Asia Dialogues Forum says Diversity and Inclusion must be connected to eventual business outcomes

The SpeakIn forum celebrated the full spectrum of human differences to create a culture of belonging and thereby making organisations complete and successful

Experts shared their opinion and views how workplaces and the world in general can be made more inclusive

SpeakIn, Asia’s first and largest network of thought leaders, has launched 'Asia Dialogues’ with a Diversity and Inclusion event.

Asia Dialogues is a forum that intends to build conversations on topics of urgent and immediate focus for the Asian region by bringing people together for progressive discussions on issues important for Asian businesses, governments, media and academia.


Later in the year, ‘Asia Dialogues’ will gather thought leaders and experts from across countries to engage on topics like Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), Sustainable Finance, Digital Transformation and Climate Change, among others.

The Diversity and Inclusion event was organised by SpeakIn in partnership with HDFC ERGO’s Sharing Circles, which is the general insurance company’s sustainable initiative aimed at true inclusivity. It had a keynote address by Sunam Sarkar, Executive Director, President and Chief, Business Officer, Apollo Tyres. The Panel Discussion that followed featured industry thought leaders that included Renee Tan, Business Transformational Leader, MD, HashTaqs; Alexander Krasavin, Chief Commercial Officer, Human Capital Solutions, APAC at Aon; Sudakshina Bhattacharya, Chief Human Resources Officer, HDFC ERGO General Insurance; Arvinder Gujral, Former Managing Director (South-East Asia) of Twitter; Anthea Collier, Managing Director (APAC) Randstad; and Michael Brown, award-winning author and entrepreneur based in UK.

Deepshikha Kumar, Founder and CEO, SpeakIn, moderated the discussion. The themes covered by the speakers included cognitive diversity, cognitive bias, and creating a safe and secure environment for people to thrive at the workplace. The panel underlined how organisations can grow to their full potential when there is equality and zero bias.

The event recognised top 10 diversity and inclusion champions from the Asian region for their outstanding contribution in furthering the D&I cause. They included Sophie Guerin, Alisha Fernando, Preeti D’mello, Duncan Hewett, Lynette Pathy, Nandini Sarkar, Bianca Stringuini, Kaveree Bamzai, Daniel Clarke, Angel Kilian.

Commenting on the first edition of Asia Dialogues, Deepshikha Kumar, Founder and CEO of SpeakIn said, “We have always been at the forefront of dialogues on matters that can not only initiate the change but drive the business, social and policy ecosystem overall. The intent behind Asia Dialogues is to bring forth much-needed discussions on a wide array of topics that can impact the world’s largest continent that Asia is.”

Speaking of the event, she said: “It was a day full of learning, and rich perspectives on D&I. Our expert speakers not only stressed the need for cognitive diversity but shared how it needs to be included from the very beginning of employee experience. We look forward to having more such conversations in the near future and hope Asia Dialogues will be the most meaningful platform for it.”

Delivering the keynote address, Sunam Sarkar, Executive Director, President and Chief, Business Officer, Apollo Tyres, said, “For the full potential of D&I to be unleashed many myths about it need to be busted, among them the notion that it means lowering the bar and that’s a barrier we must get rid of.” Diversity, he said, is like being invited to the party and inclusion is being asked to dance.

Taking part in the panel discussion, Arvinder Gujral, Former Managing Director (South-East Asia) of Twitter said, if organisations cannot connect diversity and inclusion to eventual business outcomes, D&I remains an amorphous concept. “While we try to remove long years of unconscious bias and accept D&I,” Mr. Gujral said, “it is time to to look beyond diversity only in terms of colour and creed, we need to embrace diversity of opinions in the objectives and key results of our organisations. That’s real diversity and inclusion.”

About SpeakIn:

SpeakIn is Asia's largest B2B SaaS edtech platform powered by over 18000 expert speakers and coaches. The learning is delivered through customised one-on-one coaching, e-learning videos, blogs, podcasts and live interactive sessions covering more than 500 topics in multiple languages. SpeakIn serves over 350 clients across businesses, associations and academic institutions in eight countries.

