Thriving in the Age of Disruption

Is Your Business Harnessing the Six Capitals for Sustainable Value Creation? Dr. Nisha Kohli (Singapore/Thailand)

February 01, 2023 Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra & Dr. Nisha Kohli Season 1 Episode 31
Thriving in the Age of Disruption
Is Your Business Harnessing the Six Capitals for Sustainable Value Creation? Dr. Nisha Kohli (Singapore/Thailand)
Show Notes Transcript

NOW is the time to shift gears and engage individuals and organisations in moving towards Sustainability. Dr. Ramesh has just co-founded Impact Velocity to build an ecosystem of resources and network to fulfil the vision of a sustainable, thriving, living system. So she was really excited to meet with Dr. Nisha Kohli, an impact leader in Sustainability and ESG consulting.

Dr. Nisha is at the forefront of shaping practical Sustainability solutions. Her conversation with Dr. Ramesh covers a breath and depth of issues ranging from personal, to thriving by all species beyond humanity and the kind of approach forward-looking businesses can take. Only by harnessing the six reservoirs of capital can organisations continuously strive to create enduring value for their brand, business, stakeholders and Earth's entire living system.

To learn more about the entrepreneurial mindset with Dr. Ramesh, get your copy of The Big Jump into Entrepreneurship 2.0 on Amazon.com or www.Dr-Ramesh.com.

If you're interested in building crisis resilience, Dr. Ramesh will be launching her new book on the crisis ready mindset in the first half of 2023. Make sure you follow Dr. Ramesh on LinkedIn so that you’ll get her new book alert!

Host: Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra, Author, Podcast Host and Founder of Talent Leadership Crucible

Guest Speaker: Dr. Nisha Kohli, CEO and Founder of Corpstage

#EntrepreneurialMindset #Singapore #Thailand #Dr.NishaKohli #CEO #Founder #Corpstage #ImpactVelocity #Dr.RameshRamachandra #TheBigJumpintoEntrepreneurship2.0 #CrisisReadyMindset #TalentLeadershipCrucible #Thriving #AgeofDisruption #Sustainability #ESG 

To learn more about the entrepreneurial mindset with Dr. Ramesh, get your copy of The Big Jump into Entrepreneurship 2.0 on Amazon.com or www.Dr-Ramesh.com.

If you're interested in building crisis resilience, Dr. Ramesh will be launching her new book on the crisis ready mindset in the first half of 2023. Make sure you follow Dr. Ramesh on LinkedIn so that you’ll get her new book alert!

Host: Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra, Author, Podcast Host and Founder of Talent Leadership Crucible

Guest Speaker: Dr. Nisha Kohli, CEO and Founder of Corpstage

#EntrepreneurialMindset #Singapore #Thailand #Dr.NishaKohli #CEO #Founder #Corpstage #ImpactVelocity #Dr.RameshRamachandra #TheBigJumpintoEntrepreneurship2.0 #CrisisReadyMindset #TalentLeadershipCrucible #Thriving #AgeofDisruption #Sustainability #ESG


Ho Lai Yun  00:00

 Hello and Welcome to Thriving in the Age of Disruption. 

The time is now, for the world to shift gears and engage individuals, communities and organisations in moving towards Sustainability. Dr. Ramesh and her changemaker guest speaker share the vision of enabling a sustainable, thriving, living system. We’re glad you’ve joined Dr. Ramesh to meet Dr. Nisha Kohli, an impact leader in Sustainability and ESG consulting.  

Their conversation today covers a breath and depth of issues ranging from the personal, to thriving by all species beyond humanity and the kind of approach forward-looking businesses can take to create enduring value for their brand, business, stakeholders and Earth's entire living system.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  00:48

Welcome to thriving in the age of disruption podcast series, Nisha. I'm excited to have you here and we can start off with you introducing yourself to the listeners.

Dr Nisha Kohli  00:57  

Thank you so much, Dr. Ramesh, for having me here. I'm really delighted to be speaking about my journey as well as Corpstage. When I look back at my life, I'm almost touching the middle age now, I can say that I am quite a determined person and a person who values relationships. Now, when I say relationships, both personal life or business life, it has to be very deeply understood. As a person, I'm very determined, focused.  

