Brought up in Trichy with three other siblings,
Sankaranarayanan Raghavan
, Chief Technology and Data Officer,
IndiaFirst Life Insurance
recalls enjoying his childhood to the fullest. His father was an Engineer with the Local Services department and his mother, a housewife. Raghavan studied in one of the most sought-after schools, which created the highest number of engineers and doctors, and attended a college where some famous people studied (one among them was our past president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam). Talking about starting his first job, he says, “Any first job is a great experience to be in. My first job was with BPL Ltd., selling Medical electronics to Hospitals, Clinics, etc. It was my first application, first GD, and first interview. They appreciated my approach, skill and offered me the job.”
“The opportunity opened up a lot of new vistas for me. It laid the foundation in planning, execution, networking, negotiation, etc. I was happy with it, as it moulded me into what I’m today,” he added.Raghavan, who goes by the motto ‘Keep it simple’, looks at failures as opportunities to learn better. In one of his previous companies, he implemented a Kiosk for buying life insurance which will be placed at various public places, like malls, etc. This was implemented with the help of a network product company. Raghavan believed this will change the way insurance is being bought in the country and will increase the insured population. The kiosks were deployed in 5 places across the country, where the footfall used to be high, as a proof of concept. “To my utter disappointment, within 2 months of launch, we could sell only very few policies. We have to scrap this at the end of the 3rd month. Yes, the cost implementation was minimal, but learning from this, we need to keep trying, something will be successful, something may not,” he said. Raghavan also shared that he believes his father’s loss to be his biggest personal failure. He overcame it by doing things that were closer to his father.
Talking about lessons learned in management and leadership, Raghavan said that he has been lucky to learn valuable lessons from his teachers, colleagues, and family. “Learnings that helped me in life: It is better to face a challenge, than to fear; Assumptions are killers, don’t assume, please ask; Past laurels are history, present is creating it, do create more; and Don’t forget the stepping stones that have taught you valuable lessons,” he maintained. In 2008, while working for a greenfield insurance company in India, Raghavan identified that IT implementations should be quick to implement, great on performance, and need to be available 24x7. For the applications he had managed, the architecture design was created to suit these principles. “This helped us in implementing not only our first online platform quickly within a month, but also gave new distribution channels, better experience to customers. The design also helped us to integrate with the aggregator as well, in a quick time. Also, since it was the first one to go online we were able to improve ourselves based on the feedback, and got the highest rating in terms of online experience. We were considered as a benchmark for online insurance. This, I consider as my biggest achievement,” Raghavan said. Talking about what he plans to do next in his life, he says he will pursue anything associated with Insurance/Banking technology and also contemplating enjoying the autumn years by going through the nuances of life, travelling within the country, enjoying the culture, food, festivals etc.
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