TOPIC : "Winning with stories....."

Padmashree Alyque Padamsee is a multi-faceted genius who wears 3 hats. One, as the Brand Father of modern Indian advertising and has built over 100 Brands. Two, he is the guru of English theatre in India with over 76 major productions to his name. Three, he is very committed to Public Service work, and is currently guiding the Bombay Police Force in a campaign against Eve Teasing and sexual molestation on the city streets. The President of India conferred on him the Padmashree Award. The Advertising Club named him Advertising Man of the Century.

He has worked as Communications Advisor to Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, the former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh State, where he creatively supervised the presentation to President Bill Clinton and also Prime Minister Tony Blair. He worked on "Brand Andhra Pradesh". One of the interesting ideas was the creation of the nick name "Cyberabad" for the city of Hyderabad. This attracted President Clinton's attention. He then changed his itinerary to visit Hyderabad instead of Bangalore to study India's IT Culture. His best-seller book on Advertising entitled a Double Life is prescribed in business school.

He has been a Communications Guru for over 5 decades. He is the Chairman of The London Institute of Corporate Training. He is a renowned Speaker at National and International Conferences. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Theatre from the Sangeet Natak Akademi, and over half dozen other Lifetime Achievement Awards. He is on the Advisory of IIT Bombay for which he wrote the Vision Statement.

Internationally Padmashree Alyque Padamsee is famous for his portrayal of Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Sir Richard Attenborough's film GANDHI. He is also the only Indian to be voted into the International Clio Hall of Fame, the Oscars of World Advertising. He convinced Madras Rubber Factory to change their name to "MRF". They soon became the most prominent tyre manufacturer in the country.

Padmashree Alyque Padamsee was appointed Creative Director of the Atomic Energy Pavilion by Dr Vikram Sarabhai at the Atomic Energy Exhibition in Geneva in 1971.
He was requested by the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to mastermind the Opening Ceremony of the Track and Field Games of Asia hosted by India.
He ran Workshops on Communications for Lee Kwan Yu's Singapore ; and also for Malaysian Govt.
He worked on the Governor of Maharashtra's Peace Committee in 1992-93 during the Bombay Riots. He helped to create Mohalla Ekta Committees bringing the Hindus and the Muslims and the Police together for reconciliation. He was then asked to attend a meeting in London to advise the British Govt on Reconciliation measures for Ireland.

Fernando Palacios was the first to adventure into the fields of Storytelling in Latin America. Back in 2006, there were only a dozen publications about the theme around the World. Palacios did his research. After getting in contact with all the available data on Storytelling, he came up with a local approach to brands telling stories in order to inspire employees and consumers.

Nowadays Fernando Palacios is the founding partner of Storytellers Strategic Entertainment, with a complete portfolio of business solutions. Being also a keynote speaker, Fernando has taught over one hundred lectures and courses in ten different countries.

In order to contribute to people's development in Brazil, Fernando works as a volunteer coach.  The job constitutes in helping start-up-companies to pitch their dreams and ideas to international investors.

Being himself an investor, Fernando Palacios is aware of which stories could be most appealing for a tough and demanding audience of investors. He also knows "what" means nothing without "how", which leads to his approach on how to present a story in a compelling structure.  

Over the last decade, Storytellers Strategic Entertainment has shaped the Brazilian market by developing cases that are studied in universities around the globe. Those cases include online and mobile games, theater plays, literary novels, comics, short movies, ARGs, transmedia projects and even the creation of entertainment franchises.

Fernando Palacios is also the co-author in 'The Complete Guide to Storytelling'. The book is considered to have a reliable and versatile overview on the theme. Being the most complete source about Storytelling ever written in Brazilian Portuguese turned the book into an instant hit. The copies were sold out only few weeks after the release.

Palacio's Storytelling skills are not exclusive to the corporative areas of business and brands. He is also an independent author. Fernando spends, every year, a whole trimester traveling around the world, collecting stories for his book:  "The New wonder" - an ongoing work, which has already granted Fernando The Widbook 'Top Author' award.

The moral of the story is that Fernando Palacios is someone who is constantly in love with stories. He loves listening to them, watching them, deconstructing them, understanding them, composing them, articulating them and teaching them. His main belief: Just because something is important, it doesn't mean it needs to be boring.  Stories have the power to 'unbore' and when they do so, inspiration in born.

CEO, Razorfish India – She drives Business Transformation for organisations and supporting its implementation with a team of 500 Technologists, Creaive and media specialists based in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Razorfish is the largest Business and Digital Transformation organisation in India and one of the largest in the world. It is part of the Publcis Group.

Discovery, Innovation and Transformation must be a Way of Life – A transformational journey of 27 years from Calcutta to Bombay via Middle East and London with stop-overs in US, Europe, Singapore, Australia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. She has global experience in Business Transformation across the best Marcom groups – Publicis Groupe, WPP and IPG with agencies such as JWT, Lintas, Bates, Grey Worldwide and set up, the first Integrated Marketing Agency in Middle East and India and, Product of the Year, the largest ever survey of over 30,000 Indian consumers, for recognising innovations in consumer products.

She has international experience across over 20 countries a) Strategic Business and Brand Transformation b) Mergers & Acquisitions c) Managing Global Networks d) Integrated Marketing e) Brand and Communication Strategy development and strategic planning f) Partnerships and Alliances, g) Innovation h) Customer-centric Innovation strategies i) Experiential platforms j) B2B Strategies.

