A country is a global leader when it contributes significantly to the world. Citing examples from India’s past, Brajesh Kaimal made his case for India having been a global leader since the Indus Valley civilization.

He spoke about India’s accomplishments in various sectors including education, architecture, space exploration, and infrastructure building. “The Bhagavad Gita is the best management book and the Arthashastra provides ample guidelines on selecting a minister. The rock-cutting precision in the Ajanta caves, building of the 60-metre-tall Brihadeeswarar Temple in Thanjavur before the invention of the wheel, and Jaipur’s Jal Mahal built in the middle of a lake, that does not leak, are some of our ancient architectural mega projects,” said Mr. Kaimal.

Some of the modern-day symbols of project success are India’s Mars Orbiter Mission that showed India’s prowess in successfully executing projects of high complexity at low costs; infrastructure projects such as the Kochi International Airport that runs on solar energy; and the child-friendly Koyambedu bus terminus in Chennai.

He emphasized on the use of project management techniques he manufacturing industry is ever dynamic, and companies have to constantly innovate to compete in this space. With this as the premise, S. Ganesh Mani sought to throw light on project management techniques to combat challenges that automotive companies in India face.

Some of these threats are changing customer needs, government regulations, technological advancements such as driverless cars, clean mobility, and an ambiguous business environment. “Ambiguity makes it difficult to plan, but project managers can use data to predict trends. They must keep abreast of latest advancements,” said Mr. Mani.

He stressed on the need for responsible leadership, being supportive of team members, evoking passion in the team, and recruiting skilled resources. “The ordinary can be made extraordinary with the right people. Select people with different skills sets and get them to work together. Project managers should not just manage but drive a project,” added Mr. Mani. uniformly to help replicate such pockets of success across all walks of life.

He added that what had made such megaprojects a success was our workforce. Stressing on the need to turn a weakness into a strength, Mr. Kaimal said, “The growing population is seen as our country's biggest weakness, but this is actually our biggest strength.”