Kartik Nagarajan radiates intrapreneurial brilliance

An accomplished top leader, Kartik Nagarajan, has had multiple stints as Country head and MD for the last 5 years.

Just because you come from a humble background, are not in the ivy league academic background and start your career at the bottom doesn’t mean you’ll end your career in the same position. With a little bit of determination and perseverance, you can realise infinite possibilities in life and that’s what this pioneer exemplifies.

Having started his career from scratch, Kartik Nagarajan’s determination and perseverance eased his way to success. He did not join any highly riveted institutions then. Instead, he ended up pursuing graduation in Electronics and an MBA in India.

Destiny led Kartik to the US to pursue another MBA. While many Indians would contemplate settling in the US but his love for India made him come back to start an all-new journey. His career journey is a tale of the extraordinary, starting with a Sales and Marketing stint and then switching to business development. However, his willingness to experiment and face fresh challenges would mean he could well lay hands-on things that were not opportune for success.

His first introduction to Sales was when he sold newspaper subscriptions door to door in South Delhi. Among his many other unforeseen visions, developing the concept of online booking of movie tickets in India in 2001, when neither the market nor any partners were ready, is one such idea that people understood much later.

The outsourcing boom soon caught his attention and he began weaving the journey by focusing on global client management in the outsourcing firm for the Fortune 500. Kartik Nagarajan learnt the tricks of the trade by setting up large-scale operations across the globe. Nothing deters the vision of a focused individual and Kartik turned this saying into reality.

One of the greatest examples of this was his intrapreneurial stint with one of the Fortune 500, wherein he had to set up everything from scratch – funding the business externally, getting the service offering right, making a world-class team, the good business case for the team and employees to get excited about along with finally taking the idea to a new reality of revenue growth, customer excellence and innovation.

He is the one to shine amid sheer chaos. In various Fortune 500 organisations, Kartik led global operations to the path of innovation. while facing the ever-growing demands of their clients. Most of these accomplishments were the result of the organization-wide transformation, co-creating solutions with the client  & manoeuvring through the crisis by shifting focus from what the company pays an employee to what an employee contributes to the company.

These accomplishments were possible only because of his ability to work through nuances & causing change in the course of business rather than incremental change. Coupled with his ability to always use technology as the major strategic business enabler, he kept climbing up the corporate ladder.

Today, Kartik Nagarajan is an accomplished top leader with multiple stints as Country head and MD for the last 5 years. He has been on multiple boards of MITSOT India, and WPP India among others. He has also shared his thoughts on digital transformation on various forums such as NASSCOM, CII and Deloitte.

A global citizen, in essence, Kartik says, “One of the truest values in a person is vulnerability. The acceptance of high-risk at various stages and a clear focus only on solutions have kept me going.” He genuinely believes that his honesty towards life and his willingness to embrace new choices, helps him derive exceptional performance from simple teams. Clearly, Kartik Nagarajan’s journey has been an eventful one but he feels this is just the beginning.

Show More

Cheshta Bakshi

Cheshta Bakshi gave Digpu the slogan 'Free Voice With A Critical Edge'. With over 6 years of experience in Research and More »

Leave a Reply

Back to top button