An exclusive interview with Shuchi Nijhawan, Chief Sustainability Officer & CHRO of Eka Software Solutions

Most of the businesses require a solid management team to keep the workflow intact. There are organizations around the world whose expertise lie in the processing of commodity management and become the one solution that every client would be benefited from. Eka software solutions provides the clients with the perfect management system.

Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Shuchi Nijhawan, Chief Sustainability Officer | Chief HR Officer of Eka Software Solutions.

How do I sum up an 11+ years of my journey here in Eka? Let me try.

In my association with Eka, I have always been growing and learning. I remember that even before Eka, I was keen on working with fast-paced start-ups and getting to the best results faster and without red-tape. After being a part of Eka, I realized that I did get what I wanted.

I joined Eka as Senior Manager of Global Human Resources and since then, I have evolved along with the company. I have met great colleagues, work with a splendid mentor who believes in building entrepreneurs, built lasting friendships, and helped Eka grow into a leader today.

Over the years, I was involved across verticals like agriculture, blockchain and sustainability. This was only possible because, at Eka, we firmly believe in our people, and give credible opportunities, which people think are risky, but we believe will pay off “eventually”

Through such experiments, we have built several successful leaders from within.

Currently, I perform a dual role where I am the Chief HR Officer and the Chief Sustainability Officer, because the beliefs of these roles align. At the core, we believe in giving people the wings, and letting them soar. Eka and I have grown up together- so a lot has changed; personally, professionally, but the core has remained the same, the customer-centric approach and the fast-paced culture of Eka.

At its inception, Eka was founded on the belief that a single foundation (Ekam) can lead to growth and scalability. While the journey started with the commodity management clients at large, it has swiftly changed to that of being the one platform, the one partner for our clients to help them enhance their businesses. Whatever milestones we have achieved as a company today, is because of our steadfast belief in creating better business opportunities for our clients. And we are committed to this mission, every day.

A few years ago, working from home regularly was a novelty and organizations prided themselves in this distinction if they allowed it. Post covid now, work from home is a foregone conclusion.

The employment world has changed forever.This change though, is a double-edged sword. While we are more digitally equipped to be running whole projects sitting at home, there are increasing number of employees facing isolation, demotivation and disconnectedness from their work, co-workers and imbalanced in their professional/ personal lives.
The great resignation exodus that has hit companies globally is also creating huge talent gaps. This will pave way for new recruitment models, where the inputs for fresh trainees across different work roles are being drafted.

Upskilling and re-skilling programs for the current crop of employees to fill in newer roles has also been at an all-time high as two market movements happened:

Covid changed the landscape of all organizations to work

More digitization happened in each area of work, so different skills emerged, which were hitherto not required and needed

At Eka, the culture to provide people opportunities to challenge themselves and excel is deeply entrenched. I too have had several such opportunities at Eka, and my accomplishments are a result of the company’s growth. As Eka evolved and expanded its solution portfolio on its Cloud Platform, so did the opportunities for me to venture beyond my role.

This is where I had the opportunity to lead the delivery of a state-of-the-art agri-tech solution suite built to bring more equity to Indian farmers and launching the world’s first blockchain-based coffee marketplace solution for the Coffee Board of India.It was not only a global first but a landmark solution for the coffee industry in India.

Most recently, as part of the company’s vision to unify critical business processes from procurement to payments, I lead the development of our ESG and sustainability reporting solution. The development also takes its roots in our belief that enterprises can no longer be measured solely by their profit and loss statements but also by their relationships with the environment, community, and economy. We recognize this growing need and the opportunity for Eka to help its customers with a technology solution that will help them meet their ESG reporting responsibilities that are unique to their businesses.

At Eka, we believe in the power of one. That is the guiding principle behind all our technology and innovations. We provide a comprehensive suite of pre-built solutions driven by our leading cloud platform. This digital innovation is seeded with industry-specific workflows which help businesses automate their processes.

Our cloud platform also helps businesses get a comprehensive view of their enterprise by getting a consolidated view of data in one place. It helps businesses enable rapid solution deployment for their problems.

What differentiates Eka is its leading cloud-native platform built on cutting-edge technology to help companies efficiently and profitably meet the challenges of complex and volatile markets.

We provide our customers with solutions to unify critical processes across procurement, trading, risk, supply chain, sustainability, and treasury. These solutions are driven by Eka’s robust and scalable cloud platform, that allow enterprises to benefit from one solution to all their problems as opposed to investing in multiple solutions with different architectures that lead to problems in the future.

One of the key challenges we faced has been scaling talent – right from our inception. Eka started at a time when the focus was more on services. The product thinking barely existed and even if it did it was more centered within the internet giants back in those days. The startup culture had not yet taken off. But we persisted and we adapted. Some learnings happened through continuous training, but most was on the job. Today when I look around, it gives me immense pride to see the world class team we have built, that is building a world class solution for the world from India.

My leadership mantra comes jointly from my father and my experience. My father was an entrepreneur, and he was the first to teach me about leadership. He used to tell me, “Love your people if you want to be successful, lay the groundwork for their success and let them shine.” This message stayed with me always.

Through empathy, team orientation, the big element of fun and my brand of humor, I have built and maintained a team that always looks out for each other – professionally and even personally.
I am constantly looking to hire “innately good people”, who are also great at their work. That is my success mantra, hire a good head and a good heart, but always a good heart first!

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This article was first published on Analytics Insight.