He is currently managing a team of 350+ professionals in India centre. For about 2 hours he spoke elaborately about the topic, illustrating it with quite a lot of examples from his own experience as a consultant and as a leader of a top notch company with consulting as the mainstream business.
He defined consulting as “sale of advice” – unbiased recommendation and solution to problems faced by various client firms with an “outsider looking in” approach. He said that, the three fundamental steps in a consulting project are: to diagnose the problem, device solution and implement it. He stressed upon the importance of knowledge management in a consulting business ie… knowledge acquisition, consolidation and exploitation. It is important to learn by experience dealing with customers and apply this knowledge appropriately for a new problem and a new customer. He observed that it is difficult to always find all the right people a customer wants in terms of specialization and credentials, in which case it is necessary to collaborate with competitors and exploit the synergy of resources. He also touched upon the fundamental differences in the way core consulting firms like Bearing Point and other multi-business companies with consulting as one of their verticals operate in Indian scenario.
Talking about the growth opportunities in India, he noted that global clients increasingly want to exploit the off-shore advantage which India provides. The overall domestic demand is also on the rise due to booming sectors like financial services, knowledge management, entertainment & media, aviation, hospitality and retail sector. He was optimistic about the upswing in global demand for both analytical consulting based on data crunching and management consulting by working closely with clients.
Towards the end of the lecture, he spoke about the values, ethics and passion that one needs to inculcate and the need to align what one does, sees & says, for succeeding in a business. He cautioned that while starting a business, one has to be conscious of the following: wrong reasons for choosing a business, importance of being passionate, choosing the right team, right business plan and how one is different from others while doing that business.
The session was an eye opener for the large group of students at Great Lakes who have ambitions in consulting career. The lecture gave a holistic view of the challenges and opportunities in consulting business and the thumb rules to follow when one gets into it. The audience enjoyed the experience and it showed in the enthusiasm with which they interacted with the guest of the day. Mr Gupta on his part expressed happiness on the high level of participation and enthusiasm displayed by Great Lakers and pledged his continued association with the institute.