Spotlight: Uma Shashikant

I have never written on this blog about people I admire. Admire long-distance, that is. Mostly through their work or their writing, often both. I have resolved to write such 'spotlight' features every once in a while. Today I will write on one such person and the organisation that she leads, which is distinguished by a rare combination of exceptional clarity of purpose and method, efficient working and a market awareness that does not extend to falling prey to the temptations of expansion to the unfortunate detriment of quality.

I have been reading The Economic Times' weekly supplement, 'Wealth', for almost a year. There is no doubt that it has both increased my confidence in dealing with money and sparked off a lot of interest in the complex, dynamic system that we call the financial market. The space I await most eagerly in the paper is Uma Shashikant's unfailingly sensible and astoundingly lucid column. This author is not just extremely reader-friendly and incredibly adept at phrasing in the simplest, most comprehensible terms every piece of financial knowledge she imparts, but is also sensitive to the investor as a human being. Which is why she seems to have this knack of putting her finger on what is financially crucial as well as personally significant for her readers in making the right decisions. Come to think of it, investments are all about our desires, our well-being and our emotions. In fact, a strain that runs through every article of Shashikant's is her tactful advice to be judicious with our emotions while making financial decisions -- something that will, eventually, only bring us health and happiness.

Uma Shashikant is the Managing Director of the Centre for Investor Education and Learning (CIEL), an organisation which, as I learnt only today, is based in Mumbai but functions largely on cloud technology with the team working from home. Again, most admirable because it is so sensible! The internet is full of praise for Shashikant as an exemplary teacher and trainer. Indeed, I have a good mind to preserve her articles for use in my language classroom as fine examples of lucid articulation.

There are two more points that have enhanced my admiration for CIEL. First, the organisation is almost an all-woman venture, with a team of exceptionally well-qualified and experienced women from the fields of finance, law, information technology and design. (Here is their page.) That makes me very proud as a woman and very hopeful about women building better lives for themselves and the society at large. And the second point is the organisation's clarity about its own goals. As Shashikant puts it unambiguously in this interview, they do not deal with end customers and are essentially a small organisation modelled on providing intensive service rather than taking on too many projects. It is obvious that they have identified a strong market need and have placed themselves neatly as service-providers, but are not out to capture more and more space. And that is a very rare choice indeed in a world where quality is quickly compromised in favour of unrestrained expansion.

Hats off to Uma Shashikant and her team. I am sure I shall keep enjoying and benefiting from her column for a long time! For a sample of her writing, do look here.