‘Disruption, chaos good for companies who rise to the occasion'

Maintaining value with stakeholders, frequent communication, being agile to benefit from new opportunities, prudent capital allocation were among strategies India's business leaders employed to tide over the stream of crises that appeared over the past two years.

Poring on 'Leadership in Choppy Waters' during the Fortune India 40 Under 40 Awards event, our panellists — Daisy Chittilapilly, president, Cisco India and SAARC; Devarajan Iyer, CEO, Lifestyle Retail; Vikram Pawah, president and CEO, BMW Group India; Shekhar Kirani, partner, Accel; and Shantanu Deshpande, founder and CEO, Bombay Shaving Company — shared and deliberated over measures leaders need to put in place when calamity hits, and manage a comeback afterwards.

Communication, at times in excess, is a key tenet when handling black swan events, like the pandemic and geopolitical tensions we have witnessed in the near past, Chittilapilly averred.

The disruption also creates the space for providing new solutions, where fast-moving start-ups can gain ground compared to the structure-heavy MNCs, opined Kirani.