Everyone wants to disrupt and bring something new into the world, but one ingredient all overlook is empathy, said General Manager and Head of Strategic Initiative of Tata Motors, Shantanu Naidu. He was speaking at ‘Changemakers of Tomorrow - 2025’, organised by Shell in Bengaluru on Wednesday, reported Abhijeet Kabad of The New Indian Express.

Shantanu addressed why empathy is overlooked in workspaces. “The world of technology or any profiteering business thinks emotion and business are mutually exclusive. Organisations think innovative disruptions happen only in numbers and technology, and emotion has no place. The second reason is it is too raw for anyone to wield it, use it and equip themselves with it. Nobody has figured out how to use this powerful force that connects all of us.”

Empaths are the biggest disruptors of all, he said. Elaborating on the reasons behind it, he said, “Empaths are always listening. A byproduct of this is all good things are handed to them on a platter. An empath goes one step beyond and acts on it because they care.”

Shantanu gave examples of WhatsApp, xBox and Tesla. “WhatsApp was founded because the founder wanted to connect with his mother, who was in Ukraine. It turned into a call and chatting app, while xBox was the first console for handicapped people. Tesla allows car owners to alert outsiders that their dog is inside the car,” he added.

Shantanu founded Goodfellows, India, for the elderly. Explaining how it came about, he said, “During the Covid pandemic, I had a couple in their 80s as neighbours. They would give me hot food and I had to give them companionship. I realised the solution to senior people’s loneliness is young people spending time with them.”

Shantanu also spoke of the Tata Small Animal Hospital, launched two years ago. “Our motto was care, cure and comfort. We noticed that people who came with animals were always distressed. Every time a person comes in grief, a counsellor would speak to them.”

This helped client retention by 35-40%, simply by caring, he added. “Disruption doesn’t always come in the next AI module, it comes when people come back to you. That can be disruptive and innovative enough,” he said.

Bookies experiment

Shantanu also launched the Bookies community, where people form groups and read books silently in public spaces. “I realised all come with some sort of privilege -- of reading culture, schooling, and the bandwidth to purchase books. For real impact, we had to go to government-aided schools with no access to any privileges,” he said.

Children from 4-5 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation schools were called for the next few reading sessions.

“We collected books and went to the schools, but there were no bookshelves, so we constructed bookshelves. The classrooms were dingy, so we painted them. The whole point here is, where do we stop,” he said, adding that one should never turn off empathy. Never say that profitability, revenue, growth, innovation and empathy cannot coexist, he said.