Ep2: From GCC to Global Growth Hub: The 7-Eleven Playbook

Life is full of experiences. Some decisions are right, some nations are wrong. But we we got to make decisions as >> welcome Malhar Penelli VP and country leader of channel 11 GSE. One metric you'd put on a billboard inside the GSC. >> How you need to be aware of people dynamics, corporate dynamics and that how do you bring that kind of balance of mindset when it comes to your company's culture >> without understanding what happens daytoday? What are you going to innovate? What are you going to work on

fancy items? Right? Why did 71 and GSC choose India? >> It's access to the breadth and depth of the talent. >> Seldom leaders forget this that innovation is not just about technology. >> It's a product organization what we run everything what we build is centric uh to a product mindset. >> I do not know how lazy are we becoming with commerce. What is the biggest myth that you have come across in terms of startup enterprise collaborations and working together? >> So bringing all of this together is how

we retain the top talent. I heard you like playing golf. Is that true? What what makes it so interesting for you? >> Focus on what matters for that moment. So it is more therapeutic for me. I look forward to my weekend. >> How do you what kind of a decision framework goes on into your head at that point in time to take a call about what needs to be done. >> I think data is never enough. Data is evolving over time. Right. >> Could you talk to us a little bit about what a day in a store looks like where technologies and transformations that

you have been creating are now visible in the life of a store. This podcast is powered by Retro. Retro helps global companies build, scale and run tech centers in India by aligning top talent and technology with enterprise innovation goals. Retro drives faster, smarter growth where tenacity meets tech and ambitions meet opportunity. Lexard partners where startups and global corporations find their trusted legal partner. From seed to scale and from startup to GCC's, Lexar delivers strategic end-to-end legal solutions being their partner in

growth. Discover dollar uses AI to uncover and prevent leakages and overp payments across the source to pay cycle for GCC's and global enterprises recovering cash and protecting margins. Stylum is transforming retail with AI agents trusted by Fortune 500 brands to reinvent product creation, assortments, pricing, and curation powered by real demand. Orx its agentic platform is driving a movement. Globally awarded for proprietary demand science. Store helps enterprises like Alfa BYD to co-create AI agents that can act like your best salespeople. Imagine an AI that

anticipates customers questions and nudges with relevant information to guide them with the purchase. Get a demo today. Nanta unites India's timeless crafts with contemporary life. Sustainably preserving living heritage. Home Organics where every product is a warrior guiding your skin barrier with care and science. >> Hi everyone, my name is Ab Tundan and welcome to yet another amazing episode of the innovators and disruptors podcast. Today's conversation is part of the GCC minieries and I have a fantastic leader with me who's going to talk to us

a lot more in depth about what is GCC leadership all about what is productled innovation and how you're building and creating value from India for the world as well right and for that let me now welcome Malhar Penelli who is the VP and country leader of 7-Eleven GSC global solutions center thank you so much Mala for joining in >> thanks a for having me here glad to be here >> no perfect and uh you know for the audience. Uh let me also tell you a little bit tell them a little bit more about you. You've been a leader for a

while now. But the most interesting part for me you know based on our interaction that I've seen is not only have you been an enterprise leader for a while but you've also been a startup founder which means that you know when you look at how you approach problems I have personally seen that as well in some of our interactions there's there's a lot of agility there's a lot of speed there's a lot of thinking about scale in those large environments and the startup hustle coming together to take meaningful decisions so I'm super happy to have you here and you know have this

chat with you >> and again once again thanks for being here. Yeah, the diverse experience always helps to bring them together for the best cause >> I'm sure and I'm sure 7-Eleven would be very happy about this as well and I'm sure there's a lot of impact created. So, so we'll talk about that as well. And uh for for the audience sake, you know, I would uh request you or urge you to start off by give us a little bit of a perspective about, you know, if people did not know what 7-Eleven global solution center in India is. Can you

talk to us a little bit about that? What is it and uh how did it get set up and so on and so forth. >> Sure. Um first of all, I would like to talk about 7-Eleven itself. Um we are the largest convenience retailer in the world with operations across 20 different countries with 85,000 stores across the globe and 98-year-old operation. So that's 7-Eleven. Um coming to GSC uh GC stands for global solution center uh which is a typical GCC global capability center for every organization but we call it GSSE global solution center.

Um before I get into what we are at GSSE, um I would like to introduce our purpose statement. Our purpose statement is making lives better for our employees, stakeholders and communities. Uh that's our purpose at GSC. Um I'll elaborate a little bit more throughout our conversation on what that means. >> But coming to GSE, uh we are close to about thousand people now. Uh 60% is on the technology side. uh remaining 40% is on the GBS side which is global business services on the technology side we have teams across product managers

engineering um all aspects of data cyber security which is key in today's world and on the GBS side all uh parts of retail operations what you would need finance um merchanizing uh supply chain and store operations so that's how our team is split >> fantastic I think that is that is uh that is a fairly large scale how employees and a GCC is is also talks about the maturity of the GSSE, right? Or a GCC, right? Uh how how different was it when you started it off with the GSSE came into being in the initial 12 months versus now and I I understand

that you know you have been at the helmet for a few uh for some time now >> 11 months now. >> 11 months now. So what is the transition that you have seen and noticed uh you know as as you've gone through the maturity curve? I've been part of at least eight GCC's which I have built from scratch. Um the journey is very identical for every GCC startup at least 12 to 18 months. Of course there are some variances on where you start and where you are going. >> And the first 12 to 18 months is typically how do I set up even a legal

entity? How do I get my first set of people? What compliance is going to look like in the country? What crossber compliance is going to look like? How do I recruit people? Whom? Where do I start? Right? who is going to help. So all those aspects are part of the setup for every GCC and it's a journey right and we started with a partner uh to start with and eventually we took it in-house over time but end of 12 to 18 months we were close to 100 plus people >> we started with the technology we we were here to actually bring the technology to the talent to deliver the

digital transformation for us um and especially get the people in the niche skills. Um so where we started was especially in the cyber security area uh which were are and were nishkills even when we started and as well as a good amount of engineering on the merchandising supply chain that technology side that's how we started and those days the focus was how do I bring the right people into the organization and transition the work from our partners because the entire GSC the initial bet was transition our outsourced

partners work into our organization insource >> but at the same time not miss the beat right it was all about bringing the right talent to the organization transitioning the work making sure we are delivering without u missing the beat and today it's a different world altogether um we have been here for close to 5 years now we are thousand plus people um and we have footprint our footprint across all technology uh when I say all technology all aspects of data Whether it is engineering to analytics to a IML parts of it cyber security

