INDIA: Parvez Shaikh is a Senior Manager at Dentsu World Services, a Certified Digital Transformation Officer, and an entrepreneur. Shaikh has worked across the globe in multiple capacities, devising and delivering technology solutions for a range of business verticals. Along with this, he is also a founder of the TheKnowBuddies(TKB) initiative. TKB is a group of seasoned experts who come from a variety of professions. At the core, TKB is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative and a “weekends only” model.
Currently, Shaikh is managing one of Dentsu’s most business-critical enterprise eCommerce implementation account for the US and Canada for an optical, imaging, and industrial products giant headquartered in Japan.
Professional Training: The need of the hour
With the growing respect and acceptance of self-employment and start-ups, the world today is slowly embracing a new culture, where creation, invention, and innovation are being strongly promoted. Shaikh firmly believes that corporate favoritism may soon start to decline as more and more businesses would share space. “Innovation would also be swift and reach sooner to the consumers. and free-market capitalism would flourish.”
Shaikh believes that there is a lack of talented professionals in his country who can produce optimum results in time. Thus, a professional-grade upskilling is required to train the individuals.
“Half-baked knowledge and poorly practiced product/ project management and Agile techniques is the key reason for cluster-failures and loss in revenue margins. There is an acute need for a good individual and/ or enterprise training engagement. A professional-grade upskilling is done regularly. One that tests your abilities by exposing it to real-life problems and engages you to find a solution for those problems in a timeboxed manner,” he said.
He also emphasizes that the training should be conducted by qualified and experienced professionals. “It is also very important that these training are conducted by ‘been there, done that’ grade professionals and are executed in a simple, gamified fashion.” This has led to the inception of his entrepreneurial venture ‘TheKnowBuddies.’
Talking about his entrepreneurial venture TKB, he said, “TKB is a small initiative to improve the quality of human resource our nation holds and increase individual potential no matter what the shortcomings are. It consists of a group of seasoned experts who come from a variety of professions.”
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Future of entrepreneurship
The future belongs to organizations with intelligent operations. The human race is moving swiftly towards unlocking a new era of intelligence systems and robotic workforce. Due to this, person-power is taking a hit, and the rate of machines replacing humans is ever-growing. Shaikh thinks that it is now time for the traditional human-task force to learn newer technologies, tools, and techniques to bridge the human-robot interdependency gap.
“By 2022, human efforts to complete jobs would drop by 13% globally and may result in millions of lay-offs. Disruptive innovations must put more jobs in the market than taking them away. Technology and its adaptation to be simplified for the masses, especially to generation Z. Educational institutions should promote Entrepreneurship and inventions as opposed to serviceman ship.”
When it comes to being successful and achieving what one wants to achieve, one must believe in themselves. Anyone willing to achieve great success needs to believe in themselves and work hard for their dreams.
A message to the aspiring entrepreneurs
Giving an inspiring message to the young people, Shaikh said, “It is important to believe in your idea. One should thrive to bring it to reality. It is ok to not be unique, but, it is important to be innovative. We all have lived through our lives with society telling us how starting your own business or standing up to your beliefs is risky and may put you into a lot of social and financial struggle. I think today, the world has changed and your launchpad is right outside your self-doubt bubble. It is important to be “vocal”, carefully “choose your audience”, “embrace the fear-of-failure” (Remember failure no matter small or big is inevitable) pick up from where you left off, and thrive harder, and most importantly start today!”
