My journey across telecom markets in India and internationally has taught me that growth is rarely about scale alone. It is about understanding customers deeply, anticipating how their needs are evolving and bringing together product, pricing, experience, technology, channels and execution to create sustainable value.

Today, as Head of Consumer and SME Business (Sales & Marketing) at Dhiraagu in the Maldives, I operate in a market that is geographically dispersed, digitally connected and relatively sophisticated in terms of customer and community expectations. It is very different from the scale and competitive intensity that define many telecom markets in India.

Growth in this environment cannot simply come from scale. It requires a deeper understanding of customer value, community needs, digital inclusivity, experience, pricing, channels and the relevance of our propositions. My role brings together growth, sales and marketing across both Consumer and SME businesses, with a strong focus on translating customer and community needs into sustainable commercial outcomes.

Having worked across seven telecom circles in India and in international markets including Oman, Indonesia and now the Maldives, I have seen how different market realities shape business decisions. I have increasingly found myself combining the discipline of scale-led telecom thinking with a much more granular understanding of communities and their needs.

When Functional Expertise Starts Creating Bigger Questions

Over the years, I have built significant experience across sales, marketing, customer management and growth, from traditional marketing to digital, across Indian and global telecom operators. But as my responsibilities expanded, the questions I was working on also changed.

I was increasingly thinking about sustainable growth, where the next source of growth would come from, how technology would reshape customer behaviour, how resources should be allocated and how different parts of an organisation could work together to create value. My responsibilities were beginning to give me bigger questions rather than just daily transactional problems to solve. That was the point at which I decided to pursue the Chief Growth and Marketing Officer Programme.

At that stage of my career, I was not looking for another conventional marketing programme. I wanted to step away from day-to-day execution, reflect on my experience and broaden my perspective beyond functional expertise. The CGMO Programme came at the right point in that journey. For me, it was less about learning marketing and more about evolving from a marketing and growth leader into a broader business leader.

Looking at Growth through a Broader Leadership Lens

What attracted me to the CGMO Programme was the combination of growth, marketing, technology and business strategy. Equally important was the opportunity to learn alongside senior professionals from different industries. Some of the most useful ideas for transforming a business can come from outside your own industry. That cross-industry exposure was particularly valuable to me because telecom can sometimes become an industry where we repeatedly look at the same competitive benchmarks and familiar business models.

I wanted to challenge some of those assumptions. The programme helped me think about customer-centricity, digital transformation, AI, brand, channels and growth strategy not as independent areas, but as interconnected components of business leadership.

The real-world contextual business cases were an important part of that experience. They allowed us to move beyond frameworks and ask a more important question. How would this actually work within a business with competing priorities, organisational constraints and rapidly changing technology?

Technology is an Enabler, not the Strategy

One of the strongest takeaways for me from the programme was the importance of starting with the customer and the business problem rather than with the technology itself. The discussions around customer-centric growth, digital transformation and AI reinforced my belief that sustainable growth sits at the intersection of customer insight, proposition, experience, technology, channels, brand and commercial execution.

The CGMO’s role is increasingly to orchestrate these elements rather than optimise any one of them in isolation. The programme also reinforced something that I now consciously apply in my day-to-day work. Technology itself is not the strategy. The real question is how we use technology to solve meaningful customer problems and create measurable business value. The Zara and DBS business cases, discussions around AI in decision-making, digital marketing for cost optimisation and the story of brand resilience are some of the examples that continue to stay with me. I start with the customer and business problem and the use case, and then determine how data, digital or AI can enable a better solution.

Taking the Learning Back to My Organisation

The programme has strengthened my focus on using data and digital capabilities to move from broad-based marketing towards more contextual and relevant customer and community engagement. In the Maldives, community engagement is particularly important. Our approach has therefore been to understand the specific needs of different communities and build solutions around them.

