Electronics For You’s Top 10 Thought Leaders on LinkedIn for India’s Electronics Ecosystem

Only if we are aware of what out readers should know but don’t know–can we get them to know. That represents one of the key challenges faced by our journalists, and the question that we often find ourselves asking…

“How can we get all the updates that are important for our audience who represent different facets of the electronics ecosystem?”

The Idea

“Why not identify the most active and influential thought-leaders for electronics in India on LinkedIn, and then follow them?”, asked a trainee during one of our recent brain-storming sessions.

“That made sense. But, was anyone aware about these thought-leaders who we should follow?”, I asked.

Silence.

“Are we seeing any of our contacts share such updates?”, I asked.

Thankfully, few names got shared.

“How about we build a system to review those who regularly post, and rate them on a regular basis? Not only will we know whom to follow, but so will our readers?”, suggested a senior journalist.

“And what if we released this ranking on LinkedIn and our websites and publications?”, added a tech journalist.

“Wow! We seem to be onto something here. Let’s see if we can implement it”, I challenged…

The Criterion

Within a couple of days, few of us held another meeting with two clear goals:

1. List all contacts whom we were seeing post actively related to India’s electronics ecosystem
2. List all possible parameters that can be used to rank them

Within a few hours, we had a list of 127 contacts who seemed pretty active.

Thankfully, while preparing this list, we got to review activities and posts of a large variety of thought-leaders. This helped us identify and freeze key metrics for ranking–pretty quickly.

Here’s the list of questions (parameters) we sought data for, to rank them:

1. Did they post updates related to India’s electronics industry or ecosystem at large, or were their posts primarily to promote themselves or their firm?
2. Did they post frequently or were they posting in bursts or only once in a while?
3. How many posts did they publish in last 2 months?
4. What was the highest engagement that any of their posts had received in the last one month?

We had listed a few more, but later realised that these four formed the Core.

In fact, #1 and #2 acted as filters–that is whether they could be added to the list or not. And, #3 and #4 acted as the key parameters that decided their ranks.

Thanks to parameter #1, we also realised that many whom we had considered as leading influencers were only promoting their brands and themselves, and were not sharing any important updates. Hence, we had to drop them.

The Result

It took a couple of meetings to collect and review all the data points. Few more got added to the list too, while we were going through the grind.

And then–we had the sheet with all data and parameters updated! The top 10 emerged clearly, and we had our first set of…

Electronics For You’s Top Thought Leaders on LinkedIn!

And, the names that emerged along with the data to back their ranks–made us proud…

The Top 10

Without further ado, here are the Top 10…

1. Saurabh Gaur (Joint Secretary, MeitY (IAS), Government of India)
2. Manu Kapoor (Sr VP, Samsung Electronics)
3. Dr Aloknath De (Consulting Technologist, Cyber-Physical Systems & ex-CTO, Samsung India)
4. Smit Shah (President, Drone Federation of India)
5. Amber Dubey (Joint Secretary at Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India)
6. Manish Sharma (Chairman and CEO, Panasonic India and South Asia)
7. Sanjeev Keskar (CEO, Arvind Consultancy & Ex-MD, Arrow Electronics India)
8. Rahul Lamba ( Co-Founder, The Energy Company)
9. Vivek Tyagi (GM, Rashi Peripherals and Vice Chairman, IESA)
10. Ganesh Shankar (Founder & CEO at FluxGen Technologies)

NOTE: The list is in the order of their respective rank. Also, we have linked their names to their LinkedIn profiles.

We’re Grateful

By the time we finished with the rankings, we were truly grateful for the original idea, and many that emerged later that enabled us to execute it.

The beauty that emerged amongst the Top 10 was the diversity of applications of electronics itself. We have thought leaders representing the government, the consumer electronics and appliances; telecom and mobile; drones & robotics; EVs; solar and renewables; et al.

We believe that this list will surely help us to follow the leaders. Plus, it will motivate many to start leading too. And, we hope this list will expand from Top 10 to Top 20, and hopefully to Top 100 soon.

And We Request…

1. If you know someone who should be reviewed for this recognition, do send their LinkedIn profile to [email protected]
2. If you have any queries, comments or suggestions, feel free to post below or write to [email protected]