Shefaly Yogendra
London
As seen in:
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Covers:
Geopolitics, Technology (AI, data, cyber, technology policy), Innovation, Risk, Strategic Foresight, Governance, People and Leadership, Future Skills, Future Relevance, Decision-making, India.
Board Director | Author (#UnchartedSpaces) | Keynote speaker | curious and patient human
Articles by Shefaly Yogendra
AI makes decisions faster. Who will make them wiser?
The need for speed is well-understood in the business world. Speedy time-to-market, rapid cycle times, streamlined reporting chains, optimised dashboards and now with AI-led automation of some workflows, businesses may be able to make even faster decisions—at warp speed. Indeed, some business leaders did make some rapid decisions and pronouncements. In 2023, Bill Gates wrote that the risks of AI were “real but manageable”.
Who represents the future in your boardroom?
Indian boardrooms are wrangling with challenges on many fronts—including Gen Z workplace ambitions on pay and progress that differ considerably from preceding generations. By 2030, Gen Z is expected to be 27% of India’s population, 36% of the workforce, and drivers or influencers of nearly $1.3 trillion in spend. As key stakeholders—both as employees and consumers—Gen Z needs a representation in the boardroom too. They are after all the future.
Anticipating & Acting on the Challenges for the Chair & Board of 2030
The chair building the board of 2030 is preparing it for relevance beyond 2030. Independent board director and executive adviser Shefaly Yogendra asks what assumptions about the business context in 2030 can be safely made in 2026? And how can these assumptions help build the board of the next decade? What brought us here will not take us there. That’s a fitting phrase for chairs and board directors to consider as they plan for the future.
How Boards Avoid Bad Decisions
The boardroom is where the buck stops in a business. It is where data and judgment meet and crystallize into decisions. Unless clear-eyed engagement is the norm, the boardroom can also become the place where poor quality debate can cement bad decisions. It is not the people at the boardroom table, but the dynamics of their disagreements and agreements that make the difference.
How India’s DPI Could Become Its Most Potent AI Superpower
Contributor Op-Ed · Analysis/Policy In debates about how the world should govern artificial intelligence, three models dominate the conversation: Europe’s precautionary rules-first approach, the United States’ light-touch innovation posture, and China’s state-alignment framework. India rarely features as a fourth. It should. Dr. Yogendra makes the case in this essay that India has not been waiting for a seat at the table.
Corporate Governance in the Age of Geopolitics
From supply chains to currency flows, geopolitical forces are rewriting the rules of corporate governance. Unsplash+ A new operating landscape is here. If there are corporate boards that have not, as of spring 2026, recognized that geopolitics and geoeconomics have entered the boardroom and are completely overhauling the interiors, they may already be costing shareholders far more value than they create. Recent developments make this shift difficult to ignore.
Need for future-relevant governance
“The next trillion-dollar company will likely have five employees”. This was said at a recently concluded thought leadership forum. This would be made possible by the wider adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other technologies that can empower small, even non-collocated, teams to build new products and services with far fewer resources with AI agents assisting and enhancing workflows, and sometimes running them end to end, with or without a human in the loop.
How Gen Z HR leaders can quickly boss their first board position
So, you are a Gen-Z HR professional on a board? Congratulations! Your board just won the lottery, whether they realise it yet or not. Your generation is the one whose work and ways of working will be shaped by AI-led transformation at scale. In the boardroom, you have the opportunity to bring the voice of HR as the strategic bridge-builder between people, technology and data to make such transformation meaningful.
India can help restore global governance
Over the medium term, the government has reaffirmed its commitment to fiscal discipline, targeting a reduction in the debt-to-GDP ratio from an estimated 55.6% in FY27 to around 50%, plus or minus 1%, by FY31 Respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity has long been a key pillar of India’s foreign policy. Despite being a nuclear power, India has not been the initiator or the aggressor in cross-border wars.
Harmonise the Discourse on Gender Equality
Dr Shefaly Yogendra, Director of the Board at Harmony Energy Income Trust, explains the risks of over-emphasising the business case for gender diversity in the workplace. For years, surveys and academic papers have promoted findings about financial performance benefits from increased gender diversity in the workplace.
