By Aryaan ParwezBorn in Nagpur, a city in Maharashtra, Nitin Mittal as President and Group CTO at Zee Entertainment, spent most of his school and college days in Nagpur. “Father was in the forces, so we moved around a lot, but most of my upbringing was in Nagpur,” he adds. His father worked in the armed forces at first, but later moved to the civil side of the forces, which is around the production of arms and ammunition. His mother used to be a teacher earlier but later became a house maker. “Post-marriage, doing work with such a mobile job was difficult, so she chose to take care of us and bring us up in the best way possible”, Mittal said.
Mittal got done with his 10th from Central Board, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Nagpur. “Being mobile, we were hopping between various Kendriya Vidyalayas in India”. He later completed his engineering at Nagpur University. “It was a four-year graduate program in electronics and telecommunications which was a new upcoming field in those days of the 90s”, he explained.
School life has taught him leadership skills from the beginning. He has never considered himself a geek, he has a fascination and love for sports. “All the good and bad memories of following and not following the rules are all in sports”, he said. He has represented his school, region, state, revolving around various sports like cricket, badminton, kabaddi, and athletics. He’s learned a lot about team building and leading the team through his school days. During his college days, he said “every year we used to pool up the money for our year-end party. We learned all these things when we started watching movies later on”. Since he belonged to the army colonies, his only source of entertainment during those times was to play and watch Doordarshan on Sundays. They started collecting money since eighth grade from the entire class and then arranged a full dine-out and movie party.
Early Career
“I would say I did 50% of home engineering- studying at home because it’s quite easy in the Indian Education system to study. It’s a highly predictable education system. It doesn’t come up with surprises”, Mittal added. He was a gold medalist in his branch for three consecutive years. Mittal received a couple of offers to join Indian Companies but he wanted to join a company “that can take me to the United States”, he added. Since his younger days, Mittal has always wanted to do something different, setting him apart from others. His first ever job was with IBM. “IBM could take me to the US in a much nicer way and it happened in the span of six months. That’s what drove me to join IBM. Even if people sit around doing nothing and just interact with people there(at IBM), the learning is multi-fold,” Mittal exclaimed.
“The idea was to take a risk, so I figured out a way by which IBM sponsors start-ups in those days which are highly technical in nature. The areas in which IBM does not want to invest their core manpower but would be happy to spend a few 100,000 dollars for someone to sit in an outside lap and do the research. If that research becomes a success, then an idea comes to life and IBM gives them a platform to try that for the customers in the production environment and if it’s a scalable model, then they acquire it”, he explained. Thus, he got his first start-up running through IBM’s sponsorship after he was successfully selling his idea to them. After 3 years IBM acquired them back inside.
Leadership Lessons
“My dad has taught me a lot”, Mittal has learned a lot from his father. Humility is one of the most significant lessons his father taught him. That’s still something Mittal aspires to reach, despite being so highly ranked and successful. “The way he used to treat people, the kind of social activities he participated in, it is amazing. He’s still a north star for me to match” Another lesson that was taught about discipline. “Me and my sister weren’t the brightest of students but what kept us ahead of many and in check was discipline”, Mittal adds.
“There are a lot of leadership lessons which came to me as I progressed through my professional career. I progressed through IBM to my next venture and joined Tesco, UK’s supermarket chain. During those days, they were the third-largest, so one thing which I learned and still follow even till today and something I tell others as well is that they taught me two biggest values- one is to treat others the way you like to be treated and I cherish and follow that rule personally and professionally at the same time. The second thing is to ask more than you can tell. One should have good listening skills and should be able to continuously ask the right questions, because, at the end of a conversation, everyone should go back fulfilled rather than giving a question mark on your face”, this is what Mittal had to say. This lesson comes in handy especially when people work remotely, without having any physical proximity.
Biggest achievements and challenges
“Biggest achievement for me was definitely building the Aadhar. Nothing can be as fulfilling as this. It is the backbone of our digital economy and I’m really privileged and proud to be a part of the team as a CTO to build it,” Mittal exclaimed. He also talks about Nandan Nilekani, the leader of the team, who was influential in guiding him throughout. “You learn a lot from him. The integrity and impeccable capability to maneuver a complex stakeholder system is a lifetime learning when you work with him”, he added.
Throughout his personal and professional career, Mittal has always been a risk-taker and aims to think out of the box. He never repeated a domain he worked in. He started with technology, then transitioned himself into banking, retail, and other sectors. “Then I came to India to work with Kishor Vinani to set up India’s retail infrastructure because in those days India never understood about organized retailing”, he said. He was also a part of the UPI team, building the first version of UPI. He talked about how his life has always been about two things- taking more risks and making an impact. The impact should be for purpose of India. As long as it’s something that changes make an impact on the country, he’s up for the challenge.
Hobbies
Aside from having a clear fascination and love for sports, Mittal is also very particular about taking breaks. He loves traveling and has been to over 85 countries. “Now with kids grown up, we definitely take breaks, Whenever I get the opportunity to get out of Bangalore, for 2-3 days I’ll go out on a vacation. To me, vacation is all about unwinding and exploring there is to explore”, he said.
“I would, at some point of time, with the help of a few of our friends, would build the primary health infrastructure of our country, because I believe that solves 80% of our problems today, at all levels”, Mittal said. He also wants to revamp the education system of the country. According to him, today’s education systems create skilled labor to work for others. “We are not a country of job seekers now”, he aims to make changes to the education system in ways that would turn the country into being a place for job creators.
