GUEST LECTURE WITH MR.NIKHIL KULKARNI - BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

Guest lecture WITH MR.NIKHIL KULKARNI - business communication

                                        Personal Brand and Consulting

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 insightful.

Mr. Nikhil Kulkarni

About Mr. Nikhil Kulkarni: He is the co-founder of Darwin Tech (www.techdarwin.com); a travel technology B2B startup. He has done B. Tech in Electronics & MBA from NITIE, 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. 

Nikhil quit KPMG as an Associate Director to co-found Darwin with Aditya Darooka 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.

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

We also learned about different kinds of documents are to be prepared in the corporates like Proposals, Reports, Executive Briefing, Detailed Project Report and Work Papers and to do justice to these one needs to be proficient in tools like Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

While writing any document, proper structure is very important to make contents align. Important points to keep in mind while framing the structure are :

1. Introduction
2. What is the objective of my document?
3. Who is the audience?
4. What is the context in which this content will be consumed?
5. All aspects of the problem?
6. Conclusion

The key values he shared were:

• Empathy towards your targeted audience your customers helps grow a healthy business
• Create a Network then advertise yourself it would make you visible 
•  Proposals, reports, executive briefing, detailed project report and work papers they are prepared using Word, Excel and Powerpoint be as natural with these tools as you can you're not selling you're product you're selling an Idea
• He mentioned the Pyramid Principle saying be clear about your content be concise about your words and be effective in the way you communicate 
• Use short videos photos info-graphics as a way to communicate sell your idea and sell yourself with the idea 
• Organise you ideas your thought from broadening as you go down the chain with the most important aspect being told in the beginning followed by why, how, what ?
• The Minto pyramid was explained he explained ways to present and sell yo your audience he asked us to follow a customer-centric approach.

Lastly, Mr.Kulkarni emphasized 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.

Creating a Personal Brand is important 

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 unparalled.