Lattice-Annual Business Conclave: Batch 17

Lattice 2023 – the 15^th edition of the Annual Business Conclave, and the only business symposium of IIM Calcutta was held on August 19, 2023, in association with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). It is a one-day event with industry experts, academia, and students for industry-academia collaborations. The event had its maiden journey in the year 2009 and has come a long way. MBA for Executives Programme is IIM Calcutta's One Year Full Time Residential Programme for Executives Programme for Executives with more than five years of professional experience. The 2023 Lattice theme was contextual to contemporary best industry practice – “Inn ovation Unleashed”.

The event began with a video message from the co-sponsor of 2023 Lattice, HAL Chairman and Managing Director, Shri Ananthakrishnan – he talked about innovation in the aerospace industry and highlighted HAL’s contribution to place India in the global map.

The keynote event began with Mr. Rohan Verma – the CEO & Executive Director of MapmyIndia – an Indian technology company that builds digital map data, telematics services, location-based SaaS, and GIS AI technologies. He shared his entrepreneurship journey discussing used cases of digital maps before Google entered the Indian market. He explained how his customer-funded business model provided services to companies like Coca-Cola, Ola, Flipkart, etc. He shared a used case scenario of an innovation during Covid where maps showed Covid test centers. At the end, he shared the Mappls app which offers detailed maps information like multiple road classification one-ways, turn restrictions, flyovers, etc.

The keynote episode was aptly concluded by Mr. Aman Gupta, the Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of boAt Lifestyle – a brand working in the audio and consumer electronics space. He talked about his entrepreneurship journey and how he built the 2^nd largest wearable company globally. He recalled his journey from his CA stint to starting the company boAt as a co-founder. He shared a glimpse of his company boAt, which is now a prestigious case study at Harvard School of Business. He concluded with some life lessons like ‘customer is god’, ‘being grounded always’, and the ‘importance of SALES’, among several other gems. His boAt t-shirt made Lattice 2023 world famous like him.

The networking lunch was followed by a round-table with Mr. Madhivanan Balakrishnan: Chief Operating Officer, IDFC First Bank (IIM Calcutta Alumni);
Mr. Praveen Kumar : CEO-India, Barclays; Mr. Sanjay Ojha: Co-Founder & CEO Sirius AI; Mr. Naveen Agarwal : Partner, Ernst & Young LLP; and Mr. Pulak Pattanayak: Co-founder Director, VCNow. The panel moderator, Dr. Nandita Roy from the Business Ethics & Communication group of IIMC played the Devil’s advocate to the hilt, challenging the industry stalwarts to re-think, re-imagine, and re-deliver on what innovation means for the world today – the debate between invention vs innovation, data alignment vs data privacy, personal information vs consumer data, and the perennial Right vs Left– regaled the audience over 3 hours.

The evening dinner was followed by the cultural evening, with DJ Dynamike and Prem, keeping the tradition alive – no business conclave is complete with entertainment.