U GRO Capital Appoints Amit Mande as Chief Revenue Officer

Amit Mande

U GRO Capital, a NSE & BSE listed, small business lending fintech platform, today, announced the appointment of Mr. Amit Mande as Chief Revenue Officer. In this role, he will handle the asset side of U GRO Capital and primarily focus on deepening the existing distribution channels, creating newer partnership and continue to scale UGRO’s business to achieve its mission of serving 1 Million MSME customers and take 1% market share of outstanding credit to MSMEs in India by 2025.

Amit brings 20 plus years of cross-functional banking experience with significant expertise in secured as well as unsecured retail assets. Prior to joining U GRO, he was CEO of M Capital, which is the lending arm of Mswipe where he launched the lending business which has been operational since January 2021.

Previously, he has managed a variety of retail asset products throughout his career – ranging from Personal Loans, Business Loans, LAP, Mortgages, Consumer Durables, CV/CE Finance and Two-Wheeler Finance, Auto and MSME.

He has been instrumental in setting up the SME lending business of Rattan India Finance, he was Business Head for Unsecured SME loans for Capital First and has worked with Barclays Bank, ABN AMRO Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. He is management graduate from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies and an engineering graduate from V.J.T.I, Mumbai.

Announcing the appointment, Mr. Shachindra Nath, Executive Chairman and Managing Director of U GRO Capital stated, “We are glad to welcome Amit in our team, as the Chief Revenue Officer. With this addition we have completed the reset of our management team and we now have strong layers of business leaders which would help me to achieve the vision of capturing 1% market share and serving 1 million small business customers in India. India’s SME financing market is at its inflection point wherein the Data Tripod of GST, Banking and Bureau would bring it to the levels of consumer financing in next few years. We have been resetting the management team which is nimble and agile, understands conventional underwriting but simultaneously has the ability to adopt to these changes which are happening in lending industry – we would be one of the largest FinTech driven by its own balance sheet and collaboration with large banks and financial institution.”

On the appointment, Mr. Amit Mande said, “I am delighted to join U GRO Capital which is closely working on a mission of solving the unsolved credit needs of small businesses through its unique initiatives. The building blocks of digitisation, strong analytics, robust risk platform and a large, diversified distribution which have been put in place in short span of two years is a matter of inspiration for every other FinTech and I am privileged to be given the opportunity to scale this to next level. My continuous engagement with Mr. Nath and the Board of U GRO gives me confidence that U GRO is the long term home for achieving my professional goals.”

About U GRO Capital

U GRO Capital limited is a listed (NSE, BSE), MSME lending fintech platform. U GRO Capital’s mission is ‘Solve the Unsolved’ – Small Business Credit Need with its omnichannel distribution model combining physical and digital journey of the customer. The Company envisions to spearhead India’s transition of MSME lending market to the new age of on-tap financing. It uses the emerging Data Tripod of GST, Banking and Bureau coupled with its sectoral analysis to solve the problem of credit for small businesses.

U GRO aspires to serve one million small businesses with an asset book of 1% of outstanding MSME credit of India as its first milestone.

Technology underpins every aspect of U GRO’s lending process, from API integrations, sectoral and sub-sectoral statistical scorecards, state-of-the-art AI/ML credit underwriting engine combining bank, bureau and GST statement analysers, automated policy approvals, and machine learning OCR technology. Company’s GRO Extreme platform empowers fintech and other institutional platforms to deepen their distribution reach through a plug and play API driven seamless integration with U GRO. The company has developed full tech stack to fully automate the complete life cycle of a loan right from origination to collection during the entire customer journey.

The Company has raised ~₹ 2500 crore of equity & debt capital from marquee Private Equity Investors, Family Offices, Banks and other Financial Institution over last 3 years.