I am a Chartered Accountant by profession, but I never did Accountancy, I never practiced, and then I got into teaching. When I pursued teaching, I did my best, and I completed my PhD. And after completing PhD, and got into consulting. Also, I graduated from PhD in the field of Corporate Governance. And then that got extended to CSR. Now, the environment side of it came very late, I would say, after 2015-2016, around that time, when financial institutions overall started looking at ESG parameters or indicators for investing. That was when I started consulting, and looking at ESG in a deeper sense, but before that, I was always looking at SMG more. And I continued with my academic interests, and kept on publishing papers, case studies, and so on. 

So if I now summarise who I am, I would say I'm a consultant, or I'm an entrepreneur with Corpstage, with an academic bend of mind, who also loves to research and build relationships.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  02:30

Wonderful.

Dr Nisha Kohli  02:31

I'm a mother of two boys, and an expat’s wife who's always on the move. So enjoying that journey. Have learned a lot by living in different countries, different parts of the world, understanding different languages or culture, and also always been able to write from scratch, building my story in a new location every time. So it's been a very interesting journey so far.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  02:55

Lovely. It’s interesting always, for me, when people from academia make the switch to entrepreneurship. An entrepreneurial mindset is one whereby you are being resourceful, like, you have a problem and you can deal with that. And I think the training that one gets in academia, especially in pursuing a PhD or doctorate allows us to look at problem statements or hypotheses, and to come up with solutions. But the second part, where sometimes academics don't make the transition into becoming entrepreneurs, is the ability to be able to manage risk and to deal with uncertainty. Because in the real world, being an entrepreneur, you're not in a controlled laboratory, you are actually out there. And every action that you take has a direct consequence to you, and your own bottom line. Of course, the third piece is, for both academics and entrepreneurs, that you're always trying to create value, whether it's for yourself, or whether it's for others or society, with your research, or with the products and services as an entrepreneur that you bring out to the marketplace. So when you look at your own entrepreneurial journey, what do you have to say about that mindset?

Dr Nisha Kohli  04:04

Yeah, it's a great question. And while you were describing it from your three angles, I was trying to relate it to my personal life. So to start with, I belong to a business family. Sometimes we say entrepreneurs are born. So maybe those innate qualities or the essential ingredient was lying inside me and I never realized. The very reason why I chose to become a Chartered Accountant when the teachers asked me, “Hey, why did you chose to be in commerce?” I said, “Because I want to do business” and I don't know where, but that answer came to my mind when I said that. So from that angle, yes, I come from business family with a mindset, I did not realise that I can become a businesswoman in future, I did not know that. Second thing in my life, a personal journey, it’s always facing new risks, new grounds, new locations, I learned to survive in new environments. And also I see that new challenges come all the time, and I know how to overcome and succeed in those. I'm happy and proud to say that everywhere I went and lived, I did something, it was not that I just remained a housewife or an expat wife, just enjoying life. But of course, yes, I did enjoy it, but I also kept on with my work as well and continued my career journey. Yes, I am able to take challenges. I did not know all these things when I was building up my overall personalities of the last many years. And then finally entrepreneurs are the ones who can create value, who can unlock potential. We hear this phrase as leaders, “Leaders unlock potential for others”, right? So I feel that after becoming an entrepreneur, I unlocked my own potential, I found that I had become far more independent, more free in terms of thinking in terms of applying my skills, knowledge and everything. While being as a teacher, an academic for so many years, in the past, I had so many thoughts, but I was never able to apply. But when I became an entrepreneur, I was like a free bird. I could test it on my own and apply and see the results. So that is what an entrepreneurial mindset, in addition to what you said, is that “unlocking potential”, of business, of people, of your own self.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  06:17

Well, thank you for creating for us how it would look like when as an entrepreneur, you're unlocking your potential, because it's so personal to every single person. But ultimately, I think most entrepreneurs will express it in terms of the freedom that they get to be able to determine their own future. And also, number two, is to be able to bring into reality what they have conceived as an idea. And that is, I think, the most thrilling part of being an entrepreneur. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  06:52

The next topic is about crisis. I define crisis as a setback. And so what I'm looking for is some sharing about how you dealt with a personal crisis and what you've developed over the years as a way to deal with crisis effectively.

