Yesterday morning, a pleasant surprise awaited me as I opened ET (Economic Times), I saw Sangita’s name on the headlines- Wipro, in its first major move since T K Kurien took over as CEO, had announced that Sangita Singh, SVP, was to assume responsibility for the healthcare vertical. Sangita moves on from her current role as head of enterprise application services (EAS), a business that she has grown from a little over a 100 M to about six times that size in the last five years.

Prayag’s association with Sangita started, to be precise, on Aug 31 2001. I was just wrapping up at Infosys- it was my last day there- when Sangita who was then the CMO at Wipro called me- she had heard from a mutual contact that I was going to offer ,tech marketing consulting services through Prayag. She wanted to explore engaging Prayag to accelerate marketing initiatives at Wipro. Before I knew it, we met, spoke and started work on Sep 1 2001. Yes, Wipro (thanks to Sangita) was literally a day 1 client for Prayag!

Since then Prayag’s association with Sangita’s team has grown from strength to strength. We have done a variety of work for her, and I have never ceased to be amazed by her drive, commitment and passion. The results she has achieved speak for themselves.

On my own behalf and on behalf of Prayag, we wish Sangita the very best in her new role.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Last week, Prayag extended its social media presence – we now have a face book page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Prayag-Consulting/106956225995536?ref=ts

Check it out and become our fan! And watch out for more forays soon.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I was speaking to Dr. Anand Deshpande, Managing Director, Persistent Systems, as were planning to feature the company in the forthcoming issue of Confluence, Prayag’s newsletter. We picked Persistent for the Best and the Rest feature to illustrate how a different approach to address an adverse situation may actually result in strategic benefits for an organization.

In our feature, we talk in some detail about the process that led to Persistent coming up with the game changing risk reward model of engaging with customers. While the model itself is not new, and Persistent’s association has also garnered media attention, what we attempt to do in our article is to take our readers through the process of arriving at such an approach.

The next edition of Confluence should be available in mid Jan’10.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Whenever we offer advice on strategy to our clients, a question that crops up all the time is, what is the “right” model of growth? Clients need to be convinced a lot on this point of there being not one right model, but there are several paths to growth that could lead to success.

Take for example the area of outsourced marketing services which, one could say, is where we belong. We have chosen to offer the breadth of marketing solutions, from advice to implementation, across branding, content and research, but play in only a few verticals. Our thinking is that business understanding is key to carving out marketing solutions, and hence we have decided to understand a few industries well and make ourselves totally relevant from a marketing perspective.

However, the model you find more often in the market is that of an agency- research or marcomm – research agencies choose to specialize in answering questions about the market, and typically specialize in the consumer or B2B space. Likewise, commmunication agencies, usually called ad agencies, specialize strangely, more on visual communications and also on writing. The reason for this could be that much of outsourced marketing still looks to the FMCG industry as its main clientele. And here, creative mass marketing still has relevance.

Prayag’s model is more prevalent in the US and to an extent in the UK though.

Ultimately, a business can grow successfully if it is able to demonstrate a clear value proposition to its targeted client segments. The model of business is a corollary of this.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Eight years ago, on this day, Sept1, Prayag Consulting was born. The last eight years have flown past. Lots of learning, some moments of satisfaction, and several points of introspection. Personally, have made contact with so many people from different walks of life, and discovered a whole new world beyond Infosys (which seemed like a universe by itself then).

Today, we will celebrate our successes and renew our pledge towards collectively achieving our vision, with the help of Kichu Krishnan, well known trainer, who will address our team.

More later……………….

Popularity: 7% [?]