Dr. Manish Jha
Managing Director
An IIM Calcutta alumnus, Dr. Manish is an Innovative Business Strategist & Growth focused Sales leader who brings around 16 years of professional experience to table, having worked across a cross-culture combination of national, multinational and startup companies- largely into sales and techenabling. In an exclusive interview with CEO Insights, Dr. Manish takes us through his professional journey, the latest endeavors of Briisk India, and much more. Below is the excerpt.
Cast light on your background and experiences. What inspired you to venture into the Fintech domain and what motivates you to press forward every day? Also, is being an IIM alumnus to do some thing with your growth along the journey?
Well, I am B.Tech. in Electronics & Communication by education and have also pursued MBA in Marketing and Ph.D. in Digital Marketing, followed by Executive Business Leadership from IIM, Calcutta. Further, on the professional front, it’s been 16 years of learning altogether, contributing initial eight years into entirely sales-driven organizations leading from the front, be it business development, sales & marketing, sales leadership, strategic alliances, and many others. While in the recent eight years, I was part of tech enabled businesses and that's where my more roles have transformed from a sales leadership professional to basically the innovations, disruptions, startups culture, creating something from the scratch.
Hence, I feel anything that stimulates businesses to possess digital, phygital, or tech-enabled expertise over the industry operations is my forte, including strategic alliances that helps with relationship-based businesses, key account management, B2B, B2G, and more.
Also, yes, I believe IIM, Calcutta let the brand name aside it gives one a platform to inculcate the kind of learning one can never imagine of grasping within a light time of one year. But, it’s the brighter side of the teaching pedagogy and mentors there who make it happen just by talking out loud their own personal experiences, correlating it with the corporate culture. During my course over there, not only I had a riveting experience of meeting with folks coming in from different domain (operations, IT, Finance, BFSI), cross-culture and cross-geography, and having to do the intensive assignments for four long weeks, but it gave me an insight on how to build relationship with peers & mentors, and to seize the technique to learn, unlearn and relearn things to conquer the corporate & business world.
Reflect on some of the biggest challenges that you have faced so far in your journey along the Fintech domain, so far?
There are so many learnings followed by significant challenges, but the three most important I believe are the culture fitment, productivity management and precisely the 80-20 business rule that revolve around every business. It has been the same for me too, wherein I felt challenged, but I overcame those over time devising my solutions around two basic pylons- firstly the right people and second agile leadership. If you have the right people onboarded in the right seat of your right bus, I believe 60 percent of the problem is solved. Further, what backs it is a prolifically strong leadership, as everything else is a by-product.
Define Briisk India as an organization and its position in the industry.
Insurance is an industry thriving since millennials of decades, but what has overhauled it is technology. So, typically Briisk, an Insurtech company is a loud example of such technology disruption in Insurance sector. Today, insurance is not bought, it’s sold, so as a cloud-based digital
Undoubtedly, it’s the true grit of Briisk that it’s promptly becoming a go-to partner for major businesses aspiring to grow through financial inclusion of tech into their business transaction systems
Also, yes, I believe IIM, Calcutta let the brand name aside it gives one a platform to inculcate the kind of learning one can never imagine of grasping within a light time of one year. But, it’s the brighter side of the teaching pedagogy and mentors there who make it happen just by talking out loud their own personal experiences, correlating it with the corporate culture. During my course over there, not only I had a riveting experience of meeting with folks coming in from different domain (operations, IT, Finance, BFSI), cross-culture and cross-geography, and having to do the intensive assignments for four long weeks, but it gave me an insight on how to build relationship with peers & mentors, and to seize the technique to learn, unlearn and relearn things to conquer the corporate & business world.
Reflect on some of the biggest challenges that you have faced so far in your journey along the Fintech domain, so far?
There are so many learnings followed by significant challenges, but the three most important I believe are the culture fitment, productivity management and precisely the 80-20 business rule that revolve around every business. It has been the same for me too, wherein I felt challenged, but I overcame those over time devising my solutions around two basic pylons- firstly the right people and second agile leadership. If you have the right people onboarded in the right seat of your right bus, I believe 60 percent of the problem is solved. Further, what backs it is a prolifically strong leadership, as everything else is a by-product.