whether it's your sock center or our engineering um attack engineering and defenses of our assets um or you talk about your digital platform we have a business called seven now >> uh which is um a concept similar to commerce but we deliver in 30 minutes not 10 minutes like in India uh we deliver from live stores versus dark stores so all the digital platform to drive that piece with the product manager sitting out of here uh as well as a store technology with the labs set up here and the leaders actually driving co-owning or owning independent

platforms and products. So that's where we are compared to where we were in the first 12 to 18 months and the same story on the GBS side as well. Now we have teams across all finance. Whether you talk about account payables, whether you talk about all accounting process, fuel accounting, we sell fuel, fuel accounting process, completely different from property accounting, different from merchizing accounting, all different aspects of accounting, >> your tax teams, your internal audit teams, um your merchandizing teams, whether it is merchandising operations

who bring a product to life on your systems or even driving analytics out of what we are doing and making sure we have the insights and actionables out of the activities we very much amazing. The store operations teams, asset production teams and many more business functions are set up out of here. Again, large teams owning processes, functions and platforms is the direction we are going compared to the first wall in 18 months which was more like a setup phase and just getting it off the ground. >> Wow. How how how long has the GSC been established in India for?

>> It's five years now. >> That's fantastic to see so many different kind of teams already established in our GCC in the first five years. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that because that that was a very wide range of activities either mirrored or creating transformation for the global enterprise already being in India and that that was a very interesting point that you also mentioned which I kind of resonated with multiple of those including the fact that uh the transition becomes very critical uh uh because more often than

not when you talk about bot uh and such uh partnerships the transition is where more often than not GCS end up going through a major slump. Right. And if you get that right, which ensures that your own associates globally, your consumers are still getting the right experiences without dropping those experiences, dropping those bars on that and still continue to maintain uh pace. I think that's that's kudos to you and your team for for delivering that right. So >> very sure >> uh I also wanted to get into another piece uh which is you know where in this

maturity journey around build uh run and innovate is the GSC lying today specifically when I talk about uh your portfolio composition you give a wide range of portfolios what percentage of a portfolio lies between let's say core ops which is very critical to the functioning of the larger organization and for GC as well to uh digital transformation something that you said that you know there's a lot of owners on two newer bets which comprises of innovation in true blue sense of it or disruptive sense of it. What kind of a portfolio distribution do you see today?

>> That's a tough question to answer. I I don't know if I can put a percentage because I've seen this multiple times, right? When you set up GCC, GCC has its own maturity curve where you start with doing what you've been given to contributing, innovating. And again, each capability what you build within the GCC has its own maturity curve. So that's why it's hard to put a percentage on where we are whether it's build run or innovate versus core ops transformation um u or uh value creation right >> right

>> but if I look at all the teams across I mean we do have teams across because we still building some capabilities new capabilities we will continue to build new capabilities whichever we have not built out or new process because we are evolving as an organization too but if you look at most of the GBS is I would say more of the run part of it, core operations part of it. Right. >> So that's our 40% of the team. >> On the data side, it's it's all transformation. It's all innovation because you're not telling the descriptive story anymore.

>> Exactly. >> It is about creating analytics, insights, actionables, and even predictive models on top of it. The digital you can it's a product. It's a living breathing organism in a way. So are you going to put it in the run part of it? Are you going to put in build part of it? are you going to put it in the innovation part of it? Right. >> True. >> It's a it's a product organization what we run everything what we build is centric uh to a product mindset. So it's it's hard for us to kind of bifurcate.

>> But if you really look at it right all aspects are critical. And when you have a productite mindset and value mindset, you need to continue to build. You need to continue to run. You need to continue to innovate, transform, all aspects come into the picture. So that's what we believe in which is build the right mindset with ownership and deliver value per parent organization in whatever we do. But continue to innovate irrespective of whether it's a run operations, core services or a product which you are building. >> No, that's fantastic point. I think

that's so important for today's young builders to also observe from this or learn from this because uh more often than not people think that you know anything which is disruptive is fancy but sometimes the core operations which are ensuring that the company is running very very well as a smooth sailing engine right uh or smooth sailing ship right more often than not people underindex that in fact I had long back heard about this uh key phrase such as cogs clogs and lightning rods right so cogs are cogs of the wheel or cogs of a watch which is so important and critical

part of the machinery which ensures that things are moving continuously. It is sometimes not exciting but it is the most critical piece of that machinery right and then there are lightning rods which spark innovation and transformation and then there are clogs who manage to do both right and you have to maintain that balance right it's a very interesting point that you just >> story and if I have to pick between those two I would start with being core operations because without understanding what happens daytoday what are you going to innovate what are you going to work

on fancy items right so true you need to understand core of operations first to drive any value creation and innovation >> makes a lot of sense. I mean base is super critical unless you have a strong base. You can't establish a skyscraper on that, right? >> Innovation is not just about technology. It's about delivering value to customers and business and that only comes from running operations delivering value. >> No, seldom leaders forget this very important aspect that you just shared, right? That innovation is not just about technology. technology is just a

tool to to be leveraged to get to a particular point B or point C, right? More often than not, it's about value creation. You know, a lot of times people think that, you know, we're going to be leveraging AI, we're going to be leveraging these technologies or that technologies, right? To to showcase that, you know, we technology first as an organization. But at the end of the day, it's about value creation for all your key stakeholders in that ecosystem. Fantastic. And coming to stakeholders, right, I also noticed one more very interesting point. you spoke about seven

now which was fantastic for me to hear back in the day uh when I was in Target in 2016 or 2017 uh I remember a very interesting nugget of information that came by me we were told to raise our glasses when target was able to distribute uh fresh produce in one day and uh you know my concern with that was that I was already seeing big basket in India with convoluted addresses on the maps where difficult roads as terrains to navigate were able to deliver fresh produce in less than two hours through the faster delivery mechanisms. Right? And I said

that you know why are you so happy? In fact, one of the key points that I learned even back in the day was there's so many stores uh distribution centers, black stores, live stores, cross distribution, cross dog centers and so on and so forth. Why are those real estates not being leveraged to serve the consumers faster? In fact, eventually that's what target did as well by 2017 18. Uh but so happy to understand that 7 hours is shipping products in 30 minutes because that's a very very relevant need. I do not know how lazy are we becoming with quick commerce but but 30

minutes is a good number right it's at least 10 minutes is subjected I mean subjective in terms of a debatable right whether we really require everything in 10 minutes or not but 30 minutes is a good number to go after >> yeah we are a convenience store it's all about convenience right so >> when it is convenience you need that product now you're going to consume the product now so you got to be there for them when they need it and deliver where they need it >> true that's fantastic point in fact coming to stores. Uh C could you talk to

us a little bit about what a D in a store looks like where technologies and transformations that you have been creating are now visible in the life of a store right be it a franchisee be it a store associate or be it a shopper. >> Uh I if I have to think about it I think we touch every aspect of um store >> and every persona in the store and outside store as well. um POS is one of the example and we have teams here sitting and developing our POS systems for both the store associate and as well as the consumerf facing device functionality as well.

