Trade Winds 2019: IIFT inaugurates its annual business conclave

The Indian Institute of Foreign Trade has laid the cornerstone of its Annual Business Conclave, Trade Winds 2019 at IIFT Delhi campus on Monday.  The three-day event is based on a theme, 'Age of Personalization: Rise of Customer-Centric Businesses'. At the event, Mr. V S Krishnan, National Leader, Tax and Economic Policy Group, EY was honored as the chief guest at the inaugural ceremony.

Well, the first day of the event began with National Digital Summit and National Operations Summit. 

Trade Winds 2019: National Digital Summit

As a part of the National Digital Summit, IIFT held a panel discussion which included Mr. Dale Vaz, Head of Engineering and AI, Swiggy; Mr. Abhishek Gupta, AVP-Trade and Finance, Axis Bank; Mr. Himanshu Dutt, VP & Head of Customer Success - Digital Lending, DMI Consumer Credit Pvt. Ltd. and Ms. Alka Dagar, Lead Data Scientist, S&P Global. 

Speaking on the theme, 'Personalization in the Age of Machine Learning and AI', Ms. Alka Dagar said, "Personalization is everywhere. The data being collected now and the processing ability we have now makes personalization omnipresent."

"However, not all companies are collecting useful data. Companies are realizing it and are correcting themselves now,” she added.  

Also, the panel discussion covered diverse industries along with the possible necessities and opportunities. In addition, it included a discussion on the challenges of personalization to the ethics of personalization and hyper-personalization in the increasingly data-driven world. 

National Operations Summit

As part of the National Operations Summit, IIFT organized a panel discussion comprising of Mr. Dhruv Agrawal, Co-Founder, Shipsy, Mr. Abhay Chidri, Director, Discover India Packaging and Mr. Shiva Shailendran Sekar, Head - Operations, Uber India. Also, the summit followed a theme, 'Rethinking Supply Chain in the Personalized Age'. 

"A lot of changes are occurring in Supply Chain because it has become more demand-driven & customer-centric. There are no boundaries for innovation. Moreover, technology can assist the modern supply chain to be more data-driven with AI to help make quicker and better decisions in the real-world scenario,” said Mr. Dhruv Agarwal. 

During the summit, the speakers exchanged their views on how the supply chains and production systems have become exponentially more efficient. Moreover, they talked about how organizations are still re-inventing supply chains. 

Also, the panelists unveiled "Techtonix" and "Opulence", the annual magazines by Systemix; the systems consulting, Ecommerce and SMAC club, and OpSigma; the Supply Chain, Operations & Energy Club respectively at Trade Winds 2019. 

In addition, the second day of Trade Winds 2019 will have National Finance Summit and National Trade Summit.