Mr. Altaf Ahmed, an Alumnus of IIT Kharagpur donates three laptops to the students in need
Kind words are short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless. It is rare to meet people who are contemplatives in the heart of the world and contribute to the act of benevolent philanthropy. Not aspiring to any recognition, they merely engage and exhibit what we say is still good in the society that we live in. Mr. Altaf Ahmed, one of alumnus of IIT Kharagpur from Kashmir, now settled in UAE has been the epitome of empathy by his act of kindness on three students who were unable to arrange for private loans to buy laptops with the prospect to repay after availing education loan from banks. Mr. Ahmed, Master of Business Management from Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM), IIT Kharagpur in 1996 and currently the Director of Retail IoT, Digital Channels & Payments Solutions at e&enterprise (Etisalat) responded immediately and donated three new laptops for the students. KGP Chronicle entails into a hearty chat with Mr. Ahmed for his noble deed of generosity towards people he has never met or interacted with.
As an Alumnus of this institute, tell us about your academic life at IIT KGP and how did it contribute to your career growth?
I graduated in Master of Business Management from the Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM) in 1996 and was awarded the Gold Medal for the best outgoing student of the batch (1996). The Master’s degree at IIT KGP tutored me well for a successful career in Management. Most importantly, I was exposed to new technological advances including the Internet which was in its nascent stages in 1996, that helped me choose my career path in predominantly Internet and new tech digital domains.
Can you briefly elaborate on the major business areas you have worked in?
The main areas of focus in my career have been Digital Services Development and Management, Digital Payments and Prepaid Services, Fintech Solutions, Multi-channel CRM, Mobile and E-Business, Marketing and Product Management, New Media Services & Solutions.
How have you contributed to these areas?
I have led many successful implementations for large customer bases, including multichannel solutions for Digital Payments, Digital Banking, Remittances, Online Sales, e-Services, Digital Marketing Initiatives, CRM Implementations, Customer Engagement, Loyalty and New Media Services using a variety of established and emerging technologies.
I was a part of the core team that conceptualized and launched the Middle East’s first Digital Bank (meBANK) by the erstwhile Emirates Bank in the year 2002. A Founding Board Member of the MENA Fintech Association, a non-profit industry body, I was also recognized by Lattice80 as one of Top 50 Fintech Influencers in the Middle East in 2018 and by The Digital Fifth in their Top 30 Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) Influencer list 2021.
Have you been a part of any entrepreneurial ventures?
In 2015, I co-founded Remitr, a new-age Fintech start-up focused on digital cross-border payments and spearheaded the launch of UAE’s first such Digital Mobile Money transfer app which enables users to make 24×7 international money transfers in a safe, convenient and cost-effective way, while incorporating new technologies like Blockchain and Machine Learning into key processes. Remitr was awarded by Forbes Middle East as one of “Most Promising UAE Start-ups” in 2016 and one of the “Top 100 Start-ups in the Arab World 2017.”
You are currently the Director, Retail IoT – Digital Channels & Payment Solutions at e& enterprise (Etisalat). What are your current projects and what do you intend to work on in the future?
I am leading a number of projects with solutions focused on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. These include Omni-channel Payments Platform, Digital and Biometric KYC Solutions, Management of POS Services for Banks, Processors, and large Retailers, Physical Payment Acceptance Solutions, eCommerce solutions, Interactive and Intelligent Digital Signage and Customer Experience solutions. I have also been working on a number of futuristic technologies like AI-enabled Retail solutions, Computer Vision based unmanned stores and vending machines, etc.
Apart from your work, what do you like to do when you have time to spare?
I am an avid music listener and have a huge compilation of all types of music genre. Most of my free time is spent there. I am also a keen amateur photographer. Some of my works have been displayed in many exhibitions. In 2019, my entry was shortlisted as a finalist for the prestigious Hamdan International Photography Award (HIPA).
You can see some of my work at https://www.facebook.com/fotosbyaltaf
Any fond campus memories being a KGPian?
We had a small batch of 16 students for the Business Management course and due to this we were a very cohesive unit. The VGSoM building construction started during our final year. So our classes were held in the IEM Department. During Spring Fest of 1995, we all decided to invest in a stall and made a whole branding exercise for the stall. We all worked on it in turns and served hot tea and snacks. By the end of it, we made a handsome 100% profit on the venture.
Your message to the young graduates aiming to make it big in the world of business and entrepreneurship.
My message is that your degree from IIT KGP is a great boost to your credentials. You need to take the best advantage of this. But remember that life is about continuous learning. So always invest time in yourself to keep enhancing your skills, especially your “soft” skills. If you have an entrepreneurial idea, go for it. Don’t wait for an appropriate time. Getting out of your comfort zone is not easy, but could be the best thing to happen if you try to willingly venture out. Be passionate yet humble, aggressive yet fair. Help others in need. Make efforts to contribute to a greener planet. Never compromise on your morals and honesty. Never give up.
Content Writers:- Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer) & Arkaprabha Pal, Office of Alumni Affairs & Branding
Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in; pal18arkaprabha@gmail.com; media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007
“Leadership is more about taking tough decisions now while keeping the greater good in mind than appeasing your countrymen with misleading information. Covid-19 has turned every one of us into soldiers fighting for the very survival of our species and the real leader here is invisible. So when we miss the leader micromanaging things, we look inward for leadership,” said Pinak Samui, student at VGSOM.
“This assignment has helped us to keep track of the COVID-19 situation and all related happenings as they are happening around the world. It also helped us to dive deep into the invisible leadership principle and apply the same, in order to add a new perspective to the current situation, just like looking through a different lens,” said a student Pritam Sharma.
Sharing about his learning, another student Aniket Sanyal said, “Leaders, who can take quick actions, who are flexible in adapting their bold decisions to suit the needs of a situation, will have more success in a crisis environment.”
It is that time of the year. The beginning of a string of festival months that keep both online and offline stores busy. It is also that time when customers are most likely to be wooed with online flash sales (OFS) that give them the opportunity to purchase goods at large discounts.
One might recall with ease “The Big Billion Day” sale introduced by Flipkart in October, 2014 that received a massive backlash from customers due to technical glitches that the site encountered as it’s servers crumbled under the pressure of heavy traffic. A generic apology email issued to all customers post the incident was intended to restore the buyer’s self-esteem and trust in the website.
Drawing from previous research by Tan et al., the joint study classifies service failure as functional, information and system failures. The first kind of failure may include website crashing, becoming inaccessible during purchase, or increasing customer efforts for making a purchase. Incorrect or incomplete information regarding product specifications, offers, hidden charges, firm policies, security features etc constitute information failure. System failures include poor overall system quality of an e-commerce website which inhibits effective product/service delivery to end-customers.
The recovery process is crucial in the case of OFS because customer opportunism has such a dominant role to play in this kind of sale. The dynamics of recovery in OFS is very different from that in a regular shopping environment since an opportunistic customer is easier to recover despite her dissatisfaction due to failure. The study says, “…an opportunistic customer, with failure self-attribution and lower expectation of acquisition from an OFS, considers a service recovery as more judicious, compared to a non-opportunistic customer, even though (s)he is equally disenchanted with the failure.”
In the course of just one week, first year MBA students of the 2019-21 batch at IIT Kharagpur’s iconic management school, Vinod Gupta School of Management, not only interacted with industry experts, but also picked up cues from business areas – such as the print industry – and made field visits. For example, a visit to the Kharagpur railway workshop, the largest maintenance workshop of the Indian Railways, to understand the production processes.