That's one of the touch points where we impact on how um they operate both for the customer experience and the store associate point of view and as well as store backend systems where the ordering happens where the accounting happens where they get to see what's happening within the store what inventory is there what the selfsequencing looks like and when to stock what product where to stock all aspects of this back office back of the store systems are also developed here and code developed of course and we have something All retailer initiative and this is the best

practices of how you run convenience and this also comes with nudges to the store associate on what you need to do when >> and even those uh cards or the nudges are developed and uh sent to their back office systems out of here whether it's handheld device or or a desktop. Um and even if you look at convenience business, we have fresh food, uh we have beverages, right? We have frozen drinks. We have multiple aspects of what gets sold in convenience. >> And these are delivered daily some cases and directly to the store. Some come from our CDC, some come through uh the

provider itself like Pepsi, Coke, they are delivered to the store directly and we have wholesalers who delivers to the store and these are not big box retailers where we have tens and hundreds of people working. These are one or two people working in the store, right? How do you ensure while you are serving the customers but you're also taking the goods which are being delivered to you? So a lot of solutions which are created and those are being developed out of our GCC or GSC with co-ownership and again we touch there for both logistic partners our own

employees uh in the store and as well as market leaders or area leaders who get the insights about what store is working what what they are doing how they are doing every aspect of the store uh we touch including for the customers I talked about PY system but also rewards omni channel rewards platform right >> is being created so that they can access their reward points across the fuel across online across the store and promotions stacking the promotions seamless promotions across the channels as well. So we touch every part of experience what happens in the store

outside the store for our stakeholders for our franchises uh for our customers even franchises I think of it uh we do have technical support center whom they call in to get help we have that to based out of GSC so all aspects of running our business uh we touch uh of GCC or GSC >> that that's amazing I think that that's what uh eventually the maturity is all about in fact since uh We speaking about value creation. One of the most basal layers of value creation is the talent uh that you know you you build through which you're able to deploy that kind of

value creation. Right. If you can talk to me about the talent bar at 7-Eleven GSC in India. Uh what are some non-negotiable skills that you think are super critical for 7-Eleven GSC for any talent to enter and be a part of that ecosystem? >> For GCC's talent is the key, right? And that's why all the GCC exists to get access to the talent. Um but when we look at the talent when we are recruiting I guess the baseline is the skills and the capability what you have to match to the job function what you're going to do.

>> Um that's table stakes. Um but we also look at 80% uh match not 100% because there need to be incentive for the people to come and join to learn as well right not necessarily we look at 100% match but beyond that there are certain aspects we do look at which also tack to our core principles too um one is learnability um being able to learn because the process is going to change how we do things is going to change the technology itself is going to change with the rapid innovation in today's world what you're working on is not necessarily what you're going to work on

tomorrow. So having that learnability and flexibility is non-negotiable. >> Makes a lot of sense. >> And the second aspect we critically look at is being a team player. Um there are a lot of individual contributors in in the organization. That's how every organization stack. >> True. >> But individual contributor need to know where they fit in, how they need what they need to produce, what their input, what their output, right? And how do they work in the broader team structure is key.

>> Just being an individual contributor who cannot work with the team is not going to help. I mean you could be a rockstar right and the third one which is also one of our leadership principle is accountability be accountable for what you do and hold others accountable too the mindset I have seen this multiple times grown up with it which is the mindset of hey somebody need to give me something they didn't give me what I needed so it's not my fault if you need something you need to go figure out how you going to get what you need chase the people figure out how to influence

Ask others how you can help them to get what you need from them. Right? So being accountable is another which is not non-negotiable for us. These three are bottom line. But if I have to think about probably for leads, managers and leadership. Um one of the key aspects I can think of is live in ambiguity >> and bring clarity because in today's world not everything is clear but you need to create the path for your team so that they can march right >> so for leads and debo we look at are

they able to figure out clarity and ambiguity because that's how you build the products >> makes a lot of sense >> that's non-negotiable and the icing on the cake could be um I for efficiency and innovation in everything what you do. >> Question how it's being done which is also part of one of our leadership principles which is question uh challenge the status quo >> is a key aspect so that we can drive innovation. So that's an icing on the top. So that's how we look at the talent

landscape. The table stakes are what you're supposed to do but beyond that there's a lot more for us to create longevity for the talent pool. what we are doing here. >> Uh I want to go into a little bit about the culture bit as well. Right. Again, I think this is a very very strong pillar that you've spoken about. I have personally visited the office a few times and I've noticed that too. uh right from amazing amazing office space right I mean I think every time I come there I see uh a new place a new inspiring zone so to say that at least

in my head I get inspired by some of these very unique uh you know infrastructure capabilities that that have been created in terms of the office space be it you know I don't know what what car is that it's a fancy looking car in your office it's a Mustang right so it's a fancy car to uh the the the area where people could actually uh do karaoke and listen to music cafe sorry grew garage >> grew garage right so so so these are very inspiring places and I think I would love to be in an office like that right what was the motivation or thought

process behind getting these uh the infrastructure created this way >> I think multiple aspects played out to create such an office space um the first one I would say is our purpose statement u making lives better for our employees >> and part of that is removing friction and integrating their work and life as much as possible >> right uh so we pick people from their doorsteps not for a from a common point so that's again to remove the friction but coming to office space >> we have a fully equipped gym probably the best gym in town

>> I use that um it removes the friction from me driving 30 minutes to my personal trainer but we have a trainer all the time in our gym we have uh basketball coat we have pickle ball coat we We have uh ping pong, we have other small tables, we have pool table, uh we have a lot of video games, we have brew garage which you talked about, we have a playground, multiple aspects to bring um frictionless experience to our employees including we have doctors visiting, a nutritionist, a psychologist for whatever our our team needs. So we have designed to the edges to bring that

frictionless experience for our employees to integrate their life and work together as much as possible. That's one aspect of it. The other aspect is we are a um a bold brand. >> Um our colors are vibrant and when you walk through our office, you see 7-Eleven, you experience 7-Eleven. That's how we have created our office space which is critical again for the talent here, the GCC employees to connect with the parent organization that has to be part of every step they take, right? So it's it's part of building that culture, building that

connection with the parent organization. Um and the third I could think of is culture of abundance, right? Convenience store when you walk into seven lemon store, it's always full. The aisles are always full. You get everything what you need, right? So bringing that experience to our employees. So is another aspect on how our office is laid out. Whether it's all amenities in abundance or including the food which we put money into their wallet whether it's a full meal to a snack to a sandwich a healthy salad to a juice smoothie or a fruit bowl. Pick your choice of the food or

any drink available on the floor uh for our employees. Again the creating the culture of abundance or coffee machines or fountain drink machines are available for our employees to consume too. So if you put all of that together, the purpose of making lives better, our vibrant brand and as well as culture of abundance, we brought that together to create this experience for our employees which is frictionless u by integrating life and work as much as possible. >> That was fantastic. In fact uh you know I don't know uh how how feasible is it uh but I would love to access a gym too.

