Kishor Jagirdar: Connecting Innovators With Capital Empowering Startup Success
Kishor Jagirdar
Chairman & MD
Kishor has over 28 years of rich management experience. During which, he has been assisting and working on various aspects of enterprise development strategies for the industry and initiated various programs on transformational change. He has successfully promoted numerous startups & social micro-enterprises besides MSME clusters and has mentored over 100 startups and incubated over 230 innovations across Karnataka. As a Chief Business Mentor at Ipreneur Accelerator Programme, he continues to pivot businesses and assist in the acceleration of growth using disruptive approaches and wide industry connections.
Kishor is a strategic change management specialist, serial entrepreneur, and innovator demonstrating exceptional vision and leadership to shape the future of Indian businesses & economy and create a sustainable world. Let’s hear it from him.
What has been the idea behind establishing Infopace Manage-ment? How does it position itself?
Infopace began its establishment in 1999 with the idea to be the facilitator for small innovations to be bridged with large value-creation organizations. It acts as a solution provider to companies in various verticals like education, healthcare, energy, retailing, automobiles, IT, and ITES offering an assorted basket of management services through its behavioral interventions,
assessment tools, and growth road map solutions. Over the years, we received tremendous breakthroughs where we were invited to be part of the India-Japan Global Partnership, getting an opportunity to work with CII Southeast Asia, World Economic forum Ceo Claude Smadja, and Stalwarts like Sam Pitroda, Mukesh Ambani and Vibhav kant Upadhyay who mentored it. We were able to amplify all our work in one decade to the entire ecosystem across 27 countries. We successfully triggered a big change that was part of the India- Japan partnership with regard to venture capital funding and MSME support.
Today we position ourselves as a growth accelerator for large champion companies which India needs as an economy that wants to jump into trillion figures. We are focused on building and positioning ourselves in building such champion companies that are unable to bite into the emerging trends and market because of their large CapEx or OpEx issues.
What are your flagship offerings?
We are a strategic change management company that works deeply in the space of growth acceleration and innovation. In the last 24 years, we have been able to create a Think Tank and an aggregator of social impact which is holding one very large market connectivity to the state of Karnataka where we are working closely as an advisor to the Government of India being a technical agency for both Ministry of MSME and the state government for implementation of various projects. These projects are large livelihood clusters focused on natural resources and skill sets abundantly available locally. We are leading the largest mass entrepreneurship initiative in India.
Tell us about your leadership approach.
As a leader, what I propound in the organization is to have a flat team where people can approach anyone with a high trust culture so that the feedback system can be robust and we can map people’s aspirations and weave that into an organization’s growth strategy. We are working in a purpose-driven environment and we need to have a shared vision and shared leadership to survive and acquire value-creating results.
We are leading the largest multi-layer open innovation and growth acceleration ecosystem in India
Today we position ourselves as a growth accelerator for large champion companies which India needs as an economy that wants to jump into trillion figures. We are focused on building and positioning ourselves in building such champion companies that are unable to bite into the emerging trends and market because of their large CapEx or OpEx issues.
What are your flagship offerings?
We are a strategic change management company that works deeply in the space of growth acceleration and innovation. In the last 24 years, we have been able to create a Think Tank and an aggregator of social impact which is holding one very large market connectivity to the state of Karnataka where we are working closely as an advisor to the Government of India being a technical agency for both Ministry of MSME and the state government for implementation of various projects. These projects are large livelihood clusters focused on natural resources and skill sets abundantly available locally. We are leading the largest mass entrepreneurship initiative in India.
Tell us about your leadership approach.
As a leader, what I propound in the organization is to have a flat team where people can approach anyone with a high trust culture so that the feedback system can be robust and we can map people’s aspirations and weave that into an organization’s growth strategy. We are working in a purpose-driven environment and we need to have a shared vision and shared leadership to survive and acquire value-creating results.
Where do you see yourself headed in the upcoming years?
Infopace Management was created to address a bigger vision of building India as the world's largest marketplace with strong global leadership focused on sustain ability and environmental consciousness. We want to see India as a growth partner to the whole world as a world economic growth engine and which is why our focus is largely on innovation. From a foreign-investment-driven economy, India is now moving to a more self-sustaining innovation driven economy for which we need to unleash the culture of innovation at the grassroots level and institution-alized innovational approaches and then convert that into a livelihood and economy which is built by bringing small incremental changes at the local level by promoting local community based entrepreneurship.
What is your anticipation about the market and what would be your advice to budding industry leaders while accessing new opportunities?
With the European and the US economy reeling under recessions, it creates tremendous opportunities for India to emerge as a leader in the consumer market. For this, India needs to look at the resources and opportunities within the market and be less focused on the overseas market which was built as an opportunity for the last 30 years. India, right now, is becoming the world’s largest consumer market. Therefore, current businesses should focus on building solutions that our own internal market can consume parallelly creating a global value chain.
Moreover, as India is a people-centric country, here technology like AI can never fully replace people. Hence, emerging leaders must look at opportunities where technology and local skills, a combination of two realities, come together in coexistence and see how they can be more relevant in building businesses that can lead India toward exponential growth.
Kishor Jagirdar, Chairman & MD, Infopace Management
Having an MA in Economics, MBA in Marketing, and a PGDHRM, Kishor is leading change management on innovative business models. Through Infopace Management, he is assisting in growth acceleration and business transformation since 1999.
•Awards & Recognition: Business Leadership Award 2015, MSME Business Tycoon Award 2017, RYLA Leadership award 2020
Infopace Management was created to address a bigger vision of building India as the world's largest marketplace with strong global leadership focused on sustain ability and environmental consciousness. We want to see India as a growth partner to the whole world as a world economic growth engine and which is why our focus is largely on innovation. From a foreign-investment-driven economy, India is now moving to a more self-sustaining innovation driven economy for which we need to unleash the culture of innovation at the grassroots level and institution-alized innovational approaches and then convert that into a livelihood and economy which is built by bringing small incremental changes at the local level by promoting local community based entrepreneurship.
What is your anticipation about the market and what would be your advice to budding industry leaders while accessing new opportunities?
With the European and the US economy reeling under recessions, it creates tremendous opportunities for India to emerge as a leader in the consumer market. For this, India needs to look at the resources and opportunities within the market and be less focused on the overseas market which was built as an opportunity for the last 30 years. India, right now, is becoming the world’s largest consumer market. Therefore, current businesses should focus on building solutions that our own internal market can consume parallelly creating a global value chain.
Moreover, as India is a people-centric country, here technology like AI can never fully replace people. Hence, emerging leaders must look at opportunities where technology and local skills, a combination of two realities, come together in coexistence and see how they can be more relevant in building businesses that can lead India toward exponential growth.
Kishor Jagirdar, Chairman & MD, Infopace Management
Having an MA in Economics, MBA in Marketing, and a PGDHRM, Kishor is leading change management on innovative business models. Through Infopace Management, he is assisting in growth acceleration and business transformation since 1999.
•Awards & Recognition: Business Leadership Award 2015, MSME Business Tycoon Award 2017, RYLA Leadership award 2020