IIM Kashipur Hosts 'Disha 2025': The Annual RoundTable conference on Future-Proofing MBA Skills

VMPL
New Delhi [India], July 12: The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kashipur recently hosted the highly anticipated "Disha 2025," an exclusive annual roundtable conference with India's foremost business leaders. Centered around the theme "Future-Proof Skills: What the Modern Workplace Demands from MBAs," the session served as a thought-provoking confluence of leadership perspectives, organizational insights, and foresight into the evolving expectations from future-ready professionals.
Bringing together senior leaders from some of the most respected global firms--Barclays, Deloitte India, Wipro, Schneider Electric Infrastructure, Ernst and Young (EY), and Philips India Subcontinent, --the discussion focused on the core competencies, mindset shifts, and adaptive learning required for navigating today's complex and fast-paced corporate landscape.
The conversation delved into the dynamic expectations from MBA graduates, emphasizing the rising need for strategic agility, digital fluency, and emotional intelligence. Speaking during the session, Dev Tripathy, Head of Finance at Philips Indian Subcontinent, noted, "The strategies devised in boardrooms are outpaced by market improvements; it is essential to have an open and adaptive learning approach. The Indian economy can be efficiently driven by purpose-driven leadership."

Karun Jalali, Director at Deloitte India, highlighted the evolving learning paradigm: "The art of unlearning and relearning needs to be formally taught. Management of diverse stakeholders and multi-variable work processes is essential in today's workplace."
Praveen Kamath, GM HR and Global Head of Strategic Functional Hiring at Wipro, shared reflections on the early career phase of management professionals: "Early boredom is catching up in India even after the current economic environment is encouraging modern-day skillsets. The early years of a career are pivotal--young leaders must pursue new ventures and acquire fresh capabilities with grit and tenacity."
Echoing the importance of technological literacy, Praveen Vukkalam, Managing Director at Barclays, remarked, "The advancement of technology is inevitable; learning to appropriately leverage technologies is a skill that transcends the transience of time."
Suparna Banerjee Bhattacharyya, Chief Financial Officer at Schneider Electric Infrastructure, spoke about the leadership journey with a multidimensional lens: "Evolving to a woman leader involved overcoming several hurdles; the number of women in C-suites is still disproportionate to this day. No skill or domain is standalone--tapping into different business functions is important to develop a holistic view of the organisation."
Ranjan Mathur, partner at Ernst & Young, underlined the intersection of empathy and analytics in decision-making: "Empathy will play a big role in understanding internal and external client requirements. Understanding data and building a narrative around it is essential from an organisational context."
Prof. Shubham Sharma moderated the discussion and highlighted the importance of continuous learning in a modern workplace and Prof. Vivek Roy highlighted the unique aspects of the MBA curriculum at IIM Kashipur. He emphasised the focus of IIM Kashipur on integrating Experiential Learning, Design Thinking and entrepreneurial mindset in the curriculum. Further Prof. Kunal Ganguly, Prof. Utkarsh and Prof. Deepak Verma also shared their views on critical skills.
With candid reflections and strategic foresight, Disha 2025 reaffirmed IIM Kashipur's commitment to preparing its students for an increasingly complex and ever-evolving professional world. The roundtable format fostered meaningful exchange between students and industry leaders, aligning the institute's pedagogy with real-time corporate expectations and positioning IIM Kashipur as a hub for future-ready leadership.
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