MAM
“Iron Lady uses case studies and practice sessions based on real situations”: Rajesh Bhat
Mumbai: Iron Lady is a leadership development organization dedicated to empowering women in their careers and businesses.
High Impact Leadership programs combined with a strength obsessed community of top women leaders in India, make Iron Lady ‘THE Go To’ Destination for women aspiring to grow in their careers / businesses. Thousands of Iron Ladies have gone on to become top CHRO and are now a part of this highly engaging and high impact platform.
Founded by CEO Rajesh Bhat and COO Suvarna Hegde, Iron Lady originated in 2017, from their shared desire to address the gender gap in leadership.
Iron Lady offers programs like the Leadership Essentials Program and the 100 Board Members Program, designed to equip women with practical skills and support to succeed in leadership roles across various industries. Our mission is to elevate a million women to top positions in diverse sectors, whether in corporate environments or running their own businesses.
Indiantelevision.com caught up with Bhat, where he shared insights of Iron Lady’s objectives, goals and the impact they have achieved to elevate a million women to top positions in diverse sectors.
Edited excerpts
On the specific objectives of the Leadership Essentials Program offered by Iron Lady
The objectives of the Leadership Essentials Program offered by Iron Lady are to address the unique challenges that women face in their career advancement journey. These challenges include navigating workplace politics, overcoming societal expectations, and combating gender bias in terms of unequal pay. Additionally, the program aims to equip women with the skills and mindset needed to navigate through these unique challenges, making them more confident and self-believing so they can excel as leaders.
On supporting women in advancing their careers
This program is designed to equip women with the tools and mindset needed to navigate the challenges they face in the professional world. Through a comprehensive 4-week program and 1-year community learning, participants learn essential Business War Tactics such as shameless pitching, strategic maximisation, and unapologetic mindset. Here’s how the program empowers women to advance their careers:
- Helps participants grow faster in their careers or businesses.
- Enables women to learn to deal with challenges like bias and the glass ceiling.
- Develops confidence and belief in their abilities.
- Provides access to mentors for support.
- Offers membership in a community of industry expert women and leaders who provide guidance and encouragement.
- Ultimately empowers women to achieve breakthrough results in their professional and personal lives.
On providing insights into the curriculum and structure of the 100 Board Members Program
The 100 Board Members Program is meticulously structured to prepare women for leadership roles on corporate boards. The program begins with an orientation phase where participants engage in a welcome call with their Program coordinator, meet their buddy group and mentor, and define their objectives and B-HAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) while undergoing individual strength assessments.
Over the course of six months, participants attend one session per month, each focusing on critical aspects of board membership and leadership at the highest levels of business. These sessions cover topics such as building a personal brand suitable for a board member, strategies and tactics employed by top-level executives, developing breakthrough capabilities, and fast-tracking career growth. The curriculum is designed to cultivate an understanding of the intricacies of board-level decision-making, leadership dynamics, and industry insights.
The program methodology emphasises experiential learning through small cohort-based activities, case studies, and mock pitches. Participants benefit from sessions led by top board members and investors, individual reviews, and non-recorded sessions aimed at providing a comfortable environment to address challenges.
Upon completion of the program, participants are equipped with the skills and knowledge to function effectively as board members and are positioned as high-potential successors in their respective fields.
On measuring the impact of its programs in achieving its mission to elevate a million women to top positions in diverse sectors
To measure the impact of our programs in achieving our mission, we utilise a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework. We conduct regular progress updates, collect feedback, and celebrate milestones at 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month intervals. These checkpoints enable us to track progress and assess the effectiveness of our programs.
Additionally, Iron Lady conducts graduation ceremonies for each batch every month, providing an opportunity to recognise and celebrate the achievements of program participants. Furthermore, strategy meetings are held monthly, where participants share insights, challenges, and the principles they have applied. These meetings not only foster a sense of community but also provide valuable opportunities for reflection and improvement, ensuring that the program remains responsive to the evolving needs of its participants.
On the types of practical skills and support do you provide to women facing workplace obstacles
We help women who want to succeed at work by giving them practical skills and support tailored to their needs and situation. They learn and equip themselves with tactics like the Mirror Exercise and Positive Affirmations to boost their self-awareness and confidence. The program also focuses on setting goals and finding purpose, so women can pursue their career ambitions.