I get a lot of I get a lot of requests from people especially >> um when the CEOs are visiting or CTO's are visiting for neighboring offices. Hey my can my boss use it when he's here because he doesn't like that one wherever they stay. No, but I think uh in a in a city like Bangalore, it it does take a lot of effort to you know change over or or at least head to your nearest gym in the traffic and then come back right. So I mean that that is a very conducive environment that you've created and like you mentioned the culture of abundance

is fantastic to hear of. In fact, I I think that would play out very well in your favor when it comes to hybrid work culture as well because people would want to be in office in that case when they are getting all these benefits and uh you know you know the benefits and the amenities available out there. >> Yeah, just not amenities. I mean I talked about amenities. The other thing I like to point out as well if you see our office we have a model store within the office. >> H the exposure as well. >> Yeah. The exposure to the brand and the

store the layout and what how it gets set up. And we also have a lab setup so that our teams can test between the dispenser and the POS machine outside the store inside the store how that all comes together. So all aspects are taken into consideration when we build this facility. >> Fantastic. In fact I think for me it all links up in in my head uh even back to the module about know your business right because this is the kind of exposure that you want to create for them uh both culturally and in terms of functional functional aspects of the

business as well. Thank you so much for sharing that. very very quick couple of questions I wanted to also touch upon one on the culture bit which is you know you yourself like we initiated the conversation about bringing a lot of hustle agile mindset when it comes to the large scale enterprises of course you've led large lot of large scale enterprises but as a founder you bring that how do you bring that kind of a mindset or balance of mindset when it comes to your uh company's culture specifically around GSC >> the founder mindset

>> the founder mindset >> the startup mindset okay >> I think it also goes back to uh one of our leadership principles which is act like an entrepreneur. >> So any init initiative we take any uh work we do it's tied back to some value metrics on what a success looks like and what endgame looks like and what you're going to measure as you progress to that end game. So that's that's in our DNA as as how we run the entire organization right from our leadership team senior leadership team. Um but that doesn't mean that we don't invest in trying out

new things and being ready. A simple example is um part of 7 now which I talked about we also tested already tested a autonomous delivery through a drone. >> Well nice. >> Um doesn't mean that we are going to do that today because commercially not viable. >> Exactly. >> There is not enough scale in the market to do that but we are ready. We want to be ready when it hits the market. Right. So >> fantastic. We we think about future and

we do invest in the future. But what's the right value metrics is what we look at. >> Makes sense. >> We do talk about a lot of um u formats of checkout. We were talking earlier before this conversation about the checkout, right? >> We tried every format of checkout. But are we going to install every format of the checkout in every store? Not necessarily. >> Because these stores are uniquely positioned within a specific neighborhood. It has very specific set

of customers sell specific set of var I mean there's 80% common but also 20% variance in merchandise what we sell to to that location of the store and their purchase patterns are different the demographies are different so different checkout formats work it's just because we have solution of every checkout whether it is selfch checkout assisted selfch checkout a assisted checkout mobile checkout uh pick and grab and go checkout all formats we have but we don't deploy deploy everything we deploy where there is value for that format. So we look at from that perspective of how

do we solve problems right problems for our customers >> which creates value for the business is how we run top down our success is defined right from the get-go of uh bringing up initiative and how it get it it gets funded as well >> love that love that thank you so much for sharing that one last one before I wanted to also tap into your background that's also lot of intrigue to me uh but you know what would what would you want 7-Eleven GSC to be known or 3 years from now that is not known for today. >> I'm going to be short on that answer. Um

there are a lot of GCC's um growing um numbers are growing the market is growing. There are very few gold standard GCC's for technology. There are gold standard for GBS >> but 3s has a long time but what we want to be known as is a gold standard for both technology and GBS together and having global leadership roles running platforms products processes >> delivering value for our business and our customers is what we will be known for in coming years. That's amazing. That's that's amazing. I'm looking forward to that actually. Uh like you

said, right, I've been to a lot of global places. I've seen 7-Eleven around and when I visit the 7-Eleven office in India, it feels good, right? It's actually a very peppy good feeling, high energy feel that you just feel being there. And I would love for I'll I'll root for you from the outside uh for for SE1 to get set those bars right of gold star, right? So but I I I do want to get into a little bit of what your personal life as well. I think uh most organizations of and they become what they become because of not just the talent but the leader who is leading

that talent as well who's creating that vision like you mentioned who's removing that volatile and creating those scale pathways for them. So uh this leader big you uh you know changing the direction challenging the status quo and building it for 7-Eleven GSSE. I want to talk to you about this very particular interesting piece of information that I came to know about uh that that you know your family came from farming. I know a lot of my friends today and a lot of other people in the ecosystem who want to go back into farming right uh what do you feel do you miss those days? Do you

want to go back to it? uh or or are the key learnings from there because I'm sure that you know that that must have played a very strong role as in your early days when you're building out your thought process as well. >> Multiple questions there. I don't know. I'm still debating about whether I want to go back farming or not. Um but I do miss that life. Um I as a kid I grew up in a farming family, a combined family of um seven siblings of my dad. Um and it's a different environment altogether. I was there actually last week spent three days in my hometown,

>> right? >> Um and again got to experience a little bit of that life uh where we were cooking out in the open, right? And your water is getting heated by firewood so that you can have warm water to shower. Um >> and a room full of people uh some are playing, some are sleeping, some are cooking, some are having conversation in the same room, 20 plus people. >> The the the entire environment is different, right? It's it's a great feeling to be connected to the family and live I mean