Define Briisk India as an organization and its position in the industry.
Insurance is an industry thriving since millennials of decades, but what has overhauled it is technology. So, typically Briisk, an Insurtech company is a loud example of such technology disruption in Insurance sector. Today, insurance is not bought, it’s sold, so as a cloud-based digital
insurance platform, what Briisk does is it disrupts the traditional insurance value chains of businesses (like product pricing, actuity, claim, underwriting, policy servicing & distribution) by reducing the intermediaries through financial inclusion of SaaS, simple and rapid insurance product configuration, and easy integration of API-enabled digital distribution via brandable web and mobile interfaces. Undoubtedly, it’s the true grit of Briisk that it’s promptly becoming a go-to partner for major businesses aspiring to grow through financial inclusion of tech into their business transaction systems.
Also, since we work for the BFSI sector, most of our clients are the insurance companies, banking companies, the brokers, the UMA, including the individual agencies.
How do you maintain the perfect balance between your personal and professional life? What is your success mantra?
To be honest, life is all about trade off. You need to trade off at a cost of something. However, I believe as long as you are happy, you can make your customers, your family, and also other people happy. Most of the problem arises concerning work-life balance when you don’t love the job you’re doing, and you feel the need to destress yourself. But, for me I have been very fortunate all along, I grabbed the opportunity at the right time, while my family has always been around. Of course, I do take out time for me personally, dedicating my week time to the family going for outings & more, followed by engaging myself in keeping fit by going to gym, and keeping abreast of the evolving industry, world and tech trends. Thereby, maintaining honesty & integrity along all my life endeavours has been my success mantra.
Envisioning the road ahead, abreast us with your future plans?
Post COVID, we all have witnessed the world & consumer behaviour changing drastically, and what has proved effective is‘Disruption is the Key’, today. Everyone thriving in a competitive business domain like us needs to bring in disruption in the process through innovation and tech-enablement. Hence, I strongly feel that my goal would be to keep doing disruption, and when I say that it basically implies bottom to top approach rather than top to bottom approach, because scaling with speed is the key for me at this point.
Dr. Manish Jha, Managing Director, Briisk
An IIM, Calcutta alumnus, Dr. Manish is an Innovative Business Strategist & Growth focused Sales Leader having a proven track record of 16 years into the Direct/Digital Sales, Strategy Formulation & Business Development in Insurtech, Banking, Insurance and Skill Development industries.
Also, since we work for the BFSI sector, most of our clients are the insurance companies, banking companies, the brokers, the UMA, including the individual agencies.
How do you maintain the perfect balance between your personal and professional life? What is your success mantra?
To be honest, life is all about trade off. You need to trade off at a cost of something. However, I believe as long as you are happy, you can make your customers, your family, and also other people happy. Most of the problem arises concerning work-life balance when you don’t love the job you’re doing, and you feel the need to destress yourself. But, for me I have been very fortunate all along, I grabbed the opportunity at the right time, while my family has always been around. Of course, I do take out time for me personally, dedicating my week time to the family going for outings & more, followed by engaging myself in keeping fit by going to gym, and keeping abreast of the evolving industry, world and tech trends. Thereby, maintaining honesty & integrity along all my life endeavours has been my success mantra.
Envisioning the road ahead, abreast us with your future plans?
Post COVID, we all have witnessed the world & consumer behaviour changing drastically, and what has proved effective is‘Disruption is the Key’, today. Everyone thriving in a competitive business domain like us needs to bring in disruption in the process through innovation and tech-enablement. Hence, I strongly feel that my goal would be to keep doing disruption, and when I say that it basically implies bottom to top approach rather than top to bottom approach, because scaling with speed is the key for me at this point.
Dr. Manish Jha, Managing Director, Briisk
An IIM, Calcutta alumnus, Dr. Manish is an Innovative Business Strategist & Growth focused Sales Leader having a proven track record of 16 years into the Direct/Digital Sales, Strategy Formulation & Business Development in Insurtech, Banking, Insurance and Skill Development industries.