I'm Ananya. Originally from India, in the last 10 years I've lived and worked in 4 different countries. My carrier spans nearly 9 years now, and the most prominent common threads through it have been retail, e-commerce and strategy. I have learnt a lot of skills in my disparate roles and responsibilities, and I've made myself into a very adaptable professional who can form herself to the need at hand and quickly learn whatever she needs to, accomplish a task.
I'm passionate about innovation and advocating for customers needs. I'm passionate about innovation, strategy and disruptive business models, and also in conceptualising and creating great customer experiences that can bring value to users and the business at the same time.
I've had substantial experience working with startups, creating strategic roadmaps from scratch, designing and developing value propositions, and bringing them to fruition as well as evangelising C-suite execs about new opportunities.
I've studied economics, business and strategy, I speak 5 languages and when not at work, I travel, write, ride horses, (tap) dance and keep looking for new things to learn.
A Tale of 4 cities
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it
was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all
going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its
noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of
comparison only.”
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Charles Dickens wrote these famous lines to open ‘A tale of two cities’, and they’re one of the most
famous words ever written, and one of my personal favourites too. They invoke dichotomy, and
diversity of situations which though written in 1859, still bear relevance in this day and age.
I’ll use the ethos behind these words to paint a picture of journey and skillsets
Dickens used London and Paris as the two cities, my canvas is made up of four.
Which four cities you may ask? And why?
The way I am, and I think, and I work is largely shaped by the time I’ve spent in Kolkata, the city I
grew up in, and then Oslo, Lille and London, where I’ve lived, studied, worked and built up a lot of
my adult self over the last decade.
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Hopefully this tells you more about me, and makes you want to strike up a conversation
It was the best of the East; it was the finest of the West.
Being an Indian who has spent the last decade living, studying and working in Norway, France and the UK has helped me identify with both my born heritage, which is deeply Asian, as well as the sensibilities of Europe, my adopted land.
This has not only helped me analyse and build an understanding of customer needs, behaviours and perceptions in Asian and European markets, but the myriad of people and situations that I’ve interacted with, the different cultures and situations that I’ve adapted into have also equipped me with an understanding of how to communicate, interact and engage with different audiences from different cultures and countries. Knowing some of the languages of course helps too.
It was all about befriending numbers; it was also about being creative, It was about everything tangible, but it was also about valuing things that are impalpable
With my master’s degrees in Business and Economics, my education has been very numerate and analytical in nature. At the same time, I’ve had wonderful opportunities over my career to work on very creative endeavours. (not implying numbers cannot be creative, one only needs to look at the Fibonacci sequence)
Working on human centred design and experience design, I comprehended the importance of really understanding customer journeys, figuring out customer mindsets, building empathy with users and incorporating all of that into value propositions. All the while, my analytical side pushed me to simultaneously focus on the viability of products or services we build, ensure growth is sustainable and business needs are met as much as customer needs are. My eBay experience is honing my skills by teaching me to be even more goal oriented, deliver impacts that are seen and felt very quickly, but also be the customer at all times.
It was about delivering, but it was also about iterating and learning.
I’ve not only had the opportunity to work on ops, experience & service design, but also as a product manager. The agile methodologies I learnt and assimilated into my ways of working, have instilled in me the importance of continuous improvement and iterations. My experience and training have taught me the value of delivering services/products on a time bound basis, all the while making sure time criticality and opportunity enablement are taken into consideration. At the same time, working on projects that required me to keep a constant finger on the pulse of the market and upcoming opportunities, much like the work around Retail Standards that I now have in my remit,
taught me the value of always iterating upon things and not forgetting about them once delivered.
It is easy to develop a tunnel vision while focusing on deliverables, but given the fast pace of change around us, fuelled by technology and the constant possibility of being disrupted taught me to always look for ways of keeping up-to date with the outside environment while running towards the goal.
It was about the stability of the large organisation, it was the energy and pace of a start-up
My experiences in large organisations have taught me how to navigate an already established setup.
Working in a ‘classical’ organisation taught me diplomacy, taught me how to tailor the same messages to suit different audiences, as well as taught me the power of networking and building relations with the people who would be able to speed up projects and actually move the needles.
Although I worked in a stable organization at Kingfisher, yet the business needed to have its status quo questioned and have its paradigms shifted.
My work was in the centre of that shift, and that enabled me to work in small, agile, lean teams, effectively acting like intrapreneurial start-ups all the while enjoying the resources (and battling the sluggishness) of a large organisation.
As part of this experience, I’ve also had the opportunity of working closely with actual start-ups and incubators, and learning from their energy, their passion, their pace, and the need to prioritise tasks that are the most relevant for the business and be frugal with the use of resources.
Having experienced both these points of views has taught me the importance of balancing both sides of these spectrums.
It was as much about physical experiences as it was about digital touchpoints
Customers don’t think in online and offline channels. Customers ultimately care about the final experience they will get. This means a high street store, a large chain, a digital native business, and a neighbourhood store all compete equally for share of wallet and share of attention. Just as it is imperative for brick-and-mortar businesses to attend to their customers online, digital natives like eBay cannot completely ignore the physical world, real life communities and their interactions.
I have had experience of working not only on real-life store propositions, using store-employees as a customer touchpoint and a resource to improve customer experiences, but also on digital services and products. I strongly believe the blend of ‘phy-gital’ and the understanding on how customers behave and what they expect when using different resources.