Zinnov Podcast

In an AI-led world where workflows are getting commoditized and customer expectations are rising, what truly separates companies that live customer centricity from those that use it as lip service?   For Sarv Saravanan, Chief Customer Officer at Commvault, the answer lies in designing customer experience as an end-to-end operating model - one that connects product, engineering, partners, AI, and l...

Enterprises have never been more committed to AI, yet many are still struggling to translate that investment into measurable business value. For Dinesh Venugopal, CEO of Tenarai, this wasn't just an industry trend. It was showing up in conversations with business and technology leaders every day. He saw a massive opportunity to help enterprises accelerate their AI journey. After three decades as I...

There may be 400 million SMBs in the world, but there is no such thing as a typical SMB. That's what makes the segment so difficult and so valuable. From AI adoption and cybersecurity to marketplaces, partner ecosystems, and hyper-local go-to-market strategies, SMBs operate by a different set of rules than enterprises. What works for one business, industry, or geography may not work for another, m...

The partner ecosystem is changing. As AI reshapes enterprise technology and customers demand faster business outcomes, traditional partnership models built around co-marketing and channel reach are being challenged. In this episode of #ZinnovPodcast, Rajat Kohli, Partner at Zinnov, speaks with Alyssa Fitzpatrick, GVP, Partner Sales at Elastic, to discuss how partner ecosystems are evolving and wha...

Enterprises today are managing increasingly complex cybersecurity environments across cloud, AI systems, applications, endpoints, and enterprise networks. As AI adoption accelerates, organizations are under pressure to secure AI-driven environments while responding to faster and more sophisticated threats. In this episode of the Zinnov Podcast, Rajat Kohli, Partner, Zinnov speaks with Michael Khou...

Every day, millions of people navigate cities through a maze of apps, systems, and decisions - yet urban mobility remains one of the most fragmented and complex challenges cities face today. As cities grow denser and regulations, infrastructure, and mobility systems become increasingly disconnected, the pressure to keep cities moving efficiently continues to rise. Behind all of this lies an invisi...

The tech services industry is being forced into a reset. AI is changing how work gets done, how it is priced, and how value is measured. For private equity investors and tech services leaders, the impact is already visible. Delivery is getting automated, costs are coming down, and revenue models built on billable hours are under pressure. So the real question is: how do you create and capture valu...

Over the past decade, hyperscalers have grown at extraordinary speed. But behind that growth sits a quieter transformation: the evolution of the partner ecosystems that enable it. Building an ecosystem is not a one-time strategy. It is a continuous process of adaptation as technology shifts, customer expectations evolve, and entirely new categories of partners emerge.  In this episode of the Zinno...

The automotive industry is undergoing a once-in-a-generation shift as vehicles evolve from hardware-centric machines to software-defined vehicles (SDVs). This transformation is redefining how cars are built, updated, and improved across their lifecycle. In this episode of the #ZinnovPodcast, Naveen Kichili, Global Head – Software-Defined Vehicle at HCLTech, joins Vijaykumar Hegde, Partner at Zinno...

"Our customers come to us and stay with us because of our culture." In an industry where switching costs are high and contracts are long, most software companies mistake retention for loyalty. StarRez doesn't. Over 30 years, across Australia, North America, Europe, and now Asia Pacific, they've built something harder to replicate than any feature roadmap, a community that genuinely wants to stay....

Imagine operating in a system where decisions are public, consequences are immediate, and mistakes are rarely forgiven. That is the everyday reality of Dr. Ekroop Caur, IAS. In this episode of Women in the Mirror, she reflects on what it takes to lead in public service at scale — shaping technology and innovation policy, making high-stakes calls under constant scrutiny, and carrying the weight of...

“AI shouldn’t replace judgment. It should amplify it.” As AI rapidly collapses product development cycles and accelerates decision-making, the margin for getting things wrong has never been smaller. Product leaders today are navigating faster launches, heightened customer expectations, rising concerns around trust and bias, and an increasing reliance on automated intelligence, while still being ac...

Wayfair was not built in a day. It was built slowly, deliberately, and with a partnership that worked because neither of them ever got the last word. In this episode of Zinnov Podcasts, we bring together the Wayfair founders, Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, in conversation with Nitika Goel, Managing Partner and CMO at Zinnov, to hear the Wayfair story of what it truly takes to build and scale a durab...