To help women learn these skills, Iron Lady uses case studies and practice sessions based on real situations. They also pair participants with experienced leaders to mentor them. They provide extra materials like sample videos and CV templates to help women succeed. With this personalised support, we help women overcome challenges and do exceptionally well in their careers.
On collaborating with companies and organizations to promote gender diversity and support the advancement of women in leadership positions
We collaborate with companies and organisations dedicated to empowering their women workforce and promoting women in leadership roles by providing tailored breakthrough programs. Through these workshops and specialised programs, we empower women within these organisations to enhance their skills and make significant business contributions.
On expanding Iron Lady’s reach or introducing new programs to further empower women in their careers and businesses
Yes, we are continuously exploring avenues to expand our reach and introduce new programs aimed at empowering women in their careers and businesses. This includes developing self-learning programs, organising offline workshops, creating programs tailored for teenagers, and initiatives focused on supporting women in parenting roles. These efforts are part of our ongoing commitment to providing comprehensive support and resources to help women excel in all aspects of their lives.
Digital
GUEST COLUMN: How AI is restructuring distributor and retailer motivation models
From incentives to intelligence, AI is redefining how brands engage channel partners
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how brands engage with their most critical yet often overlooked stakeholders: distributors, retailers, and last-mile influencers. For Abhinav Jain, co-founder and CEO of Almonds Ai, this shift marks a fundamental departure from traditional, transaction-led incentive models toward behaviour-driven, data-intelligent ecosystems. In this piece, Jain examines how AI is enabling brands to decode partner motivations, predict engagement patterns, and deliver personalised, scalable experiences—ultimately redefining channel relationships from transactional exchanges to long-term growth partnerships.
Across many sectors, there is increasing recognition that motivating those who bring products to market (distributors, retailers, last-mile influencers) poses a growing challenge.
Brands continue to invest significant marketing and digital resources to consumers, yet in many countries and the vast majority of emerging economies, these types of consumer-focused investment areas have had little impact on ultimate product delivery. Rather, it is still the case that traditional retail continues to make up most products sold.
So why is it that the systems built around motivating these channels have yet to evolve?
For decades, distributor and retailer engagement revolved around static schemes – quarterly targets, volume-based rewards, and occasional trade promotions. These programs were designed around transactions, not behaviour. The assumption was simple: if incentives increase, performance will follow.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, the definition of performance is being challenged.
With the development of artificial intelligence, businesses can move beyond simply creating loyalty based on transactional-based models and toward models built on behaviours, the behaviours of channel partners that are intrinsic to their motivations in engaging with particular brands. As a result, the means by which businesses develop relationships within their distribution network are starting to evolve; thus, ultimately changing how brands interact with those within their distribution network.
Assessing engagement: Transitioning from transactional- to behavioural intelligence
Traditional loyalty systems refer to transactional activity (sales data). Although this data is valuable and important, it only provides a partial view of engagement across the channel partner.
For example, a retailer may have a high frequency of sales of a product, but their lack of engagement with the manufacturer would not reflect that they have true loyalty toward that brand. Conversely, a retailer who actively participates in training programmes, acts as brand advocates, and is engaged in learning with the supplier would exhibit more profound levels of loyalty but would have been invisible based on historical incentive programmes.
Artificial intelligence allows for the identification of behaviours that help to address this gap. Brands are able to use a variety of engagement data points, participate in learning programs, respond to communications, redeem behaviour and track platform use behaviour in order to identify motivation through behaviour.
McKinsey has stated that companies that leverage advanced analytics for their sales and distribution functions can achieve as much as a 15-20 per cent increase in productivity due to increased awareness of their behavioural trends throughout their networks.
This visibility of behavioural patterns within channel ecosystems can be transformational to brands as they can now view how partners engage on their path to purchasing products, instead of just measuring the sales revenue generated by those purchases.
Predicting motivations, not just measuring performance
Possibly, the largest contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to helping brands engage with partners via channel ecosystems is its ability to predict future engagement versus simply measuring past performance.