Dr Nisha Kohli  

Yeah, the way to deal with crisis is to be determined. Everybody's life has challenges of their own, but in my case, my career was filled with a lot of challenges. When I was doing my Chartered Accountancy, I got married in between, and I had my son also in the first year of marriage, so the way I overcame that challenge is to systematically organise and get the resources in place and start studying and finished my CA. The moment I completed my CA, my husband got transferred, and I had to move along with him. And the location where we went, I could not pick up a corporate job because there were hardly any good corporates to work for. So I decided to teach in a central location, I did not want to go to, you know, outskirt of the cities. I mean, I migrated from an accounting career or banking career, even before starting, before I started, to academics. That was a switch. Facing the crisis situation, I dealt with it and I tried to flourish. I mean, I tried to make my career in that and I did PhD along the way. Even in the entrepreneur journey, I have faced situations in Corpstage, we developed the prototype and the kind of development quotes that we were getting, I could put in my own resources 100%, but I did not want to put all my eggs in one basket and try it out. So wanted some people to understand my idea and believe in it and come together. So at that point of time, I was at crisis level where I was trying to convince people to join me and collaborate with me. And yes, I think I was consistent, I kept on talking about it, and came out of it. So basically, clarity of thought, determination, consistency, can help anybody to come out of crisis situation.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  08:53

Very interesting. You started off the conversation describing yourself as a determined person. And in this particular segment about how you have dealt effectively with crisis, you went back to “determination” as that key trait. In my upcoming book on crisis-ready mindset, I actually talk about this concept that, at the end of the day, how effectively we deal with a crisis comes from our perception of ourselves and the situation. Your perception at that point about the crisis was not, “Oh No, I give up!” because you've got determination. But more importantly, also to be able to see the next steps because your Plan A didn't work out. That's where you pointed to having that clarity of thought. The third piece is - If you don't take action, then it doesn't become a result. So you need to have all these three pieces together. Thank you for sharing that. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  09:50

Have you been in a situation whereby as a woman, you've had limited access to leadership and decision-making roles, and if so, how did you navigate those difficult situations?

Dr Nisha Kohli  

As I mentioned, I'm from a business family. So it was a difficult for me to be in a corporate job because of the mindset. I started my career in Coca Cola, actually before graduating from Accounting. And I worked in different multinationals from time to time, but I never enjoyed that. So these kinds of challenges where I had to face, as a woman, not being able to move forward or take decision, I never faced. However, I do really feel that women in this human life have a different role to play. The expectation of the society, or I would say, even my own expectation from myself, would be to take care of the family, parents, children, and overall my own role as a woman. I'm not a feminist person and don't think that is any kind of challenge or restraint. It depends on the mindset, how you tackle the situation, or how you prosper in the situation where you are. So it doesn't depend on the external environment, it depends on your internal, I would say, again, go back to potential. If you have resilience potential, then you will be stronger, you will come out of that. Overall, it's your own potential, which makes you realise that, “Yes, you can do it.”

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  11:18

So what I'm hearing is that when you describe it as your own potential, you're actually talking about your own mindset, in the sense that, “How do you look at the world?” and “How do you deal with that situation.” And that's good, because we can't change anything that's happening outside of us, because life is just happening. But what we have control over is how we frame all these incidences and situations for ourselves, and whether we are going to be burdened by, “Oh my god, that was a bad thing”, or we're going to just say, “Okay, so what am I going to do next?” 

Dr Nisha Kohli  

We talk about women empowerment all the time, right? So when we talk about the gender biases and all those things, I feel that we should first empower ourselves, whoever, whether it's a male or a female. First, empower yourself, and then will you can empower others. That's why I don't feel any kind of external restraints.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  12:09

Yeah, I think that's great advice. The first place that we want to focus on is to empower ourselves and also to have a certain amount of self-leadership first, before we start to then practise that outside of ourselves. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  12:29

You're from a business family. Were you ever interested to join the family business? 

Dr Nisha Kohli  

I mean, the kind of business that my family does is different. They are into products. But because of the past career, I've always been in service business so it’s not easy for me. However, I can help them sometimes, give them ideas on how to unlock their working capital, or some kind of consulting I can do for them, but not in the real business.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  12:54

What do you think is the challenge for family businesses?