>> homes in small towns and villages are small not as big as what we get where everybody has a room >> but the ent entire environment is different um and I love that environment u but is farming commercially viable can we stay there as a lifestyle change for us um probably I have to answer those questions in the future when it's right time but if you talk about key learnings as I grew grew up in this environment. I think there are two I can think of which always helped me. The first one is respect for work. >> I grew up in a farming family. My father

was officer in grandpa but I still went to field after work during the summer break worked in the farm. >> I used to take milk and distribute in the town because we had cows and I did that work. No, >> there's there need to be respect for every work. Every work is important and there is no big work or small work is what I learned. Um the first lesson the second lesson I learned is there is no supplement for hard work. >> My grandfather had nothing. he could educate all his children and still left some for them um

in terms of land and some properties and made sure the kids were settled in a good place and he is the most hardworking person I have ever seen and his ethic is hard work itself. >> Wow. >> And that's what I have learned there. There's no free lunch. >> You need something you got to work for it. >> True. True. But it's your choice whether you're going to work hard or not is your choice and it has its own results. Right? But those are the key learnings. Two key learnings I had. There's no less

work, no big work. The respect for work is equal irrespect of what you do and there's no supplement to hard work. Irrespect of what you do. >> That's fantastic and profound at the same time. Thank you so much for sharing such a personal uh learning with all of us. I think uh that just goes on to show who you are as a leader. So I'm uh thank you thank you so much for sharing that. Uh I'm going to go a little uh more into your growing of phase as well. Right. What at what junction in life did you realize that you're not just executing projects but you actually building

systems now >> the after my campus I joined TCS. Um um I got into tools group uh where I was building Excel macros to utilities uh which I was not happy with. >> Um >> uh I always somehow had this I have to take the most difficult job. >> Uh and do it well. So there was this big project which is open source early 2000s and Java J2 just launched right. It was all still CC desktop applications um or cobalt uh dummy terminals um still existed those days

>> right >> and somehow I figured out a way to get into that project by through influences talking to people >> and I had an opportunity to join their architecture team versus a functional team I had both options but I chose the architecture team again I wanted to pick the most challenging work right >> and this imagine this let's say the largest insurance company in the Middle East. >> They were on adabase as a database which is Arabic stored in the image format. >> Okay.

>> And uh yeah it they were working on dummy terminals. >> Okay. >> With mainframe on the other end and we needed to build an open source solution to replace the entire ERP system across all different departments they had. >> Wow. Um that's a great opportunity I had and we called it a project those days but it was delivered over four years incrementally like a product and I had the opportunity to build those days the frameworks didn't exist the spring framework didn't exist it was

>> it was JSPs they were called pages >> and then solet each JSP would have its own serlet there was no single gateway to your entire infrastructure >> protected infrastructure >> um there were EJB's world Um so learned all of that and actually built a framework similar to spring today and those days we didn't call it spring built orchestration engine which we called workflow engine those days >> where we automated or configured 900 different processes across businesses which had child parent task for the system task for human being integrating

all of this poking joining >> 900 different processes configured on the workflow engine to orchestrate the system task or a human task >> that was the foundation of what I have learned as a technologist and when you build those frameworks uh bottom up it gives you a great experience and when you see the technology today you can imagine what is behind it right >> makes sense >> and also had the opportunity to transform that database image format into relational database and most importantly I was reading user manuals

of some spark systems okay >> to actually build the data center, configure the uh firewalls and the servers itself. That's a great experience I had being in that architecture team helped me build the foundation of technology but also how we executed the project is systemdriven not a project driven. And just to add to that, right, we had dummy terminals and some of the branches were having dialup modems. This was early 2000, right? The internet is not gigabytes. um and we were building this huge pages with which need to be delivered to them

and we had to be creative in how we actually created the experience and be fast in that dialog modems as well. So that entire experience including the change management from a dummy terminal to a interactive >> experience for the users how it was delivered I mean I was fortunate to be in that project ours product to be honest to get all this experience >> fantastic I also want to I mean that that's that's fantastic I think a lot of youngsters today will not really understand what you're talking about but uh I of course was able to partially

relate to it because I have a little younger but I at least get what you're saying. Uh I I don't even think that you know the the young builders today would understand what a dial modem looks like right or the sounds that it created back. So that's that's fantastic learning and I think that also gives us a perspective for how system thinking is formed in your head uh and and how people should look at it uh from a product lens right which is very important today uh as we start building any any new uh solutioning it has to be done from a

product lens standpoint from a systems standpoint as against a very project specific buildup right uh I want to go deeper into a little bit of your decision making rubric uh that goes on in your head right sometimes uh like you said right in a volatile situation where there's a lot of ambiguity we have incomplete data sources limited amount of data uh how do you how do you what kind of a decision framework goes on into your head at that point in time to take a call about what needs to be done I think data is never enough we never will have complete I

it's data is evolving over time right but I think it's very simple for me I'm going to be short on this too I only have X and Y axis >> X is let's the the risk and the Y is the value. >> Mhm. >> Uh value in terms of topline, bottom line, customer experience, return and whatever. And that's how I make personal decisions as well in my life and financial decision too. >> So if you put this in the four quadrants, you have low risk, high reward, high value, that's what I would

attack first. >> Yeah. >> And high risk, high reward, I would take that second. Low risk and low reward, I would take third. I would never attend the high risk and low reward. So that's how my decision-m rubrics would look like. makes a lot of sense and that's fantastic. I think I'm just going to draw this up for the audience to visualize it. Uh Elizabeth, this is fantastic. In fact, uh how does this play out? Uh where you may have probably taken a decision which in hindsight may have gone wrong. Uh but has there been a

case like that? How how have you rectified that? >> Life is full of experiences. Some decisions are right, some decisions are wrong. But we we got to make decisions as leaders, right? Um but if I have to talk about a personal learning experience, I was a tech guy and I became an executive I guess at fairly young age. Um >> and I didn't know people dynamics because it has been always tech for me right I transitioned from a tech guy to >> an MD role u or country leader role and for a GCC and I was being hey everything

is open everything is okay right and being highly I mean being um in that environment of mindset of just let's solve problems and over time I realized I mean that did not work in that environment over time I realized you need to understand people dynamics right >> um every corporate has its relationships every corporate has its dynamics it alliances and who are the decision makers you need to understand who are the influences you need to understand and you need to navigate it and one of the uh the

relevant um video I have seen uh is of Indranui >> where she talks she talked about it in multiple podcasts. She talks about how you need to be aware of people dynamics, corporate dynamics and politics but not be involved in those but understand to navigate it to be effective. So that's how I learned >> to to be more effective through those experiences. >> That's fantastic. I think that's something that took me a lot of while to understand and graph for the thank you so much for sharing that. I'm going to

go into a little bit of rapid fire segment. I think no no conversation is complete without rapid fire but I'm going to throw in a bunch of very interesting questions with you and uh expect some amazing rapid fire. Let's try >> lot of pressure there but I'm sure you know you're leading such a complex set of functions and you know creating so much of value that this should be very easy cakewalk for you. So >> that's right. All right. So could you talk to us about or share at

least two or three personal habits that keep you very effective under pressure? >> I would talk about two. One is focus on what is important, what is core, why you are doing it, the purpose part of it. So you be clear about that. >> And the second one I learned as a kid. I read this story of where a teacher gives a bunch of sticks to students to break them. >> And they try to break the entire bunch. They can't. And the teacher asked them to break stick by stick. >> So that's something which I learned. I'm a math student.