Brand Guru, Jagdeep Kapoor is the Chairman and Managing Director of Samsika Marketing Consultants, Mumbai, a leading brand strategic marketing consultancy with an impressive list of clients drawn from both multinational and Indian firms.

Samsika has successfully completed its 21st Anniversary year and entered its 22nd Anniversary Year.

He is a visiting faculty member at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, of which he is an alumnus. He is the visiting faculty member of British Council's Strathclyde MBA Course. He was the Chairman of the Advertising Works Committee, Advertising Club of Bombay, and was Joint Secretary of the same. He is often quoted in the world's marketing publications including John Nasbitt's "Mega Trends" and is interviewed regularly as a brand-marketing expert on top television channels like BBC, Star News, CNBC and NDTV. Jagdeep Kapoor has also hosted the popular Dream Merchants show on Zee TV that dealt with the advertising and marketing world.

Mr. Jagdeep Kapoor has been a Rotarian and a Paul Harris Fellow. He has been the Chairman of the Consumer Affairs Committee, Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry and student selection panel member of Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Bombay, as well as Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Jagdeep Kapoor has conducted over 801 training programs and has trained over 16200 MBA students and has trained over 23312 Indian Managers.

Mr. Jagdeep Kapoor has been awarded the 'Visionary of India' award 2014-15 by nexbrands in the category of Brand Guru.

Mr. Jagdeep Kapoor has been awarded the lifetime achievement award for outstanding contribution to corporate education on the occasion of Teacher's Day 2016 by Higher Education Forum (HEF).

Mr. Jagdeep Kapoor was recently awarded with the Life Time Achievement Dewang Mehta National Education Award, November 2016.

Samsika was awarded the prestigious Jamnalal Bajaj Fair Business Practices National Award from the Council for Fair Business Practices for the year 2002.

Samsika has regularly encouraged young MBA students by presenting the Annual Samsika Award for Academic Excellence in Marketing™, for 10 Years to MMS and BMS students.

Also, every year, on Saraswati Puja, Mr. Kapoor gives free consultancy to students, institutions, start-ups and corporates.

TOPIC : "Winning with stories....."

Koh Kai Xin helps transform ideas and complex information into memorable visual stories. She co-founded HighSpark (previously known as SlideComet), a strategic presentation consultancy. Till date, Kai Xin has worked closely with best-in-class companies on their high-stakes presentations. To name a few: Panasonic, DBS, Tetra Pak and Renesas. She has also conducted visual storytelling workshops for notable companies such as: Intel Malaysia, MasterCard, Monetary Authority Singapore (MAS), Singapore Management University (SMU), and more. With her passion for innovation and goal to empower changemakers with powerful stories, Kai Xin also took on a mentorship role at accelerator programmes such as JFDI, StartupBootcamp and TAG:PASS. To inject pragmatic and approachable design influences into the local professional community, she also co-founded The Orange Hive Community - where design-thinking is advocated through hands-on workshops. www.theorangehive.com On top of the daily hustle, Kai Xin makes time for meditation to gain clarity in life and volunteers actively as a means to give back to the society. She is currently working on a side project on eldercare.

Minhaz, Chief Storyteller of BetterStories Asia, is an active innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem builder in Asia. Besides leading on the State of Social Enterprise in Bangladesh Study for British Council and Inclusive Business Mapping Survey for Asian Development Bank Minhaz has delivered several platforms, challenges and competitions like the Seedstars Dhaka, MakeAThon Bangladesh and Bangladesh StartUp Cup. Minhaz is currently Head of GP Accelerator in Dhaka, Bangladesh Country Representative for Spring Accelerator, an Adviser to the World StartUp Cup (headquartered in USA), Global Ambassador with the International Business Innovation Association (InBIA) USA, a Director with the Founder Institute in Dhaka and Founding Advisor to Future Strategy Group. Before founding BetterStories Limited, a premium future building agency with three verticals: Better Strategies, Better Entrepreneurs and Better Schools, Minhaz had about a decade of experience in Advertising and Development. He had worked for the Governments of Bangladesh, Australia and UK, UNICEF, BRAC and Leo Burnett prior to setting up his own research and consulting agency: BetterStories in 2008/9. He is the recipient of the Junior Chamber International Ten Outstanding Young Persons (JCI TOYP) Award in 2015 for his outstanding contribution on entrepreneurship.

MUKTA MAHAJANI is a lawyer with degrees from India, UK and USA and training in negotiation from Harvard Law School. She is trained in mediation from Bombay High Court and is on the Mumbai University Mediation Expert Committee. She teaches negotiation and mediation in Mumbai University's one year Post Graduate Diploma in Alternate Dispute Resolution and at the University National Law School, Mumbai. Mukta teaches negotiation and mediation at the post graduate level in ICADR (International Centre for Alternate Dispute Resolution) that comes under the central Ministry of Law and Justice. Her research has been published by the World Bank Group where she has been a consultant and guest speaker. At the World Bank Mukta's research focussed on Non State Justice Systems in Bangladesh specifically and Rule of Law in Africa. She also guest lectures at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Mukta currently serves on three expert committees (Legal, Arbitration and Mediation) with the Indian Merchants' Chamber where she plans and executes programs that facilitate dialogue between various stakeholders. Mukta holds training programs in contract law and general and specific negotiation strategy for corporates. She is a member of Lincoln's Inn, London and the Bar Association of Maharashtra and Goa. Her first book "Let's Talk, Negotiation and Communication at the Workplace", that deals with working with difficult colleagues released on December 14, 2012 and her second book "Power Play, Getting Results Your Way" released on December 5, 2015. This book deals with working with difficult superiors at the workplace.