“Technology shouldn’t support the business. It should be the business.” As technology becomes inseparable from how companies operate, the role of the CIO is being fundamentally redefined. Today’s leaders are navigating growing complexity, diverse business models, rapid AI adoption, rising cyber risk, and globally distributed teams, while still being expected to deliver speed, resilience, and measu...

What does it take for Managed Service Providers to stay relevant as enterprise growth slows and AI complexity accelerates? In this episode of the Zinnov Podcast, Aly Shivji, Group Vice President – Global Partner Sales and Engineering (GSI | Advisory | MSP | Hyperscaler) at Cisco, joins Rajat Kohli, Partner at Zinnov, for a grounded conversation on how the MSP model has evolved over the past 12 to...

Financial services has long been the benchmark for trust, scale, and regulation. But in an age where innovation moves faster than policy, the sector is rewriting its own rulebook. In this episode of Zinnov Podcast, John Kain, Head of Financial Services Market Development at Amazon Web Services, joins Rajat Kohli, Partner at Zinnov, to unpack how cloud, data, and AI are reshaping the foundations of...

"If you don’t cannibalize your own business, your competition will." Most organizations today are grappling with the same reality: the systems and structures that made them successful weren’t built for what’s coming next. Legacy systems, monoliths, distributed teams, and AI moving faster than anyone planned - all while leaders try to move forward without breaking what already works. In this episod...

L’Oréal has spent more than a century defining beauty, and today, it continues that evolution through technology. In this episode, Susannah Greenberg, Chief Information Officer, Americas, L’Oréal, joins Pari Natarajan, CEO of Zinnov, to discuss how AI, data, and digital platforms are deepening L’Oréal’s connection with consumers and reshaping how beauty is experienced. From precise diagnostics and...

Proof of concepts were once the hallmark of innovation. Today, they are the bottleneck. The most successful technology partnerships are moving beyond pilots and into production, building together, scaling together, and differentiating together.  In this episode of the Zinnov podcast, Jason McIntyre, VP, Consulting & SI Program - Scale Ecosystem, Databricks, joins Rajat Kohli, Partner at Zinnov...

In this debut episode of Hot Takes & Hard Truths, a new subseries under the Zinnov Podcast: Business Resilience series, Nikhil Kulkarni, Partner, Zinnov, sits down with Mahesh Raja, Chief Growth Officer at Ness Digital Engineering, to unpack a pressing question: If every company is investing in upskilling, why does it feel like no one’s actually learning?   As enterprises pour resources into G...

How do you measure software productivity in an AI-first world, and are we focusing on the right metrics? In this episode of the Zinnov Podcast – Business Resilience Series, Pari Natarajan, CEO of Zinnov, speaks with Dr. Ranjit Tinaikar, CEO and Board Member of Ness Digital Engineering, to examine why traditional approaches to measuring productivity fall short in today’s AI-led engineering landscap...

What does it take to turn a company into a leadership factory — and a country into a product powerhouse? In this premiere episode of Legends & Legacies, Zinnov’s President Sidhant Rastogi sits down with Ajai Chowdhry, Padma Bhushan awardee and HCL co-founder, to decode the DNA of enduring value creation in people, technology, and nations. From pioneering India’s electronics revolution to drivi...

What does it really take to own the room, especially when it wasn’t designed for you? We’re back with Season 2 of Woman in the Mirror, a Zinnov podcast series hosted by Nitika Goel, CMO at Zinnov. And we’re opening with a powerhouse: Rama Bijapurkar. Rama is one of India’s most respected thinkers on business strategy, market behavior, and leadership. Author. Board member. Educator. Trailblazer. Fo...

What happens when sustainability stops being a cost center and starts becoming a competitive edge? In this episode of the Zinnov Podcast – Business Resilience Series, host Pari Natarajan, CEO, Zinnov, sits down with Catherine Kniker, Chief Marketing and Sustainability Officer, PTC, and Dave Duncan, Head of Sustainability, PTC. From their personal journeys into the world of sustainability to the su...

What happens when AI, data, and experience design collide? In this episode of the Zinnov Podcast – Business Resilience Series, Pari Natarajan sits down with Rajaram Radhakrishnan, CEO & Board member of Ciklum, to explore how Experience Engineering is reshaping enterprise growth in the age of Generative AI. With over three decades in tech leadership, Raj shares deeply personal stories of transf...