Generative AI and us humans
I had cause to go to an Apple Store today. As my 10-year old iDevice could no longer be fixed, I decided to look at a potential new purchase. A genial Genius was helping me. While noting that I was likely not a gamer, he added that as a tech savvy person, I may want to use the new AI tools, and for that one model here may be better than the other. He then told me he was using a Generative AI tool to build an advertising pitch for an agency he wanted to go work for. “What tool is that?”, I asked.
Now for something completely different
I often speak at events for aspiring board directors where I am billed as the speaker with an unconventional — different — path to the boardroom. Different is an interesting word. It means “not the same” but is also used to mean diverse, divergent, disparate. These words describe the idea of “diversity”, a key topic of discussion on boards, most recently back in the news with two developments.
People, pandemic, and places of work
“Au milieu de l’hiver, j’ai découvert en moi un invincible été.” — these words of Albert Camus were on my mind when I asked what good may have come out of the pandemic as far as people and places of work were concerned. I was attending a Women On Boards conversation on the topic of the pandemic and the people. These conversations happen under the Chatham House Rule so I am not about the identify the brilliant women around the table, so to speak.
Case filed against Mahesh Murthy: Indian startups must encourage women entrepreneurship
Time’s up, reportedly, for a well-known high profile evangelist and investor in the Indian startup ecosystem. A police case has been registered against his alleged sexual harassment of women who have approached him for advice. This is providing a much-needed opportunity for reflection and corrective action in the male-dominated startup ecosystem in India. The opportunity should be taken.
Startup Series: Visualising success is the best way to prepare for it, but it comes with its share of inconveniences
Even if the widely accepted statistic “8 out of 10 startups fail” is wrong, it is true that a vast proportion of startups are likelier to fail than to succeed. As a result of hearing about it often, somewhere in our subconscious, we are perhaps better prepared for failing than we are for wild success, both the road to it and handling it. But wild success can come to founders, and often does. Many things go into the making of a successful business.
Startup Series: Founders of failed startups take heart, people don't fail or succeed, ventures do
“I failed. Now what?” Whenever I hear these words, the first thing I do is remind the founder: People don't fail or succeed, ventures do. A “failed” venture can mean various things e.g. the venture fails to reach key milestones on a projected timeline, the venture runs out of money before raising money, founders fall out and some or more want to call it quits, the venture is going bankrupt, the venture needs to be wound down.
Startup Series: Founders ignoring their own wellness can adversely affect the company
In the very first column in this series, I wrote about the loneliness of entrepreneurship. Add to that the stresses of building and running a fledgling business, with the worries of making cash last, making sales, making payroll, and just making it to the end of the month sometimes, and we have the makings of a psychological nightmare for founders. In the recent years, there has been more than one founder suicide, a sad outcome which is often preventable.
Startup Series: The art of equity distribution among the early employees
As a professional and an advisor, I have been on both the founder’s and the early employee’s sides of the question of equity for early employees. In an early stage venture, equity is an idea, and equity distribution an art rather than a hard science, regardless of how much algorithmic formula type advice you find floating on the web or from well-meaning people. At an early stage, both founders and early employees are driven by the vision and the possible value creation from realising that vision.
Startup Series: The art of equity distribution among the early employees
hiddenMay 10, 2017 14:30:27 IST By Shefaly Yogendra As a professional and an advisor, I have been on both the founder’s and the early employee’s sides of the question of equity for early employees. In an early stage venture, equity is an idea, and equity distribution an art rather than a hard science, regardless of how much algorithmic formula type advice you find floating on the web or from well-meaning people.
Brexit and the luxury brands of Britain
British prime minister Theresa May’s visit to India and trade talks with her Indian counterpart takes me back to the midsummer’s day in 2016. We woke up in Britain to find that the Leave campaign, colloquially called Brexit, had won the referendum. The pound plummeted and for a while the stock markets were in chaos. Markets stabilised but the pound continued a downward trend, beating historic lows.
Selling diamonds online
You must have done some good deeds to be living here,” quipped a friend visiting me in Switzerland many years ago. The country was wonderful but in my city only two stores sold books in English and the choice was limited. Amazon swiftly became my go-to store way back in the late 1990s. Fast forward to 2016, I have not stepped into a grocery store for over seven years. My grocery comes from one of the UK’s largest grocers. Further, it has been years since I went into a clothing store.
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