The Epitome of Selflessness

Skills make or break a person. While the world struggles with enhancing their skills for better work opportunities, some people wish to be the medium for skill development. When the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, launched the Skill Development Mission in the year 2014, a phenomenal entrepreneur, Jagadish Shekhar Naik, decided to contribute to this mission extensively. He, along with a team of people, established TalenTree in the year 2016.

As the Co-founder and CEO of TalenTree, Jagadish has set the benchmark with signature skill development and livelihood programs. From its humble beginnings as a skill development Company serving clients in Karnataka, TalenTree has grown manifold today to partner with several engineering, manufacturing, retail, pharma, aviation, and automobile companies across the globe. The Company has maintained consistent growth PAN India and is aggressively going global.

Jagadish graduated with a second rank in Social Work from Karnataka University. After completing his Masters in Social Work at Roshni Nilaya, Mangalore, he worked with TE Connectivity, Tata Motors Group and Scania India. He received executive education from IIM, Ahmedabad, ISB Hyderabad & SPJIMR, Mumbai. Over the years, he has worked with some of the leading minds in electronics, engineering, retail, aviation and automobile industries from twenty-seven nations.

A substantial economic opportunity for India lies in creating competent and trained manpower. When professional social workers like Jagadish and a group of creative engineers realized the dearth of trained quality leaders, inadequate training programs, and a high drop-out rate in schools, they took up the responsibility to contribute to skill development. Today, TalenTree is a significant and welcoming step to bridge the skill gap in India and the world.

A brilliant leadership philosophy facilitates one to gain far-reaching popularity. Jagadish firmly believes in the Servant Leadership style, wherein the leader’s focus is on making their organization thrive. It sounds much different from the traditional leadership philosophy, where the leader prioritizes their reputation. Jagadish, a spellbinding servant leader, doesn’t want people to serve himself but desires to attend to people. A client-centric and an employee-friendly leader like him is hard to find!

Switching from being a senior corporate HR professional to becoming an entrepreneur taught Jagadish about servant leadership. He continues to lead in the same manner, also encourages potential leaders to opt for this to lock everlasting success.

The requirement for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies are now surviving in an uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. Only a strong leader can direct a team under such circumstances. Therefore, Jagadish insists on leadership development for the youth. He suggests the technique of continuous learning and applying theory into practice for the next generation to become future-ready.

Jagadish terms his entrepreneurial journey as a “roller coaster ride.” He exclaims, “My team always believed in ‘WE CAN’ and ‘WE ARE HALFWAY THERE.’” The cumulative will power of Jagadish and his team made every fall seem like a learning opportunity. The world sure needs such pragmatic leaders, primarily those who work for society.

When Jagadish started working, he discovered how a genius leader adds glitter to the corporate sector. It is then that he developed the practice to remain self-aware, a quality he believes that shields a leader. “Self-awareness leads to listening to the voice of the inner and outer world.” Jagadish learned how leadership begins with leading the self, then the organization, and finally, the people.

In 2019, Economic Times and Karnataka Bank awarded Jagadish and his team for their outstanding contribution to the skilling eco-system. An honor like this doesn’t come without persistence and a vision. He places self-anagement and client relationships before making it a race to achieve goals. Jagadish is someone, who reckons a barrier as more psychological and less reality.

The happiest are the ones who enjoy every moment of living. Jagadish renders a fabulous theory to spell out the difference between passion and profession.”Passion is something that you find exciting and love to pay attention to. Profession, on the other hand, is the work you do to earn money.” A blend of passion, doing what you love, and profession, getting paid for it, leads to happiness. According to Jagadish, “Such happy people always have ways to energize their days.”

Under the pivotal leadership of Jagadish, TalenTree works with an organized, “Balanced Scorecard” method to drive strategic intent. They use it to keep track of the execution of activities by the team, based on various factors.

But some people do not get tired of serving people. Jagadish aims to set up a skill university and free school for orphans, economically challenged, and meritorious students to groom them for Indian Administrative Services/IIM’s/Indian Defence’s Officers selection. In the past forty-eight months, he has provided successful employment to over one lakh, twenty-nine-thousand students.

In a bona fide sense, Jagadish Shekhar Naik is the epitome of selflessness!