Mar 23, 2023

Event Report - Cornerstone Connect Live at Mumbai







On February 15th, Cornerstone's Connect Live event was held in Mumbai, India, where CEO Himanshu Palsule emphasized the critical skills gap in the country and the need for learning to address it. He highlighted that not only does the skills gap impact individual employability, but it also affects the growth and productivity of the Indian economy. Cornerstone, with EdCast, SumTotal, and Saba, have become the largest learning platform company globally, serving 7,000 customers and over 100 million end-users.


He further stressed upon the democratization of talent and how employees expect their organizations to take initiatives in skilling them. He warned that companies that fail to invest in employee development risk losing out to competitors who do and urged organizations to act. Himanshu also expressed his belief that technology plays a significant role in addressing this issue and presented the vision of the Cornerstone Talent Experience Platform. 

In the keynote, Yashwant Mahadik, the Global CHRO of Lupin, shared his experience and discussed the complexity of a global LMS rollout. He highlighted the challenges that leaders will face in the future and predicted that immersive learning using virtual and augmented reality will be the next big thing. Mahadik emphasized the need for leaders to be in tune with technology to remain relevant in the future. 

In the product deep-dive session, Cornerstone’s Chief Product Officer, Kartik Suri unveiled Cornerstone's Talent Experience Platform, where the best-in-class learning, performance and talent management capabilities are married to holistic, highly engaging, personalized people growth experiences, interconnected by intelligent tech-fabric with AI-powered skills, highly context-aware content, both of them fed through a people-intelligence data layer, all built on an open ecosystem with an extensible integration hub.

In the CXO panel discussion, Nishchae Suri, MD at Cornerstone India, began by sharing insights from the Learning Health Index survey, which revealed that corporate India operates at only two-thirds of its potential, despite 82% of employees expressing a desire to take ownership of their learning. The panel discussed the need to bring enterprise technology up to par with consumer technology, with Mohit Kapoor, CTO at Mahindra Group highlighting how his team tracks Employee Waiting Time, a metric that measures the time it takes for a request to be approved from the time it was raised.

Carmistha Mitra, CLO at Axis Bank emphasized the importance of technology providing hyper-personalized data to both employees and the business while making supervisors accountable for their team's learning. Animesh Kumar, President - HR and Transformation at Zee stressed the crucial role of managers in facilitating learning and development, describing them as the linchpin for success in this area. Abhilash Misra, CEO of NSE Academy spoke about the importance of investing in one's own learning through a Systematic Learning Plan (SLP). 

In the Customer Success Story session, Prateek Mehta, head of Mahindra leadership University shared insights into how Mahindra Group re-imagined learning using EdCast by Cornerstone’s Learning Experience Platform. In a refreshingly candid presentation, Prateek discussed the mistakes made and the lessons learned along the way, ultimately resulting in an impressive adoption rate of 80% and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 66. 

The event concluded with an inspirational talk by Ashish Vidyarthi, an actor turned speaker, who shared his personal journey of finding his voice by remaining open to learning, regardless of where he found himself in life. He emphasized how technology has simplified life and provided opportunities for individuals to reinvent themselves, provided they possess a curiosity and willingness to learn. His talk left the audience feeling inspired and motivated to embrace continuous learning in their personal and professional lives. 

Looking into the future, with the potential to be a game-changer in the future of learning, talent, and work, Cornerstone's Talent Experience Platform (TXP) could revolutionize the way individuals approach personal and professional development while equipping businesses with the necessary tools to thrive in an ever-changing landscape.

To learn more about Cornerstone’s Talent Experience Platform, visit www.csod.com