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Vandana Poria
💡 Chief Alarmist at The Human Alarm Clock & Co 💡 Visiting Faculty at Flame University 💡 Co-Founder Wake Up! Speak Up! 💡 ICAEW Advisor India 💡 Board Trustee Common Purpose 💡 Chair Associate Engagement TiE Pune 💡
Professional Background
Vandana Saxena Poria OBE stands out as an exceptional Mindset Expert and Disruptive Thinker with a remarkable career spanning entrepreneurship, consultancy, and teaching. She is recognized not only for her innovative contributions to the business world but also for her commitment to holistic leadership and personal development. Her journey reflects a blend of profound insights and practical experience, making her a sought-after mentor and speaker at various global platforms.
Vandana is the Chief Alarmist at The Human Alarm Clock, an organization dedicated to reshaping perspectives within corporate environments. Her work emphasizes the importance of valuing life alongside business metrics, fostering a culture where leaders can transform their internal processes, relationships, and organizational practices. Her approach integrates insights from nearly two decades of experience and extensive research in education, business management, and human dynamics.
Vandana has collaborated with numerous prestigious organizations, including Tata Sons, FIS Global, and ICAEW. With a strong focus on learning and development, strategy, diversity and inclusion, and future skills, she leads a diverse team that draws from varied perspectives and experiences. Their work serves to enlighten businesses, encouraging them to embrace innovative practices that resonate on a deeper, more human level.
Education and Achievements
Vandana Saxena Poria's educational foundations are robust, laying the groundwork for her career as a Chartered Accountant. She pursued her studies at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from London Metropolitan University, achieving a commendable 2:1 in Accounting and Finance. Her academic background has equipped her with comprehensive knowledge and skills that she has adeptly applied throughout her career.
In recognition of her outstanding contributions to society and business, Vandana has been honored with an OBE from HM The Queen. This prestigious award reflects her dedication to service and excellence, further establishing her as a figure of influence and respect within the communities she engages with.
Vandana is also a TEDx speaker, where she shares her unique insights and stories that inspire audiences to challenge their thinking and explore new possibilities. Her commitment to education and empowerment is evident from her previous role as a Visiting Faculty Member at FLAME University, where she taught entrepreneurship and innovation, sharing her wealth of knowledge with aspiring leaders.
Recognitions and Community Engagement
Vandana’s influences extend beyond conventional business settings. She has earned the title of Top 100 UK-India Influencer, reflecting her significant impact in bridging cultural and professional divides between the UK and India. Her interactions range from conversations with industry leaders to insights gained from everyday individuals, like the local Chaiwallah—a testament to her belief that every voice has value and can contribute to societal growth.
Her leadership roles, including as a former Non-Executive Director at the UK India Business Council and a Board Trustee at Common Purpose, further exemplify her commitment to fostering connections and collaborations that create meaningful change. These experiences not only highlight her dedication to international business but also her passion for social impact and community-building.
Vandana also co-founded Wake Up! Speak Up!, an initiative intended to empower individuals to express their ideas and experiences, fostering a culture of open dialogue and inclusive leadership. Her innovative ventures continue to impact many lives, inspiring action towards a more equitable and just society.
Personal Philosophy and Life Perspective
At the core of Vandana’s work is her belief in the intrinsic value of every individual and their contributions. She often challenges the corporate world by asking hard-hitting questions about the way we view life and work. Her philosophy encourages leaders to consider not just the bottom line but the broader implications of their actions and decisions, focusing on how they can uplift those around them.
Vandana is also a mother to two teenagers, which adds a rich layer to her understanding of generational dynamics and the importance of nurturing future leaders. Her ability to connect with individuals across different generations and cultural backgrounds enables her to create inclusive environments within organizations and communities alike.
By anchoring her teachings in real-life experiences and interactive storytelling, Vandana inspires others to explore beyond artificial boundaries. She encourages audiences to envision possibilities beyond their everyday constraints, providing them with actionable insights to realize their potential. Her narrative style allows participants to immerse themselves in
Highlights
Entrepreneurship is one of the hardest games we can play in this world. To start something from scratch, or join early - it's thankless and takes its toll on everything from your health to your family.
And yet, there's a magic around #entrepreneurship. When you surround yourself with like-minded people, your battery recharges and you see new possibilities for yourself and your business. You both grow.
And sometimes, just sometimes, you go to events that fill you up with a new energy as you find people who can support you even further on your journey. So if you are in #pune this weekend, don't miss #TiECONpune2022 where you will find a group of people who will kickstart you in ways you won't believe!
So join all of us, including Ganesh Natarajan Kiran Deshpande Smita Yedekar, Ashwini Deshpande, Anand Deshpande Hemant Jalan - over 400 people coming to the Conrad Pune on 11th and 12th Nov.
Many of our associate members, including Sudarshan Yadav Gaurav Tripathi Shriniket D. Chetan Rawal Vasanti Mulajkar Prasad Bhalerao Sanjeev G. Kulkarni Krrish Agarwalla Jayant Kelkar Sarang Kamalakar Amit Jain will be there. Tag in this post someone you know is coming!
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
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