Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Agriculture & Farm Excellence Organization, Former MD and CEO, Rallis India Limited, Tata Group on the topic “Strategic issues in managing business in prevailing Covid scenario” for management students on 27th October, 2020 .

The session started with a warm welcome of Mr Shankar by Prof. (Dr) Vidya Sekhri, Director (Management). In her opening remarks, Dr Sekhri said, that COVID-19 is significantly impacting businesses and the world economy. It presented significant challenges to people and organizations around the globe and the disruption continues to evolve. Organizations particularly in India are now trying to  mobilize, stabilize and return to work path again

Mr. V Shankar shared his experiences and approaches to manage businesses in prevailing COVID-19 scenario. He said that Covid -19 has swept the globe, spreading uncertainty and disorder wherever it goes. He discussed that pandemic has forever changed our experiences―as employees, customers, citizens, humans― and as a result our attitudes and behaviors are also changing.  Suddenly even best of experts realized that most of the forecasting tools and techniques to analyze trends became obsolete. Businesses must navigate the financial and operational challenges of corona virus at the same time rapidly addressing the needs of their stakeholders including employees, customers and suppliers. It also gave businesses, plethora of opportunities to learn the capabilities to innovate, collaborate and succeed at a rate assumed to be impossible. He also discussed about changing strategies across sectors covering Manufacturing, E-commerce, Agriculture and Automotive. He suggested Scenario based planning for running targets, Communication with employees, customers and other stakeholders, Agility, exploring new business opportunity, continuous learning, re-learning and up-skilling as the new mantra to sustain in changed world.

The session was attended by Prof C K Sabharwal, Dr V N Bajpai, Dr. Surendra Tiwari, Dr Ashish Kumar Jha and other faculty members.

It was great to have such deeper insights on one of the most impressing challenges prevailing today by the expert. At the end, Prof Yachana Malhotra , proposed a vote of thanks to Mr. V Shankar for sparing his valuable time and enriching the participants with his words of wisdom.