The panel resisted a clean answer to the technical vs managerial skills debate — which was itself the insight. Senior practitioners consistently described fluency in both as the operating condition of their roles, not a choice between them.
Mr Jigar Rathod’s perspective from Adidas India illustrated how digital and data literacy — traditionally framed as technical — has become a core managerial competency at consumer brands, not a specialist function to be delegated.
Mr Aditya Sawant’s experience in healthcare operations underscored how AI is entering sectors with high regulatory and human stakes, where managerial judgment about when not to rely on AI outputs is as important as knowing how to use them.
Mr Raj Singh’s consulting lens highlighted that clients increasingly look for practitioners who can translate technical solutions into operational decisions — the translation layer between technology and management is where value is created and where the skills gap is most acute.
The round table format — more conversational and less scripted than a formal lecture — allowed students to observe how practitioners reason through ambiguity in real time, which is itself a form of management education.
Speaker Perspectives
Mr Raj Singh (Nexivaa Fenestrations) — spoke from the vantage point of consulting and operations leadership, emphasising the practitioner’s role as a bridge between technical systems and organisational decision-making.
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Mr Raj Singh
(Nexivaa Fenestrations)
Mr Aditya Sawant (LEIXIR Dental Group) — brought the lens of operational management within a specialised healthcare setting, where process precision and human judgment must coexist with increasing automation.
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Mr Aditya Sawant
(LEIXIR Dental Group)
Mr Jigar Rathod (Adidas India, Lead — Digital Marketing) — offered a perspective on how technical and managerial fluency intersect at one of the world’s most recognisable consumer brands, particularly in the Indian market context.
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Mr Jigar Rathod
(Adidas India, Lead — Digital Marketing)
Student Takeaways
Students encountered the technical vs managerial skills question not as a theoretical framework but as a live professional dilemma — one that each panelist navigates differently depending on their industry context.
The discussion encouraged students to think of AI literacy not as a technical specialism to acquire separately, but as an increasingly inseparable component of managerial competence.
Hearing three practitioners from consulting, healthcare, and consumer goods articulate their skills priorities helped students understand that the answer to career-defining questions is always context-dependent — and that the ability to read that context is itself a managerial skill.
The round table setting modelled a form of professional discourse — reasoned, candid, and comfortable with complexity — that management students benefit from observing directly.
