A Day In The Life Of: Chitranjan Kesari, A Spiritualist & A Data-Driven Leader

Key takeaways

Chitranjan Kesari starts his day with yoga and meditation, reflecting his spiritual approach to life.
He values both his professional commitments and social engagements, often prioritising work.
With over 20 years of experience, Kesari attributes his success to expertise in data strategy.
Currently, he focuses on visualising customer service data to enhance service quality.
His role encompasses team management and strategic decision-making within the Kanakia Group.

In our column ‘A Day In The Life Of’, we are trying to step into the shoes of the awesome techies from various organisations who are working in Emerging Tech areas like big data, data analytics, artificial intelligence and the internet of things, among others. This week, we decided to talk to Chitranjan Kesari, the Head of IT at Kanakia Group, about his ambitions for the company, and his symbiotic relationship with the company management. Kesari begins his day at the crack of the dawn at 5:30 am with a healthy dose of yoga and meditation. Revealing his spiritual side, Kesari says that he is a fan of the Art of Living and always begins his day with Sudarshan Kriya. Describing his social life as “active”, Kesari adds that there are days when he gives more importance to his work than his social engagements. With a work experience of over 20 years, Kesari says that a majority of his success and projects is credited to his skill in data and data strategy. Right now he is working on visualised customer services data by using cloud-based software to improve customer services and priorities. Describing his work in detail, Kesari says that his work consists of:

Team management
Strategic decision-making
Technical goal achievement
Digitisation
New project planning

Kesari in May won the prestigious Analytics100 award for Data-Driven CxO at MachineCon 2019. This award is given to executives who have successfully leveraged analytics for their business benefit. He is currently working on a one-of-a-kind project for AI and ML-based interactive game for Kanakia’s sales pavilion. He is also working on building cloud-ready compatibility through hyper-converged infrastructure — a Lenovo-Nutanix solution. His other projects include:

Data analysis on In house CRM solution
SAP S4 Hana Project
Customer service software implementation

When asked about the current challenges he was facing at the workplace, he says succinctly, “The challenges are commercial, as the market is very slow as of now. The strategic decisions that the C-suite takes, requires a lot of time as costs are involved.” When we asked Kesari about the most interesting and the most boring parts of his workday, he said, “meetings” as both. “Meetings are very interesting when brainstorming and idea exchange is involved. If they become too long, everyone gets bored and distracted,” he said. Kesari is one of the happily-placed team players who says firmly that his company makes optimal use of his talents. “The most important thing is that my company believes in my knowledge completely,” he says. Ask him about his 5-year plan, and Kesari says methodically:

Strengthen our data analysis team
Implement SAP S4 Hana
Implement an AI-based CRM solution
Improve information security.
Move in-house DC to the cloud

Kesari has also chalked out some short-term goals for himself. He says, “Build a strong team to service our customers easily, improve our customer-focused approach and be ready to build a world-class AI/ML-based game for our advanced living project. These are my pet goals.”

A Day In The Life Of: Chitranjan Kesari, A Spiritualist & A Data-Driven Leader

Key takeaways

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