels demerger

Chairman and MD Sanjiv Puri is trying to kill three birds with one stone

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Noel Tata’s brahmastra
·Business & Strategy

Noel Tata’s brahmastra

His value lifestyle brand Zudio has caught the attention of the entire retail industry. It also signals a coming of age of retail in small town India

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Modern Times redux
·Economy, Policy & Society

Modern Times redux

Is the government’s Make in India programme creating a system where a large section of workers in manufacturing could find themselves trapped in low wage jobs with no future?

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

How (not) to build your personal brand
·Work, Careers & Personal Mastery

How (not) to build your personal brand

FF Life: The power of social media has lulled leaders into believing that a carefully curated digital identity is the sure-fire passport to success. They are entirely off-the-mark

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Building leaders for and in India
·Leadership & Organisation

Building leaders for and in India

What do we need more of: leaders who dominate global institutions or local leaders with a make-in-India mindset?

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Adani’s NDTV takeover: The end game
·Business & Strategy

Adani’s NDTV takeover: The end game

The three-month-long takeover saga is reaching its climax. What happens next? (Updated on December 6, and December 24, 2022)

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Capping the moonlighting volcano
·Work, Careers & Personal Mastery

Capping the moonlighting volcano

There’s simmering tension over moonlighting, hybrid work and a breakdown of old workplace norms. Will this erupt into a full-fledged crisis? Or will better sense eventually prevail?

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

A battle of unequals
·Business & Strategy

A battle of unequals

As the Adani group pushes through the doors at NDTV, owners Prannoy and Radhika Roy find themselves with their backs to the wall. What are their options?

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Gautam Adani’s midnight raid at NDTV—a developing story
·Business & Strategy

Gautam Adani’s midnight raid at NDTV—a developing story

The aggressive billionaire’s dramatic attempt to take over one of the country’s best known media firms has set the cat among the pigeons. Will Prannoy and Radhika Roy stand their ground? Here are the possible scenarios. (This is a developing story and we are updating it as things unfold. The latest update was on 31 August, 2022)

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

The hare and the tortoise
·Business & Strategy

The hare and the tortoise

The R K Swamy Hansa group remains the last man standing, even as almost all the large homegrown advertising-led groups have thrown in the towel. How did the Swamy brothers, Srinivasan and Shekar, pull it off?

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Agnipath and a second career for veterans
·Economy, Policy & Society

Agnipath and a second career for veterans

The raging controversy around the Agnipath scheme has placed the spotlight on an issue that has been pushed under the carpet for too long.

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Bollywood’s wakeup call
·Economy, Policy & Society

Bollywood’s wakeup call

Why the Hindi film industry is struggling to emerge out of its pandemic-induced coma

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Plugging the infra gaps
·Economy, Policy & Society

Plugging the infra gaps

The Gati Shakti Mission has been billed as a major transformational project. But is it merely a delayed attempt at better housekeeping?

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Rushing back to office
·Leadership & Organisation

Rushing back to office

There are signs of growing impatience among CEOs to abandon the hybrid work experiment and return to office permanently. What’s driving this sentiment? And could it scupper change?

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Riders on the storm
·Business & Strategy

Riders on the storm

Two of India’s iconic companies—Tata Steel and ITC—find themselves at the cusp of a huge upheaval. And it once again raises serious questions about the role of the board in supervising executive management

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

How entrepreneurs learn
·Entrepreneurship, Startups & Innovation

How entrepreneurs learn

Large established firms have a tough task in embedding entrepreneurial thinking inside the firm. Because it means rewiring the way leaders think about the future

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Stepping into Rana’s den
·Leadership & Organisation

Stepping into Rana’s den

On March 1, Ravneet Singh Gill will assume charge at YES Bank. Will the entry of the quintessential MNC banker from Deutsche Bank be able to calm the troubled waters swirling around YES Bank?

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Why the worst may not be over for Chanda Kochhar
·Leadership & Organisation

Why the worst may not be over for Chanda Kochhar

The inside story of how Chanda Kochhar let hubris and greed implode her trail-blazing career at ICICI Bank

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Why UDAN is flying into headwinds
·Economy, Policy & Society

Why UDAN is flying into headwinds

The Modi government’s ambitious scheme was a serious attempt to make air travel accessible to every Indian. But two years later, it is apparent that the challenges may have been somewhat underestimated.

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

The new ‘mad men’ in town
·Business & Strategy

The new ‘mad men’ in town

The global merger of JWT and Wunderman is a signal of how a new combination of techies and fuzzies might dominate the world of innovation and marketing

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

Flippin’ over backwards
·Entrepreneurship, Startups & Innovation

Flippin’ over backwards

Less than six months after their momentous deal with Walmart, both co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal are out of Flipkart. It is a sad commentary on the hubris and the immaturity that’s gripped India’s high-flying tech entrepreneurs

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

#metoo: Searching for a silver lining
·Leadership & Organisation

#metoo: Searching for a silver lining

Three years after her sexual harassment allegations against then Indian Hotels CEO Rakesh Sarna, Anjuli Pandit has made her horror story public, signalling a complete breakdown of internal processes to prevent sexual harassment. Yet, Pandit shows the new Tata management a way to make amends

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

The long road to a safe workplace
·Leadership & Organisation

The long road to a safe workplace

The #metoo movement has provided a wake-up call for leaders across India Inc to significantly up the ante in building safe and gender-balanced workplaces

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel

The return to humanness and collaborative innovation
·Leadership & Organisation

The return to humanness and collaborative innovation

In this never ending race for greater productivity and measurement, the practice of management appears to have lost touch with real human values. It is time to correct that

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Indrajit Gupta

Indrajit Gupta

Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel