President – Corporate Strategy, HCL, and Senior Advisor, Shiv Nadar Foundation

Saurav Adhikari is responsible for driving corporate strategy at HCL (www.hcl.com), a $6.6-bn global technology enterprise, as well as at the Shiv Nadar Foundation (www.ShivNadarFoundation.org). The Foundation is one of India’s largest philanthropic institutions focused on empowering individuals to bridge the socio-economic divide, through transformational education, creativity and art.

Saurav brings over 3 decades of global strategic business insight to the role, from his diverse experience with leading global firms like Unilever, Pepsi and Group SEB, in markets across North America, EMEA, APAC and India. His responsibilities include visioning and execution of HCL’s mid to long term business strategy, as well defining its corporate brand positioning and communication. In his 14 year career at HCL, Saurav has been responsible for incubating new businesses, building valuable relationships with consulting majors, private equity funds, investment banks, partners and customers, that have had significant revenue and profit impact for HCL.

More recently, Saurav has been helping conceptualize and build up the Foundation’s landmark institutions including developing partnerships with some of the world’s premier educational institutions/universities to catalyse the Foundation’s leadership development and social transformation initiatives.

Saurav was earlier President – North America for HCL BPO and was based in Stamford CT, USA from 2002-2005, after having joined HCL in January 2000 as the President of an enterprise networking startup company.

Saurav schooled at Mayo College, Ajmer in Rajasthan. He earned his B.A. in Economics from Hindu College, Delhi University, an MBA from JBIMS, Bombay University and an AMP from INSEAD Fontainebleau, France. Saurav has a passion for integrating strategic and creative thinking processes into delivering business impact. He enjoys writing, eclectic reading, traveling, sport, and fitness.

SHIKSHA Initiative uses these three steps to effectively educate students in the classroom in its mission to eradicate illiteracy. The foundation of the SHIKSHA Initiative rests on three distinct pillars:

• Teaching – The entire curriculum of the U.P. board primary syllabus is converted into an interactive animated learning exercise. High-quality streamlined content is delivered to students through a basic and simple technology platform, learning aids and interactive sessions. Teaching sessions are conducted by the local teachers who are trained to use the technology. This is a simple technology and any teacher is capable of using this after basic training.

• Querying – Querying and assessment is the second step of the process wherein the learning imparted to the students in the teaching phase is tested for evaluation. Querying helps understand the effectiveness of the learning process utilized and its effect on student understanding. The Assessment is conducted through in-class and after-class question and answer sessions, conducted face to face and individually for each student by their respective teachers.

• Augmentation – The students who are found to be lagging behind in the assessment sessions are selected for special classes imparting deeper learning. These learning sessions are conducted by the same teachers to keep familiarity and same teaching style. These sessions provide better and detailed explanation of the same subject/content to the students for their learning and retention based on reports generated by the assessment process. We have realized that most of the students who need augmentation are those who were absent during the classes when that topic/chapter was taught.

SHIKSHA Initiative is an accelerated technology-enabled literacy and enhanced learning program. It works through continuous intervention in primary education with a digital high-quality engaging content based on State Board syllabus and a technology-based mode of dissemination, to instill learning retention among children. It attempts to overcome the existing educational challenges by introducing interactive content and periodic assessments, making the process of learning more interesting, fun and effective.