>> I love math. So I learned u from that story is you break the problem into multiple pieces. Solve each piece and put them together. So that's another way I look at um on how I solve problems. >> Fantastic. First principles in second order. Uh a recent p uh podcast or book or mentor inside that you've operationalized at work. Um a lot of them helped me for sure but one of the book I read uh very early uh was Shiva's triology um that's a fairly modern adoption of Shiva story there are multiple aspects of what you can take from that book but one of them I took is

what you do today what is right today not necessarily is right for tomorrow right >> right >> irrespective of what even though you build something you got to continuously evolve assess and evolve Mhm. >> What the solutions you have in place, what operations you have in place, what process you are in place because what you have today is not necessarily right for not just I mean what you had yesterday is not necessarily right for today but for sure not going to be right for tomorrow right have that eye for

evolution looking at things critically and assess and evolve. Thank you so much. I'll have to share that with Amishati as well. That's a fantastic point. Thank you so much. One metric you'd put on a billboard inside the GSC. >> I would choose two. >> Not I would choose two of them. Not not one. One is I mean two less. >> Um goes back to the value >> whatever you're doing the value whether it's topline, bottom line, customer satisfaction, whatever that is. That's one aspect of it. The second one is how you get that done. The culture what does

your team feel about it right? Are they enjoying what they do matters >> right uh leadership cliche that you disagree with >> leaders should know everything should be expert at everything I don't think so the leaders are there to bring experts together create that cross functional collaboration to drive outcomes >> that's fantastic a hiring red flag that you'd spot in five minutes >> um commonly experienced two of them um one is people are very peripheral can't go in deep with examples then that's a red back. The second one uh I would stay

away from is uh playing victim of oh that wasn't right there, that wasn't right there. Like take you got to take accountability for everything happens around you. >> Fantastic. I heard you like playing golf. Is that true? What what makes it so interesting for you? >> Yeah, I do play golf. I mean I'm passionate about it. Um now I've been on a break for almost four months because of a small accident. What I love about golf is in my day-to-day I'm dealing with multiple things. I mean in our life all of us are

dealing with multiple things right and then 10 things 100 things thousand things are running parallelly >> but golf is something where you are focused for that moment on that one shot execute it well >> focus on that moment >> right >> and focus on what matters for that moment so it is more therapeutic for me I look forward to my weekend >> uh because that also helps me to kind of how I focus back in my day-to-day as well >> that's amazing uh favorite retail

innovation global be outside of 71 as well. >> Um I'm deliberating around two right now. Uh one is a little bit old but if I have to pick today's world I think quickcommerce >> Mhm. >> is the biggest innovation um where which had changed entire consumption pattern >> uh in India especially that 10-minute delivery from >> dark stores again this goes back to what we do in seven now >> uh which is 30-minut delivery not from dark stores but from our live stores is

what we do. Fantastic. Uh coffee chats with any tech or retail leader, who would it be and why? >> Um probably tech leader. Um Ellen Musk and just to understand how he thinks, how he makes these bold bets, makes sure people invest in them and motivated to do those. It's it's amazing on how he invests in his long shots, moonshots. >> That's amazing to hear. Three words your team would use to describe you. three words probably I'm going to borrow from our leadership principles um entrepreneurial >> um accountable and u probably not in

seven principles but accessible. >> Fantastic. I think that that makes holistically inspiring as well. So thank you so much for sharing that. When you think about innovation what comes to your mind? doing with less resources, better quality and better experience for stakeholders. >> Fantastic. Thank you so much. I think you killed it when it comes to rapid fire. So, thank you so much. >> You do get a you do get a hamper. You will get a hamper. I'm going to save it for the end. We have one more segment

lined up and for which we'll take a small break and come back to you. And in this segment, I'm going to be bringing in a third guest, a second guest rather. I'm I'm not a guest. I'm going to bring in a second guest who's going to share a little bit of perspectives when we talk about enterprise startup collaborations as well. So, we'll just come back from a short break and then uh go right into it. >> Yep. Sounds great. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> In a world where retail convenience

meets community, there's one name that stands above the rest. Welcome to the 71 Global Solution Center. We are all about making lives better for our customers, our community, and our employees. >> And what does it take to make lives better? >> A good cup of coffee or a slurpee. And your whole self, your passionate self willing to go the extra mile here and here. your courageously vocal self. Whether you're sharing a bold new

perspective or just grooming to your tune, your entrepreneurial self, making the most of what you've got and sharing what you've got to enable. Your game changer self who flips a challenge into an opportunity and an opportunity into a win. your determined self who responds to every can meet with a >> we can. >> Whether you're chasing a deadline or a health goal, your righteous self standing by your principles

even when no one is watching. your accountable self taking ownership of your actions and results. Because when all of you come together, that's when the 711 magic happens. >> On cloud 9. >> No. Come >> join us on cloud 11 >> where we are making lives better. All right, we are back friends uh from from a small break and today now we have another very interesting guest joining Malar and I for this conversation. This segment is going to be focused around uh

how enterprises and startups collab. We were speaking about innovation just prior to the the last segment ending. So I wanted to touch upon this aspect because as you tap into the India talent and the India ecosystem larger ecosystem of India, I see a very very strong stakeholder which is startups who are driving that value uh you know working in partnership or in tandem with enterprises and for that we have a dear friend of mine and a founder of of a very interesting company Subramana Rao joining us as well. Thank you so much Subu for taking our time and joining us.