Traditionally, brands only realised that a partner was disengaged (not likely to purchase products) once their sales performance had already declined. By then, the brand would have to use significant amounts of incentives or aggressive promotional activities to recovery their partner’s engagement level.
AI models can help organisations to detect early signs that a partner is becoming disengaged, such as declining participation in learning modules, declining interaction via the platform, or slower reward redemption rates. These indicators can help organisations to proactively engage with their partners before their sales performance begins to decline.
The practical application of AI and predictive analytics gives brands the ability to re-engage with their partners prior to their sales performance declines. For example, instead of developing and implementing broad-reaching incentive programs that provide a “one size fits all” incentive to all partners in an ecosystem, brands are able to develop targeted, engaging re-engagement programmes. This is how personalisation can be done on a large scale, such as across global distribution and retail networks.
The vast majority of distributor and retailer channels have thousands, if not millions, of individual channel partners. Historically, providing personalisation to such a large number of businesses has not been feasible.
However, with the advent of AI, personalisation at scale is becoming a reality.
Brands can now create tailored engagement journeys for all their partners, based on their partner profiles, through some combination of machine learning models and behavioural segmentation. For example, high-performing distributors might receive higher levels of leadership-based recognition and greater incentives to continue to grow. Emerging retailers, on the other hand, might be supported with training, onboarding rewards, and measurable performance milestones.
The shift towards personalisation of partner engagement echoes the direction that consumer marketing is already moving towards.
According to Salesforce’s report, over 70 per cent of customers expect personalisation in the way that brands engage with them. As such, there is a growing expectation for B2B ecosystems to have these same types of expectations from their channel partners.
Gamification and continuous engagement
AI is also radically changing how brands will engage with their channel partners through the use of gamification.
Many traditional incentive-based contests and leaderboards would spark temporary engagement among their participants, but they struggled to sustain engagement over time. With the use of AI, gamification mechanics are evolving dynamically based on historical and evolving participation patterns by their channel partners.
Challenges, rewards, and recognition structures can be modified continuously in order to sustain engagement with all of a brand’s partner segments. This will provide a greater opportunity to move away from episodic campaigns towards ongoing, continuous engagement experiences.
When channel partners receive motivation as part of their daily business activities through recognition, learning, and tracking their performance, long-term loyalty will be achieved.
Aligning motivation to broader impact
There is a growing trend within the channel ecosystem to integrate sustainability and socially responsible behaviours into the channel partner programmes of brands.
Increasingly, brands are motivating their partners to use sustainable practices in their operations, participate in sustainable practices like sustainability-related knowledge programmes, or promote products that are in line with their sustainability objectives.
Brands can use AI to monitor and measure these types of behaviours and incorporate them into their incentive frameworks so that brands can align their commercial objectives with broader social and environmental outcomes.
A shift in the way brands view their channel partners
AI is having the most significant impact on the way that brands are now viewing their channel partners, as it relates to the underlying philosophy of those fundamental relationships.
For the past several decades, many brands have viewed their channel partners as intermediaries in the supply chain. More and more brands are now beginning to view their channel partners as key ‘partners-in-growth,’ and their actions can have a direct impact on market performance.
In fact, all the channel ecosystems are using behavioural engagement platforms to design new models that reward not just transactional behaviour, but also create continuous engagement journeys for their partners, where their partners can receive recognition for their participation, learning, and continued engagement, thereby reinforcing long-term loyalty to the brand.
The future: Intelligent channel ecosystems
As we consider what the next phase of channel engagement may look like, many believe that it will be based on intelligent ecosystems, using AI to continuously monitor and adjust the engagement strategies used to engage their channel partners, in real time and based on the behaviours of those partners.
For brands operating in complex distribution networks, the ability to perform well will be determined both by whether products are available to their customers, as well as by the enthusiasm, expertise, and loyalty shown from each channel partner that represents the brand each and every day that they are working on behalf of the brand.
While AI clearly does not eliminate the human aspect of a brand’s relationship with its channel partners, it does allow brands to better understand and nurture that relationship.
In markets where the last mile will determine whether a sale is made, how one leverages the intelligence gained by using AI will ultimately be the difference between gaining a new, sustainable competitive advantage versus losing one.
