On 8
th October, 2015, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur had the pleasure of hosting Mr.Kushal Sanghvi, Business Head, Reliance Entertainment and Digital. A Marketing, Advertising and Brand Building specialist,Mr.Sanghvi is also the Founder and Head of World Wide Open, a Reliance digital brand partner and the Founder and CEO of Span Digital, a Marketing and Advertising organization helping old age brands go digital. In this session lasting approximately two hours, Mr.Sanghvi talked about the future of Marketing and Technology in the Digital context.
Mr.Sanghvi started the lecture by talking about his own humble beginnings, as to how not long ago he was also a management student struggling to find his next calling. The lecture gained momentum when Mr.Sanghvi talked about the advent of smart phones into our life. To stress on the points he was trying to communicate, Mr.Sanghvi resorted to a quick exercisethat made the students realize howdependent we have become on technology. Divulging into an elaborate real life example, he successfully explained how the 'Internet of Things' is no more just a theory and how the future of modern technology, in ways one can only imagine, is not very far away. There was a detailed discussion on disruptive technology and how the youth of today are driving innovation. Mr.Sanghvi and the students also talked about various technological advancements around the world and how they are completely altering the global technological scenario.
Mr.Sanghvi ensured that the lecture was interactive by constantly involving the students through open ended questions. He talked about the multiple channels being used by various organizations to market to their customers and drawing from his own personal experiences, he stressed on the growing custom centric approach. Following a comprehensive discussion on social media, he talked about influencer-marketing and how in today’s connected world even a layman can leverage social media to influence customer decisions. To answer a question raised by a student, Mr.Sanghvi involved the students in an exercise, through which he tried to provide us an insight into the influencer marketing strategies used by some famous Indian brands. He also talked about the growing need for new and creative content for different personal wear and other smart gadgets. Throughout the lecture, citing various examples, Mr.Sanghvi stressed on increasing our social media visibility and made us understand the power that social media gives an individual. As the lecture ran into its final few minutes, he told us about the various opportunities that lay ahead of us, and how we should carefully choose the place we decide to start our management career with.
Mr.Sanghvi, with his sharp business acumen and a light sense of humour, managed to keep the lecture an interesting one and even after the lecture was over the students were buzzing with ideas they had assimilated through the lecture. Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur would like to thank Mr.Kushal Sanghvi for addressing the students and imparting some much needed practical business knowledge to the students.