>> Thank you Abai. Thank you for having me today. >> Subu, can you just talk to us a little bit about what Discover Dollar does? I've of course known you for I think 8 10 years now. Uh worked with you in various capacities. Uh but but if you can just share for the viewers a little bit of a perspective about what Discover Dollar does. >> Yeah. So as the name says Discover Dollar, >> we are in the business of discovering value for enterprises. To go more deeper for a very large enterprises there are

like so many teams involved in this entire source to pay journey starting from sourcing team who finds vendors then there is procurement who onboards them then there is a requisition team placing our orders then accounting team looking into the GRM and ensuring the posting happen and the treasury team who makes the payments so this entire journey there's a lot of different teams coming into Okay. Different applications like teams uh zoom in the initial conversation then email back and forth of negotiation contracts where important negotiations are done. Uh then the ERP

systems like the SAPs and Oracles right and the payment systems. So there is both unstructured and structured data. So the historically in the previous world only structured data was processed. So what discover dollar does using AI is enabling enterprises to unlock value which otherwise was not possible by looking into the entire unstructured data like the contracts the uh emails etc and ensure they don't leave any leakages on the table the money on the table maybe in the form of uh pricing which was negotiated better which is siloed in sitting in a

procurement systems but um accounting team has no visibility to it or it may be a discount which was negotiated but they're not capturing that right so we have looked into more than 300 leakage points having analyzed more than trillion dollar spend for hundreds of fortune credit companies and thousand plus use cases where money can be lost >> and yeah we help them find that and bring that u and we work on outcome based model and I say that in the first year typically only when we deliver real hard dollar savings on the in their bank account is when we

charge and they move to a typically a licensing or other models which they prefer. >> Fantastic point and fantastic set of model as well right because I think it has worked out for me uh because we have collaborated in multiple uh you know situations in the past as well. I was working for multiple of those fortune 500 enterprises too. So thanks for sharing that Sabu. uh you know this conversation is going to be focused on how do we uh you know leverage how do enterprise and startups work together in tandem to create uh you know

opportunities in white spaces that sometimes either of the parties has not been able to successfully do that and for various reasons uh I've been an innovation leader in some of the large organizations and I've realized that you know uh their challenges and their opportunity areas and I wanted to tap into both of your intellectual capabilities is your knowledge and your wisdom that you know you've had over the years to get a little bit of a perspective on this. So Mala maybe we can start off with you. We we spoke about innovation as the last uh you know

rapid fire question. Uh Nan your thoughts around this uh do you see large enterprises or do you do you see value in large enterprises partnering with startups? >> Absolutely and u many organizations are doing it and including 7-Eleven on the US side. Um I talked about um use case for um testing the drone delivery that was also a startup whom we tested with. It's natural that every organization when it is about solving a problem and there is solution already exists which is proven the enterprises are looking to partner with u the startups.

I think it comes down to I mean we are also trying to do that in India uh as well um as you know uh but it's it's important how uh we bring that to um uh reality is depends on what use case you are trying to solve and is it important for the organizations or not and as well as what is the engagement model going to look like when we solve that problem together. So somehow these are going to play out in a big broader enterprise context on um how that partnership comes to life. >> Makes a lot of sense. In fact uh so you have also worked with a lot of

enterprises now right over the course of what 8 10 years now. Yep. >> Yeah. Uh have you encountered any challenges per se? I mean I have seen as an innovation leader I've seen challenges uh you know in in creating that perfect marriage of sorts uh between the enterprise and the startup. Uh but I have typically come across challenges. These could be around IP, these could be around uh IP ownership. >> These could be around models that Mala spoke about. It could be a bunch of other challenges as well. Right. even sometimes at the contractual stage

itself uh and of course those are very very critical ones because uh you know there's a very large enterprise at play as well and the IP of a startup at play as well right both are equally critical so how could you could you share any perspective about some of the challenges that you have faced in your journey >> yeah so the IP and u the nuances what you have to go through the enterprise is always a challenge but um the larger picture having worked with a lot of fortune 500 companies And having worked with a lot of founders who work in enterprise space, the biggest of the

challenges if I have to bring out is startups if I have to say are extremely good problem solvers. >> Not necessarily great at navigating through the nuances of an enterprise relationships and figuring out how to sell probably >> but they know what's the problem. If a real problem is given, they can go really solve it in a very efficient and good way. That's what I've generally seen as so the biggest challenge is always on uh the way to get into an enterprise uh where enterprise expects the general how large companies would do

the the onboarding the selling process which enterprises may not be well versed with but if that is being addressed there's a great way to efficiently solve some of the toughest problems by startups. Yeah, >> do you agree? Do you want to add something to that? >> Yeah, probably. I um that's very true. I have been an an entrepreneur as well. Um >> navigating and finding the decision makers and influencing is not easy unless you are big enterprise. But if need to talk about what are the other challenges probably I might add uh

few more um is when you are an enterprise right again if you go back to the rubric cube I talked about the risk uh the the the disk aspect is going to come into play on let's say if this is going to be my critical platform to run for mission critical applications or decision making am I with the right partner who has the longevity in the market and who is not um who is not going to go out of business in the first place right that's a big risk for the enterprises that's one thing enterprises do look at um in terms of um when they engage with the

startups the scale and the size and the longevity the funding who are behind it some of those things do play out in the decision making >> the the other one I can think of is in today's world especially for large enterprises because some of the small and mid-size enterprises are okay to let go of the data in a different environment with certain contractual regulations and rules and the penalties but not large enterprises because an event is much more damaging than the value itself, right? So enterprises love to keep the data within their

environment. So are you solving the problem for enterprises from the startup perspective? Are you building a SAS solution? Are you building a SAS and a pass solution as well which could sit on my infrastructure too also matters in in the startup world on how you can partner with advisers >> makes a lot of sense. uh impact uh there's there's so many frameworks and models over the years that have come in from incubation to acceleration models to st venture studio models and so on and so forth now right uh that's uh sometimes equally challenging on the

enterprise side to figure out you know what compliances what kind of metrics and frameworks that can work out well to actually uh measure outcomes and value proposition right sometimes people get lost in that maze of doing innovation for the sake of innovation like we mentioned earlier we discussed about technology being looked at as the outcome rather than a value level, right? Uh on that point, you know, we spoke about IP as well. How how important is IP uh for 7-Eleven and from from a India or a global standpoint as well as a large enterprise and a GCC uh

while partnering with startups, you know, and and looking at these collaborations from IP lens? >> Um that's easy answer. IP is critical for 7-Eleven. Uh and if you look at it, convenience business is very competitive, right? >> Um and and if you look at our tech strategy itself is all um inhouse tech >> uh most of it that's how we solve our technology problem. So the reason why we do that is also because of IP. We want to control our IP. It's a very critical um and uh the compliances around that is also very critical for us. So that's why

I was talking about engagement models. what engagement models we are going to work with are going to be critical factor. >> We also talked about legal and some of the compliances takes a long time to get through. >> Um so as the largest convenience retailer out there our IP is very critical for us. >> The engagement model matters >> makes a lot of sense. In fact uh uh in more more often than not I've always encountered these kind of situations that you know uh it's not the question

about the intent it is just the question about the scale at which an enterprise or GCC operates that you know they are worried about not following the compliances to the tea and that leading to mishaps or situations uh pertaining to the stakeholders including the shoppers or consumers at the end of the day right and and that lead public listed companies having a tanking of their you know you know uh tanking of their share rates as well right so so in in these scenarios something that I've noticed has worked

out and of course that's not an easy implementation as well is a sandbox environment >> right uh where it becomes easier uh for for those partnerships to be explored in a safer environment before it's even thought of being explored at a commercial level makes >> sense right Uh I I would want to ask both of you this question as well. Maybe one of you can go first. is is the key advantages of the unique cultures that both organizations both types of entities bring in right from a GCC or large enterprise standpoint to uh a

startup and when they collaborate what are the learnings for for each other what are the benefits of course there's commercial outcomes that that is the biggest benefit but outside of that are there any nuances that you think are key benefits that most people don't even think about or or not often indexed very highly Yeah. So specifically speaking about GCC's and the startups right. So uh few things where I see a lot of value is u especially we starting our journey in GCC space we worked only with GCC's to begin with. Now we work with standards.

