Second Act | Maulik Thakkar
I distinctly remember joining the firm as a consultant on 18 February 2014 where I was straightaway sent to join a strategy and execution project with a client. I was in awe of the work environment - I had joined in from industry where the work cultures are quite different. Just to be surrounded by people from multiple practices to collaborating with teams to solve client problems, it really was a new experience.
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We were sitting with the people and organisation team back then and I was able to make quite a few lifelong friendships. While working, I also began to realise the scale at which client problems exist and how we as a firm are helping them solve for tomorrow.
After spending close to five and a half years in PwC, I decided to move to industry and was Strategy and PMO lead for a couple of leading Indian pharma companies. The idea of transitioning into these roles was to understand the pain points of this sector while executing their strategic vision. Leading the role for the India business, working day in day out with business leads and CXOs, especially during COVID-19, which was an inflection point for many business units was an enriching experience.
Although in the industry, you get a lot of exposure in terms of day-to-day execution, one can start losing out on the bigger picture and where you can connect the dots that can improve the health of the business, whether it is finance, HR, Technology, etc. With my previous experience at PwC, I was sure that the exposure on business transformation would be cross functional, and the learning would be enormous.
This is exactly what transpired when I rejoined.
I began working on large scale business transformation spanning across 30 odd countries, leading tech deployments and the deployment of analytics solutions, all the while wearing the lens of what is in it for our clients - interacting with some 100 odd people day in and out.
Most of the projects that I did in my first stint with the firm were core consulting engagements but since rejoining, almost 80% of the projects/proposal that I have been working on have involved an allied competency, whether it is tech consulting, ERP deployments, data and analytics, etc. Knowing that our customers are more than willing to invest in digital enablement has led me to develop a lot of tech and analytics skills. I am now more fluent in various data lake platforms, data governance principles, data mesh/data product concepts as well as the ways in which we can improve the analytics journey of our clients. This goes a long way in driving business development conversations that I now have as part of my responsibility.
Being able to deliver on client engagements is something that I cherish the most. A great example of this is the time when we were driving a long-term project with a client and received a perfect satisfaction score on consecutive years while we ramped up resourcing. It is something that I will always be proud of because it is very easy to lose focus on large-scale recurring engagements.
PwC is an exciting place to work. From an overall culture perspective as well as the kind of projects, institutions and community work that we are involved in, we are definitely ‘THE’ firm to look out for to make you and your enterprise lead the future. We don’t just call ourselves a “community of solvers” – we mean it. The opportunities one has to collaborate with other functional teams is something that will surely drive your personal and professional aspirations as you begin to grow at PwC.
