Viraj Kalra, Co-Founder, Open Brackets Learning and Co-Founder, White Ladder Consulting

Viraj Kalra, Co-Founder, Open Brackets Learning and Co-Founder, White Ladder Consulting

Viraj is recognized as one of the top soft & behavioral skills trainers, speakers and leadership coaches from India (Silicon India’18; StartUp City’19, WCRC’19). He is popular with his participants for his brand of high-impact, storytelling, interactive, experiential and passionately delivered sessions.

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“It is very difficult to get a Chinese businessman to say yes. It is very difficult to get an Indian businessman to say no”- Ashutosh Garg

Ashutosh Garg engages in a vibrant conversation with Viraj Kalra, the co-founder of ‘Open Brackets Learning’ and ‘White Ladder Consulting’. Viraj is recognized among the top soft & behavioral skills trainers, speakers and leadership coaches from India. He is popular with his audiences for his brand of high-impact, storytelling, interactive, experiential and passionately delivered sessions. Viraj talks about his early life, his first job, and how working with different companies molded him as a person. He attempts to define a term he has invented- sociopreneurship. He explains what ‘high-impact storytelling’ is and emphasizes its significance. Viraj then answers a crucial question- ‘What are some of the skills most of us lack at our workplace?’ He elucidates how he developed a new model for new-age readership.

“There is a lot of old world wisdom which rings truer today than any time before”.

Viraj is recognized as one of the top soft & behavioral skills trainers, speakers and leadership coaches from India (Silicon India’18; StartUp City’19, WCRC’19). He is popular with his participants for his brand of high-impact, storytelling, interactive, experiential and passionately delivered sessions. Viraj has 20+ years ofexperience in leadership roles in industries like Consulting, L&D, Education, Media, PR and Retail with brands such as Sumitomo, Perfect Relations, Lacoste & Planman Group.

As a trainer, speaker and coach Viraj engages with his clients and participants through his four-quadrant-model titled ‘New Age Leadership’ that covers modules such as Personal Effectiveness, Executive Presence, Video Presence, 2020 Skills, Change, Innovation, Agility, Public Speaking, Storytelling, Resilience, Emotional Intelligence, Intuitiveness, Influence & Culture. His clients include the likes of PepsiCo, Accenture, NIIT, GSK, Nestle, ByteDance(TikTok), Pernod Ricard, Diageo, Goals 101 (Visa), Sony, IOMEDIA (TicketMaster), Sterlite, India Today, Envestnet Yodlee, Fresenius, Orbis (USA), Embassy of Denmark, 7N, Uflex, Cheil (Samsung) & Jindal Group among others.

Also, Viraj engages on developmental initiatives with faculty, management and students of prominent universities and institutions like IIT, IIM, Amity University, Manav Rachna University, Jamia Hamdard University, Coventry University (UK), Kirori Mal College (DU), New Delhi Institute of Management and Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs. As a strategist, Viraj and his team partner clients on projects such as Employer Branding, Innovation Capability, Revenue Strategy, Change Management, Transformation, Excellence, Go-Digital, Diversity & inclusion, Workplace & Brand Culture and Leadership Alignment. His ‘strategy projects’ clients include the likes of Amazon, Cognizant, Accenture, Jindal Group, Sterlite, WTV, Fresenius, IOMEDIA, SkillTree, 7N, Goals 101, Foresight Group (IQVIA) and PepsiCo among others.

Viraj’s master’s education includes alma mater like Darden School of Business (University of Virginia) and IMD Lausanne (Switzerland). Partnering people, brand, organization & community growth stories through a sociopreneurial approach is the vision that drives Viraj.