>> Um so GCC's primarily have um specific objectives like one of them being cost savings and also capability building. And there are technology teams based here along with business services teams like finance, procurement, HR etc. So we have seen um when a startup is able to deliver a value in these spaces they're able to directly interact with the real stakeholders work very collaboratively and um get things done much faster. uh if I have to bring our experiences from the public domain where people have spoken about right in target uh when we had to build an API uh to connect and

get the data we worked with their technology teams here as well um for carrier again when we did uh procurement teams were based with the GCC we were able to drive that with their innovation and AI team so the partnership became more stronger and um the nuances of businesses could be passed on easily so that the the outcome delivery became much much easier for us. So that's one biggest advantage I saw specifically working with GCC's in uh um uh for a startup right based in that's like an advantage we looked into. Yeah, >> makes a lot of sense.

>> Yeah, >> there are obviously different learnings for different sites of the team but um how they operate is slightly different, right? and uh the metrics what you're tracking is different for startups >> it's the pace matters um how you do it doesn't matter pace matters get the solution out for corporates I think compliance and the risk comes first especially when you are trying out new things because you already have a large business right protecting that business becomes your first priority >> very true

>> um so which might come across as moving slow while startup wants to move at 10,000 miles an hour we got to make sure our environment is safe and secure and we are trying to solve their uh real world problem. The when you bring those together, there is learning from both sides on how you can be more agile. >> True. >> Which all the enterprises are trying to create that mindset right >> right >> uh in a sandbox environment especially how do you segregate this from the rest of the organization create a sandbox

environment to bring the speed. So that's a big learning for sure and for the enterprises but on the other side as subu talked about the first point right startups learning how enterprises work and what their success looks like is different >> compared to just getting the solution out there. So that's where coming together um to the the middle point is going to be the key and the other aspects of learning uh I would say being on a startup side is you end up pivoting learning use cases when you work with the enterprises

>> what you thought about as a product at the beginning >> and you actually deliver it it's going to be completely different because you pivoted so many times >> because you learn by working with enterprises and solving those use cases you pivot quickly And that's experience what the startups can get from the enterprise the real use cases and the real world on how you run things um and solve the problems for real customers. >> True. I mean I think uh when when startups uh start out but I've been a founder for a couple of years now.

>> So I'm also experiencing on both the sides now. uh I I think we start off as as founders we start off with about let's say five or 10 variables that we are think are critical variables and and that's our bias because when we get into the actual deployment of it then there are 10,000 more variables that start coming of course not all of them are critical ones but maybe another 10 critical ones that we had not factored in initially even though we may have done our own due diligence and research around this always comes in and that that it's a big big change in how we

perceive the product and evol evolve the product from there on towards the liter iterations. Fantastic point by both of you. One last question to each of you. So we'll ask you this. What is the biggest myth that you have come across in terms of uh the startup enterprise collaborations and working together that you would want to bust for the audience? >> Um maybe the tough one. Uh so so what one what I've seen uh for sure is uh it's not like a magic wand >> where enterprise and startups can uh make it happen. It's not like a marriage made in heaven. So there is a definitely

a lot of uh background work to happen. So one thing which I can see is when there is a good amount of handholding or a program management happens uh from the enterprise side uh this relationship really blossoms and becomes really good and typically we're seen when either a innovation teams or even uh maybe like um a champion internally carved out specifically to drive special projects when they navigate and drive these complexities for startups that has created a huge value but it's not like suddenly things happen out of the blue >> right in fact I regret uh using the word

marriage now >> I realize that uh startup enterprise collaborations uh more often than not are for limited time period only you know I' not I've rarely seen a startup enterprise collaboration touching 10 15 years yours might be one exception I know one of your clients has been an ongoing fight for the last 10 years. More often than not, those partnerships don't engage for that long, right? And that's why marriage is probably a bad analogy to give a partnership analogy. Uh but thank you so much for sharing that. Malar, this last one is for you.

7-Eleven like you mentioned is interested in solving for a lot of these problems. You're continuously working on transformation and uh newer innovations and so on and so forth. Apart from the core ops, in each of these areas, you probably require some kind of uh potentially uh potential collaborations as well. Any uh areas that you would want startups to reach out to you for? >> Um I think probably I can think of maybe two or three. Um one of the area can be as I think of it um contact center transformation. Um driving efficient uh first time first

call resolution kind of how do you create that environment and transformation the contact center is one thing um we would be interested to probably listen and understand. Um the other one can be in the space because we are 24 bar 7 operation. Uh and we have 14,000 stores in US alone. Um the employee safety or the store associate safety matter. So any solutions around associate safety uh is another um set of use cases would be willing to uh understand and see how those problems are being solved. um and any core retail operations including um discord dollar

are kind of would be good to understand how they operate um at least to see if there is a possibility of collaboration or not. >> Fantastic. So there you guys have it. You know Malahar has just shared three amazing use cases and in case you guys interested please feel free to reach out to Malhar or someone from the team that Mal will probably eventually let you know but yeah I will feel free to reach out to us and uh we'll we'll definitely be happy to evaluate those uh you know applications and if you reach out to me I'll obviously be sharing some of your

interesting ones uh with Malar and team as well. Thank you so much Subu and Mala for joining and sharing so much amazing amazing insights and perspectives. I think the audience is going to go back very enriched. And uh on that note, I just want to make sure you spoke about the hamper. I've got one for you both both of you. So I'm going to do that. Give me one second please. >> Thanks for having me today. Bye-bye. It was a pleasure for me to be here this conversation. >> No, I I'm sure I loved it. I found it interesting and I'm sure the audience

did it as well. So thank you so much. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Mad this is by Narantra which harmonizes India's ancient narratives and crafts with contemporary living creating sustainable treasures that preserve cultural heritage while ensuring artisal traditions high for generations to come. So the Rajatra that you see here is also one of those ancient traditions that they have brought to life today. So that's that and so this is for you. Thank you. Wonderful.