Dr Nisha Kohli  

There are positives and negatives, but then yes, scaling up is a challenge for family businesses. Where they are close families and one senior person is a leader, with power and everything, they find it sometimes difficult to scale up or to grow faster than professional organization. However, if that is a challenge, that's also positive thing that they don't have uncertainty of losing talent. If they haven't, but I find that most family businesses when they grow, even if they have very good cash flows, and they acquire different businesses, then also there's a problem of finding the right people to help them, enable them to sustain that.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  13:38

Yeah, it's interesting that you've highlighted this because my thesis was actually about trust in family businesses. And what I discovered largely was that what makes family businesses unique and special is the relational trust, which is the priority for them, whether it is with each other or with a non-family member. First, I must like you. And number two, is that aspect of cognitive trust. Cognitive trust is more my competency, and about, “Did i do what i said I would do and on time”. And that's not as important. It is important over time, if we create a reputation, and people start to depend on that for us in a family business. But in normal corporate, how hiring and firing is done is that I go in there and if I can't prove myself from a competency point of view, immediately I'm not going to be there even to get to know people and to be liked or to like others. So that is both an advantage and disadvantage for family businesses because of the way in which they form trust and the way in which they want to build their network based on this trust factor, where relational trust has got a priority over cognitive trust. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  14:46

What is spirituality for you?

Dr Nisha Kohli  

Spirituality is, again I would connect few points which you mentioned. One is “clarity of thought”. Other is “putting thoughts into action”. If you practice a spiritual life, you will be able to do these two things very well that your mind will be calm, you will be able to assess the external environment very well. First thing is realisation of Self. Inner Engineering is something that we all need to do. So once we have done that, we will be able to assess the external situation and take appropriate steps and action to deal with the situation. And that's spirituality for me. You ask me about a crisis situation. So the thing that has helped me to come out of the crisis situation every time is spirituality, I would say, because that gave me clarity of thought, assessing myself and then taking an appropriate action to deal with the situation.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  15:48

So do you have any special practice that helps you to be able to have clarity, ability to self-reflect and assess yourself the situation and then to take the action because sometimes things are happening, and you're emotional, and you are very much stuck in that event? So how do you get yourself to zoom out?

Dr Nisha Kohli  

I meditate, but I mean, I just close my eyes, listen to some good music with high gigahertz or something, there are plenty of them on YouTube and just listen to them. That gives me a pause to think, reflect, assessing myself and assessing the situation and then finding the right action. People who are very, very spiritual, they talk about energy fields. So it clears up your energy field and then you're able to assess the situation, external environment without any pollutants. So I've able to assess practically, logically, rationally, I would say that the power comes by just meditating and keeping your mind calm for a few minutes in the day. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  16:47

It's the discipline of doing the practice daily, that also brings the muscle that when something happens, you can center yourself very quickly. So thank you very much for sharing with us your practice of spirituality. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  17:01

Do you think it's possible for us to live a simple life in today's world?

Dr Nisha Kohli  

I don't think it is possible because we are human beings, and we do have a social environment around us. Living a simple life would mean, in today's terms, it would mean that we become a sage or sanyasi. In Hinduism, a very good book that we follow is Gita and Gita says that in this world, we need to live along with other people. So we don't need to cut off threads with other people to be more spiritual or to be simple. However, living a simple life from mind is very much possible. So if you feel your thoughts, your heart, I mean, your mindset is simple. That is in your hands. And you can do that. But yes, living a simple life, in terms of social environment is difficult. But in terms of our own thoughts, to be with clarity of thought, that would come only when you're living a simple life. If you have complexity of thoughts and complexity of feelings for others, then it is very difficult to live a simple life. You will always be competing, greedy, running after people. I always tell myself, compete with yourself, don't compete with others.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  18:16

That's right, you created simplicity as power over our internal world. 

What are the three words that you would use to describe the state of thriving,

Dr Nisha Kohli 

Thriving is happiness. Happiness comes from perception. The way we perceive our external world, if we feel that it is okay, then it is happy. Second word is confident, that this is where you’ll thrive. If you're not confident, wherever you are, with whatever talent, it's very difficult to thrive. Third one is, if a person is satisfied with what he or she has, then everything else, to move forward, is a bonus, and that brings happiness. So in my opinion, these three words are very important. And that's what I teach my children also, live happily, like, live, whatever you are, enjoy that. Gain your confidence with whatever, try different things so that you have the full confidence in you. And then the third one is satisfaction.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  19:20

I want to now move on to this topic called Sustainability. You're someone who is very familiar with the space, being involved as early as 2016. Nisha, give us a simple definition of what is Sustainability.

