The ContraMinds Podcast

Rajesh Jain is a technology entrepreneur based out of Mumbai, India. Rajesh was a pioneer in Asia's dot-com revolution, creating India's first internet portals in the late 1990s. Today, he's the founder of Netcore Cloud, a bootstrap, SaaS company that helps B2C brands and marketers create AI-powered new age customer experiences at every touch point of a customer's journey. Netcore Cloud is a very...

Building a Toolkit for Product Success Management David Fradin is the president of Spice Catalyst . He's a product management and product marketing consultant. David is a mentor, professor, and one of the world's foremost authorities on product management. He is an author of two incredibly great books - Successful Product Design & Management Toolkit and Building Insanely Great Products. David...

Roger Forsgren is a retired Chief Knowledge Officer of NASA. He was a director of Academy of Program, Project and Engineering Leadership at NASA. Roger is also an undergraduate with a liberal arts degree, a mechanical engineering degree and a masters in industrial engineering. Roger is also the author of two books and the most recent being “When Graduation is Over, Learning Begins - Lessons for ST...

Sridhar Ramasamy is an industry veteran with interdisciplinary knowledge across the pharmaceutical and manufacturing domains. Sridhar leads digital transformation, engineering, automation and data analytics. In this episode, Swami and Sridhar delve deep into -The Importance of an Engineer Understanding a Business Problem - Asking Stupid Questions - How to Handle Ambiguity - Having an Open Mind and...

Rajat Kumar Agarwal is the Chief Executive Officer of Jagriti InnoHealth Platforms - a tech startup creating knowledge management centric intelligent IT systems for healthcare using a business platform approach resulting in improved patient outcomes and scientific publications. Jagriti InnoHealth products: BMTPLUS - the world's first dedicated software platform for complete management of Hematopoi...

Marketing Accountability: Elevating the role of the CMO and Value of Marketing in an Enterprise Prof. Venkatesh (Venky) Shankar is a Ford Chair Professor, a RETHINK Retail Top Influencer, and an Advisory Council Chair at the Marketing Accountability Standards Board. With vast experience in retail, Prof. Shankar is a professor at the Texas A & M University and has over 27,000 citations (Marketi...

Ravishankar Iyer is a Story Coach and Founder of Story Rules ( storyrules.in ), a startup that offers training and coaching services on how to apply storytelling techniques at work. A Chartered Accountant with an MBA from IIMA, Ravi a.k.a. “The Storytelling Guy”, believes From boardroom reviews to big family gatherings, from TED Talks to teachers in classrooms, from magical monuments to mythology...

Inside the Mind of a Technology-Driven Marketer Sukumar Muthya is a seasoned marketing technology executive with over 27 years of marketing experience across a variety of industries - from manufacturing to technology. Sukumar is currently the Executive Vice President at Ansira Global - an independent global marketing technology and services firm with clients from automotive, technology, finance &a...

Amit Tiwari is a Martech Leader with a new-age marketing approach for new marketing technology enablement. His experience includes a crucial role in the modernization and transformation of marketing technologies.  Amit has vast knowledge in managing all aspects of the product lifecycle from concept development to launch in both B2B and B2C platforms. He is currently the Global Head of the Marketin...

Dr. Tanvi Gupta is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Indian Institute of Management Udaipur (IIMU) and a practicing semiotician. Her academic research focuses on brand language and consumer culture—and her research has been published in Journal of Consumer Research—one of the top marketing journals in the world. Tanvi co-leads the Consumer Culture Lab at IIM Udaipur, a platform to foster...

Pooja Jauhari is the former Group CEO of VMLY&R India, and former CEO of The Glitch. Over her two-decade-long career, Pooja has worked with some of the biggest brands in the country and the world, and introduced powerful campaigns to society. Pooja has worked with some brilliant people and has held important responsibilities over the past 20 years. She is the Founder of Seat At The Table, an u...

Prof. Peter Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His expertise centres on the analysis of behavioural data to understand and forecast customer shopping/purchasing activities. He works with firms from a wide range of industries, such as telecommunications, financial services, gaming/entertainment, retailing, and pharm...

