A Blast From The Past

 

LEARNING BUSINESS COMMUNICATION WITH 

MR.NIKHIL KULKARNI

FOUNDER, TECHDARWIN.COM



  

B. Tech in Electronics & MBA from NITIE, Nikhil is a techie at heart – having pursued the whole gamut of IT Strategy to Project management, architecture and emerging technology consulting in his 11 years in KPMG. Being more of a DIY traveller himself, Nikhil encountered travel planning problems himself and reconnecting with Aditya realised the commonality of thought and ambition.

Nikhil quit KPMG as an Associate Director to co-found Darwin with Aditya and leads the technology end of things and is out there to pursue his ambition to create a global technology-driven business out of India. In his personal life, Nikhil is an avid blogger and crypto-currency, cleantech and Spacetech enthusiast.

A Class with Nikhil Kulkarni

On 18th August 2020, we were graced with the presence of an alumnus, Founder of TechDarwin.com, Mr Nikhil Kulkarni. Having an industry stalwart visit your classrooms (Well virtually in this case) is always exciting and the amount of learning one can have is unparalleled. During the session, we had the opportunity to learn about - 

  1. How business communication works in Consulting
  2. How one should structure his/her content - Pyramid Principle
  3. How one can make an impact in the mind of his/her audience
  4. Why personal branding is the best investment
At the beginning of the session, we were introduced to Business Communication in Consulting. Mr Kulkarni emphasised the importance of having a good hold over Word and Powerpoint and also, knowing which to use to communicate your idea. For instance, for proposals, one can make use of both Word and Powerpoint. However, one should use Powerpoint during an executive briefing.

Next, we discussed about the Pyramid Principle. A tool that is commonly used during consulting. However, if applied correctly, it can help in other domains and the gains can be multifold. The Pyramid Principle talks about keeping in mind a couple of things while drafting your content - 
  1. The objective of the document
  2. Our target audience
  3. Context

Now talking about the context in which the content is consumed, he introduced us to an important tool called Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive (MECE). The MECE principle suggests that to understand and fix any large problem, you need to understand your options by sorting them into categories that are: 
Mutually Exclusive – Items can only fit into one category at a time. 
Collectively Exhaustive – All items can fit into one of the categories.


Mr Kulkarni also talked about Idea-Data-Fact-Logic Methodology and how our arguments should be supported by it, that is, our arguments should reflect the idea of MECE and must be supported by ideas, data, facts and logic.

Lastly, Mr Kulkarni emphasised on the importance of personal branding. Now, personal branding is becoming more and more important day by day. It is how you present yourself to the world and effective personal branding will differentiate you from the competition and allow you to build trust with prospective clients and employers. He also talked about the necessity of having blogs, Facebook page, Instagram page, Twitter and Youtube Channel to build yourself as a brand and how one can make an impact through these platforms.

I would like to thank Professor T Prasad for giving us opportunities to interact and learn from industry stalwarts. The amount of learning that one can get from experience is always unmatchable.



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