Dr Nisha Kohli  19:49

In my own terms, I say that Sustainability is sustaining life on Earth, air, land, water. I mean sustaining life on Earth overall, and respecting all species. That’s Sustainability. So if we are able to sustain life and we are talking today, when we talk about climate change and all, we mostly talk about humans or our species will not be able to survive. And now in the guidance frameworks etc, we've started talking about biodiversity as well, and how that in turn affects human life. So it's very important to respect and take care of all species who are present on this Earth. They are very important. Sustenance of life on Earth is Sustainability, right? Like even SDGs also, when you look at the first goal itself, it’s no poverty. With poverty comes malnutrition, or lack of education, which affects livelihood growth. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  20:31

There are many definitions of Sustainability and what you have taken on, which is about sustaining life and respecting all species, and in our work at Talent Leadership Crucible, as well as more recently Impact Velocity, we've also taken a broader definition of Sustainability, the one that Alan Atkinson uses, which is the ongoing thriving of any living system. It means that it can be you or me, as a living system. It can be a group of people, a community, any other species. But that's the key point, which is what is going to have ongoing thriving of that living system. We also feel very passionately that it starts with our mindset first.  Because if we are not owning it 100%, how we are going to walk the talk, then all we are going to do is to come up with this checklist and people talk about in this industry, about greenwashing and so on. My next question for you is how corporates can figure a way to embrace Sustainability in a way that it makes sense for them, they can see that there is value in doing this, not just as a CSR or because it's a checklist, but because if I did this, and it became part of our corporate DNA, it created value, not just for others, but also for the organization.

Dr Nisha Kohli  22:58

Right. So for corporates to determine about their Sustainability objectives overall, it's very important for them to evaluate as a living system. So corporates also have their living system, the corporates survive because of input and output of resources. Out of all the Sustainability related or reporting frameworks that are present, the best one that I liked was IIRC, International Integrated Reporting Framework. So in that framework, they talk about six capitals and corporate stake, the financial capital, the manufactured capital, which is the other name of assets, then human capital, which is like manpower, social capital in terms of suppliers, customer, society, and government. Intellectual capital in terms of R&D, and innovation. And then finally, the environment capital where we take natural resources. So all these six capitals when they go inside the corporate, and they apply their strategies, objectives, processes, activities, and in the production, everything, the value chain happens, and the output that comes out is the value that they create. So the IIRC framework says that if any of the capital that you take, and the output is negative, for any of those six capital, then the value is destroyed by the company and if the six capital, they grow, then corporates create value. 

So a corporate has to determine about what should be their Sustainability objective, the key thing is to evaluate or to understand their stakeholders. I published on LinkedIn an article on stakeholder materiality, why materiality matters and how corporates can evaluate or identify that materiality. When I say stakeholder materiality, it's about evaluating the risks and opportunities related to each stakeholder. Now, when we say risk and opportunity, it could be a negative impact, it could be a positive impact. Considering this as a system, I mean, all the stakeholders and everything, external, internal environment of the organisation contributing six capitals, it is where after this determination of materiality, corporates can identify what will make them sustainable. Now, here when I say sustainable, it is in literal sense, which will help them to sustain in the long run. So corporates will be able to sustain in the long run, if they take care of their system, which is internal and external system comprising of these six categories.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  24:24

I really appreciate the way you have created for us how to look at the six capitals, and that as a corporate, we are a living system and we are interfacing with different stakeholders. And what we want to look at is what is the impact on the output from our interaction with the six capitals. If there is something which is negative, then it's an area that we can focus on immediately to see how we can make it into a positive. So what would be an example, let's say, if we were looking at Human Capital, for instance.