Dr. Aniruddha Malpani is a pioneering IVF Specialist, Angel Investor and Social Impact Entrepreneur. Through his firm Malpani Ventures, Dr. Malpani has contributed immensely in promoting India's startup ecosystem. A strong believer in the power of entrepreneurship, Dr. Malpani funds frugal innovation in India, and is also among the leading voices seeking a transformative change that India's outdat...

Prem Kumar is the founder of Kalvi40, a mobile educational technology app that is transforming the way education is imparted to over 750 Government schools across 26 districts in Tamil Nadu. A seasoned IT delivery Manager with a career that spanned 19 years across companies like HCL and TCS, Prem Kumar took a leap of faith in creating Kalvi40 when he observed gaps in the way education was reaching...

HUMANIZED GROWTH: A NEW BLUEPRINT FOR MARKETING Mark de Swaan Arons is a thought leader in global marketing leadership. An experienced marketing hand, Marc had a successful 14-year career with Unilever working in The Netherlands and New York offices and is now the Founder of the Institute for Real Growth (IRG) - a not-for-profit organization that helps CMOs and other growth leaders drive humanized...

Is it Your life is your responsibility or  Just keep going. No matter what or pay yourself first.  It does not matter how good the advice is if you have benefited from it!    As Prof Annapurni says, Whatever the situation you are in be it a disadvantageous situation but identify the advantage of it and make use of it.   As Sunder Madakshira says, Winning the battle in one's mind before winning it...

What advice would you give to an 18-year-old in university?   Is it Getting out of the bubble of your Majors? Developing communication skills or simply sticking to the basics?   As Prof Annapurni says, work hard, be passionate, and find something that challenges you. If you feel comfortable and capable, you are no longer challenged.   As Neil Hoyne says, in the future, you must learn subjects outs...

What Does Success Mean To You? Is it about how much money you make for yourself, or is it in being able to give back to society? Is it a measure of happiness or in constantly striving to achieve your goals?  As Prof Annapurni says, the definition of success changes in every stage of career and life. When we start our career, we are hungry, we are curious. We want to learn, we want to create and we...

Rupal Patel is an ex-CIA agent turned entrepreneur, international speaker and business consultant. She helps founders and executives unlock their potential through a powerful new toolkit that reveals how techniques of the CIA can help anyone find their voice and thrive without conforming to stale stereotypes or dated “best practices”. Rupal is the author of the bestselling book “From CIA to CEO”....

A writer, investor, and entrepreneur, Chris Yeh has had a ringside seat in the world of startups and scale-ups since 1995. His books help founders, venture capitalists, corporate leaders, policymakers, and everyday people better understand how the internet has changed the way we work together to build amazing organizations. Chris Yeh is the co-author, along with Reid Hoffman, of  Blitzscaling , th...

Prof. Thales Teixeira is the co-founder of digital disruption consultancy Decoupling.co. Previously, he was the Lumry Family Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, where he taught MBA, doctoral and executive-level courses in Marketing Models, Digital Marketing and Ecommerce for 10 years. His two primary domains of research constitute Digital Disruption and The Economics of Attention. He i...

B. Joseph Pine II is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial start-ups alike. He is the cofounder of Strategic Horizons LLP, a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings. Pine consults with numerous companies around the world, helping them embrace...

Prasad Mangipudi is one of the top sports development and marketing minds in India. Prasad is the Managing Director of Sportzlive - a company primarily focused on investing and creating Sports IPRs in the Indian sub-continent market, and is a Mentor Director with the Hyderabad Hydras, a premier esports & lifestyle organisation. Prasad is one of the brains behind the Premier Badminton League, m...

Intro Paul Zak is an American neuroeconomist. He is the co-founder of Immersion Neuroscience, which creates technologies that enable human flourishing. His specialities include neuroeconomics, neuromarketing and neuromanagement. Paul is also a professor at Claremont Graduate University (for over 27 years), where he currently is the Director at the Centre of Neuroeconomics Studies. In this episode...

Connor Joyce is a behavioral science evangelist who writes extensively about the future of work, helping establish the field of behavioral science. In this episode on The ContraMinds Podcast, Connor speaks to Swami and Vignesh about the importance of behavioral science and its four pillars of Choice Architecture, Biases & Heuristics, Habit Formation and Social Norms. A deep-dive discussion int...