Our newly introduced Dhiraagu Home solutions are designed around family needs, while DGG, our community gaming platform, focuses on the youth segment and the need to empower future generations. Our SME security solutions are aimed at strengthening trust and relationships within the SME community. Another important area has been our customer value management transformation journey towards an AI-led digital predictive platform. This is one of the implementations where the thinking and perspectives I gained through the CGMO Programme have been particularly relevant.

The programme has also changed how I look at individual commercial decisions. Rather than treating pricing, propositions, channels and communication as separate decisions, I see them as parts of one integrated customer-value equation. This becomes particularly important when working across Consumer and SME segments because their needs, priorities and decision journeys can be very different.

Learning Beyond the Telecom Ecosystem

The combination of faculty expertise and peer learning was one of the strongest aspects of my ISB experience. The faculty brought extensive experience, frameworks and research from their respective fields, but the conversations rarely remained theoretical. We were encouraged to examine how these ideas could work in real businesses. The diversity of the cohort added another dimension. Learning alongside leaders from sectors such as robotics, IT, brands and geology exposed me to approaches that were very different from those I had encountered in telecom.

For someone who has spent a significant part of his career in telecom, that cross-industry exposure was extremely valuable. It helped me challenge industry assumptions and look at familiar business problems through a different lens. I believe that is one of the biggest advantages of an executive learning environment. You are not simply learning from faculty. You are also learning from the experiences, successes and failures of people who are solving very different business problems.

From Marketing Decisions to Business Decisions

Perhaps the most important shift for me has been in the lens through which I look at decisions. Earlier, I would naturally frame a problem as a sales or marketing decision. Today, I increasingly start by asking what the business decision is and then think about how marketing, sales, technology and customer experience can contribute to it.

It may sound like a subtle shift, but it has significant implications for leadership. I increasingly see the CMO as a business leader first, with growth and customer expertise as key capabilities for creating enterprise value. This is also how I see the evolution of the role. As organisations become more integrated and technology-enabled, growth leaders cannot operate within functional boundaries.

For marketing leaders considering a CMO Course at this stage of their career, I believe the value lies in stepping beyond functional expertise and understanding how marketing connects with the larger business agenda. A CMO Training can add to that learning journey, but the real measure of an executive programme is how it changes the way you think, make decisions and lead. CMO Certitification, in my view, should similarly be seen as part of a broader leadership journey rather than simply another credential.

What's the Future?

I believe the CGMO role will become significantly more technology-enabled while, paradoxically, becoming even more customer-focused. AI and digital technologies are already transforming how organisations understand customers, personalise experiences, optimise channels and make decisions. Activities are becoming increasingly predictive, personalised and real-time.

But technology alone will not be the differentiator. The differentiator will be the ability to combine data and technology with a deep understanding of human needs, simplification, strong commercial judgement and disciplined execution. This is particularly relevant in an international market such as the Maldives. We can take advantage of global advances in technology while ensuring that the solutions remain relevant to local market realities and community needs.

The CGMO Programme has given me a broader framework and the tools to think about this challenge as a business transformation journey centred on the customer.

What I Would Tell the Next Generation of Growth Leaders

For marketing and growth leaders who have built strong functional expertise but are unsure whether a programme like this is the right next step, I would suggest looking at the questions you are beginning to ask in your current role. When those questions become bigger than your immediate function, it may be time to step outside your operating environment.

Functional expertise remains extremely important. But as you move into senior leadership, the ability to connect your function with strategy, technology, finance, customer experience and enterprise value becomes increasingly critical. For professionals exploring an Online CMO Program, I would apply the same principle. The value should not simply be in completing another qualification. It should come from gaining new perspectives, testing your assumptions and learning how leaders across industries approach complex business problems.

Similarly, an Online CMO Certificate should be viewed as part of a larger leadership journey rather than an end in itself. For me, that has been the biggest value of the CGMO journey at ISB. It has helped me move from asking how to optimise a particular function to asking how different parts of the organisation can come together to create sustainable value. Ultimately, that is how I see the role of a growth leader today. It is not simply about creating demand or driving transactions. It is about architecting an ecosystem where customer needs, technology, people, propositions and commercial priorities come together to create long-term value.

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