Dr Nisha Kohli  25:56

We have heard about a lot of things about Tesla. And lately, there were news reports, Telsa’s ESG rating was reduced, they were downgraded. Now, how that happened was that Tesla being an EV vehicle, in terms of ESG, their E (environmental) scores are very high, but in terms of S (social), the employee scores, they were low. Human capital means that humans working in the organisation should be motivated, should be engaged, should be empowered, so that they become your brand and they give value to the organization. I mean, they stay with your organisation, and they really work for the organisation to create more value overall. So that is Human Capital. One can be traded off with the other, that is possible. However, corporates have to take care of all the six and that's what if Tesla is taking care of Environment, they should also make sure that their Human  apital is equally taken care of. There’s a lot of buzz around garments industry, right? In the last decade, alot of readymade garments are manufactured in Bangladesh, in China, in Vietnam. Rana Plaza, for example, is a good case to understand how a company can create financial capital or manufactured capital by ignoring the human capital of the supplier, the relationship capital. With that relationship capital, a lot of reputation gets affected. All those things need to be cultivated. So that's where the main concept behind IIRC is to inform the shareholders that look, “Hey, the financial capital has declined because of some other strategies that are in place today. Or we are looking at growth, at manufactured capital, at empowering humans, we are looking at this and other areas. That's why this year, we have not been able to report higher profits.” That was the initial idea of this report. When I teach Sustainability or when I talk about Sustainability and practice also, it really makes sense to look at all those six capitals, overall Sustainability point of view, this model helps in also converting those in terms of financial numbers.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  26:58

What you're pointing to is critical when we look at the future of corporate because there was a time at one stage where most corporate said that they needed to look at profit as the primary return for the shareholders. But what you're saying is that at some level, Mother Earth, and the living system is also our stakeholder. And in a corporate, when they are not focusing on the people development or their human capital, it's actually a very big disconnect. Because fundamentally, it's the people who are going to get the job done. It's the people who make the corporate the corporate because otherwise you can be a solo-preneur, and you can do your job. We've been doing work for years on corporate culture change, but this new thinking, it goes beyond even corporate culture change for better performance or for transitioning to a new business model, that we need to treasure this human capital.

Dr Nisha Kohli  27:58

It's very simple to explain, if we take this viewpoint, when I talked about Sustainabilit, I said sustaining in the long term. I'm not saying that the businesses should not focus on profits, it is a must. As Milton Friedman, he mentioned, according to his theory, organisations will not exist if they don't make profit. And that's true. If there is no profit, basically, you're not creating any value for the external society as well. No economics are created, right? So profits are essential, not denying that side. However, sustaining in the long run would mean taking care of all the other capitals as well and explaining this to the companies or the businesses. 

One example I can give is like, today we talking about alot of carbon footprint, right? So companies which have huge carbon footprint like oil and gas industry, if they do not consider this as a fad. Or let's take an example of manufacturing, which is highly dependent on coal or other fossil fuels. If they do not change the ways they are doing today, what will happen is that the other capitals like human capital, the social capital, and maybe environmental capital, like floods, droughts and hurricanes, and all those things will come and impact businesses. If not in one place, maybe in other locations, but that's bound to happen. 

This is like we call it an accounting deferred tax liability. So it's like a deferred Sustainability liability. Like if you're not considering this as a loss today or as an expense today, it's going to come and impact your business tomorrow. That's where the long-term Sustainability gets impacted. This is what happened in terms of many garment industry as well, when they were trying to cut the costs, bringing all the production to the cheaper locations, in terms of raw material and labor as well, but then how now can they sustain this reputation loss which happens because of that. And now we are talking about not just human or manpower exploitation, we're also talking about environmental exploitation with cheap fashion, clothing, what they're doing, they're changing the habits of people. I remember my childhood, I had four to five good dresses which I used.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  29:59

That's true.

Dr Nisha Kohli  

Again, and again, and again, and again, I would love those, I love those dresses. But then today, my cupboard is also filled with clothes. It's because it's available. It's the overall culture, or I would say how the world lives.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  30:13

We've been corrupted by consumerism.

Dr Nisha Kohli  30:48

But this consumerism actually increased because of the international trade because of globalisation, because of so many other factors that has changed our habits. So coming to the core, again, will required a lot of habit change. And this will not only happen to corporates, but even individuals have to change, we have to change our mindsets and the way we live. So it has to be both top-down and bottom-up approach, both sides have to push to achieve the Sustainability. If we create this kind of awareness to the corporates like, “Hey, you think that it's going to bring some expenses and liabilities, better to take it today, take a hit and be prepared. Start thinking of remodeling your businesses, so that you don't get the hit, down the years, down the line. That is why we have that carbon pricing thing in place for climate reporting. We assume a price of carbon and we take it as a liability today, so that corporates are aware that if we don't consider it today, it’s going to haunt us, it's going to impact tomorrow.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  31:12

So on that note, what is your vision for a sustainable future?

Dr Nisha Kohli  

As I said that thriving for all living beings, I mean, the life the breadth itself is coming from five different sources, air, water and land. So in that sense, it is very complex thing to make it sustainable. We also have to take complex decisions today, so that we can live a better future. So it's thriving for all species, that's what Sustainability means.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  31:40

Since we are here together recently, yourself as one of the Founders of Corpstage, and myself as one of the Founders of Impact Velocity, we signed an MOU and we're looking to working together in Vietnam. I wanted to share that at Impact Velocity, we look at ourselves as an aggregator of system awareness methodologies so that people get a better understanding from a mindset perspective, in terms of how we as a living system, impact the whole, and other stakeholders as well. Number two is that we also work with incubators, accelerators, funds and with networks so that we can influence them towards the Sustainability direction. We are really excited that with Corpstage we can start to offer consulting for corporates who want to take on this journey. Recently, we've just confirmed one client and I'm sure that's going to be exciting, and it's going to create an impact in the industry in which they operate. 

Thank you Nisha, for being in our podcast today.

Dr Nisha Kohli  32:45

Thank you very much and looking forward to doing more work in Vietnam with you. 

Ho Lai Yun  32:50

Thank you for joining Dr. Ramesh and Dr. Nisha conversation today, especially for their thoughts around Sustainability being the bedrock for thriving for all species, beyond a human focus alone.

If you're interested to learn more about the entrepreneurial mindset, Check out Dr. Ramesh's book "The Big Jump into Entrepreneurship 2.0", simply click on the Amazon link provided in the podcast description. 

In addition, make sure you follow Dr. Ramesh on LinkedIn so that you’ll get her the latest insights from her and our amazing podcast guest speakers.

Next up, we head over to Vietnam to hear from the entrepreneurial founder and CEO of FlexOS, Daan van Rossum. Daan’s ASEAN-focused work tech startup helps companies manage hybrid teams and offices with a focus on employee engagement, so that employees can have better work days and richer, more meaningful, and happier lives.


Bio
Dr. Nisha Kohli, CEO and Founder of Corpstage

Expertise: Corporate Sustainability; ESG; Sustainable Finance, Finance & Strategy; Performance Management; Corporate Governance & Risk Management; Financial Planning; Analysis & Control; Corporate Valuation; Organizational Resilience; Mergers & Acquisitions; Alliances & Joint Ventures. 

Dr Nisha Kohli is driven by the passion of creating an impact in sustainability and entrepreneurship ecosystem. She been working for over 22 years in consulting, training, managing finance functions in multinational and private organisations. 

She is the CEO and Founder of Corpstage which helps companies in creating sustainable values and advises them on ESG management and reporting. The focus is on global frameworks such as ISSB, VRF and TCFD. Dr Kohli believes that corporate sustainability is increasingly complex and there is an urgency for cooperation within and with outside partners. Global issues need to be tackled in a holistic manner to build investor and customer trust and positive reputation for the company. She helps companies to make new commitments with regards to sustainability with profitability as their core strategy. 

Dr Kohli was awarded Corporate Governance Research Scholar award in 2008 from International Corporate Governance Network for my outstanding research in the field of Corporate Governance. Since then, she has published several case studies and research articles in internationally refereed journals such as International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, HBSP, Richard Ivey, Cambridge etc. 

Selected Clientele: 

L &T Ltd, CIMB Bank, Sinco Shipping, Places of Impact, DBS Bank, SBI, Singapore, Maritime Port Authority Singapore, Asahi tech, JSW Foundation, Raymond, Bharti AXA, SIEF Hong Kong, Paycode (South Africa), Indian Oil, Maruti, Swarovski, Punj Lloyd, NHPC etc. 

Selected Highlights: Specific examples of ESG and climate related consulting Implementation in a Japanese business involved in: 

Case 1:
Engineering Business
 Draft Report was submitted. 

Case 2 : Brick Manufacturing company based in Europe
Corpstage worked as a sub-contractor to Cutliv8 Ventures for this company. Scope – To arrive at Net Zero Targets for the company for 2050. 

Case 3: Real Estate ( Hospitality) Company in India
Corpstage worked with this company to implement Impact Radar focusing on EESG – economic, environmental, social and governance metrics related to Real Estate. 

Case 4: Shipping company based in Singapore: Corpstage worked with this company to enable adoption of environmental policies for decarbonising their operations. 

Case 5: PE Firm based in Singapore: Corpstage worked with this company for ESG due diligence for their potential investee company.