Never compete if you do not have a competitive advantage: OTV’s Litisha Mangat Panda

Litisha Mangat Panda, Business Development Officer of Odisha Television Network (OTV), has one piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs, and that is- If you do not have a competitive advantage, do not compete.

Litisha said this while speaking on a talk show, Wooble Nexus, conducted by Wooble. The show was moderated by Akash Jaiswal, founder and CEO of Wooble. Litisha discussed topics like branding, marketing, and media in the show.

Speaking about entrepreneurship, Litisha said, “If you ask me one thing that I would advise any budding entrepreneur, it would be to read the six rules of Jack Welch that has the potential to change any entrepreneur’s life. And my favourite rule is, if you do not have a competitive advantage, do not compete. You can participate in the same industry and be similar to another company but you need to offer your customers something different than a company that is already there in the market.”

“You need to be a pioneer in your category; if not, then you will have to create a sub-category that others do not serve to," she added.

Advising MBA aspirants, she said, “Opt to pursue MBA only if you have corporate experience. MBA is all about case studies and it will be hard to relate to the case studies of other corporates if you do not have the same exposure beforehand.

Asked about media organizations and their branding, Litisha said, “As far as a media organisation is concerned, it does not need to market itself, because it is the platform on which others do their publicity. Moreover, the publicity of any media organization depends on its credibility. They need to be true to their charter, be dependable and trustworthy for the viewers.”

“In recent times, if you look at the media in any country, it is mostly polarised. So we at OTV believe in ‘We Report, You Decide’. Our job is to disseminate news and it is up to the viewers to do what they want to do with the information. Yes, our job is to question and we do question both sides so that the viewers get answers from both sides. And we have reaped the benefits of it too. There has not been a single instance when OTV was not on number one position for the last 25 years,” she added.

Coming to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and innovations in recent times, Litisha was quick to remark that ChatGPT is overhyped. She said, “AI has been with us for a long time. It is just that it has now become accessible to all. When social media came, it was free for all. But now we have so many regulations, community guidelines, violations, copyright issues, etc. I am sure AI tools are also going to evolve in that manner. But, even to use ChatGPT, one needs to have writing skills. You need to put the correct prompts to get the correct answers."

"ChatGPT only gives us answers from the web. It does not create an answer on its own. They had to feed in a lot of information in order to get the right answer to questions. I think it is yet to evolve and I am sure it will evolve," she said.

The discussion on AI prompted the moderator to ask about the new skills she would like to master, to which Litisha replied that she would like to master the skills of writing.

“I always wanted to master the skill of writing. I feel like I can express myself better when I write. It is sometimes not easy to express what you really think in your mind, but it is easy to write it down. Apart from that, when I am talking, I am also thinking about how you will react to me. So, I will be thinking 10 times before speaking something. But while writing, I would probably have clarity of thoughts,” she said.

Asked about her advice to people who want to learn a new language as she herself learned Odia at a later stage, Litisha said, “The trick I used to learn Odia was to tell everybody around to speak to me in Odia only. They should push you to reply in Odia irrespective of the grammatical and syntactical errors so that when you reply in Odia, the other person can correct your errors. People should think in the language they want to learn too, in order to speed up the learning process. This approach helped me learn Odia in just less than a year. Though I am still not fluent, I can manage a conversation in Odia.”

Speaking about her personal life, she said her parents had a positive influence on her life. “They are all the reason why I am here. I have gotten the best from both of them. My father and mother are very distinct leaders with the basic fundamentals being the same. They are visionaries. While my mother is driven by her work, my father has introduced so many new things in Odisha and is a pioneer in introducing different ideas. Other than that, I would like to imbibe their discipline, the drive to wake up every single morning and keep going no matter how successful you are,” Litisha said. 

“People think owners of companies do not need to work. But when I look at my parents, I see a contradiction. They work more than anybody else in their companies. That is how you achieve success and I try to replicate that in my life too,” said Litisha.

Speaking about the challenges she faced at the workplace, she said, “With being the Head of Business of the longest-running media house in Odisha, ‘Change’ was the major roadblock that I faced. I think making a change is the most common roadblock that anybody will face in any industry. People who have been working in an organisation for long and who have got habituated to a certain work process are harder to change.”

“Digitisation is the major change that I can attribute to myself after I joined OTV in 2016. That was a long process and I am glad that at least 70 percent of our processes have been digitised so far. We have digitised almost everything, from accounts to the Human Resources department. We are trying to automate a lot of things in our media wing too. We are working with a few software companies globally to bring in a lot more convenience and AI-related initiatives in the media software to which I am majorly contributing. I am awaiting those changes which will be reflected industry-wide,” she added.

Litisha also made a special mention of Bhubaneswar in the show and said, “While each place I visited has a memory of its own, I enjoyed living in Bhubaneswar the most given the environment. But if you ask me about the place I would like to visit frequently, it would be Delhi. I love the hills and from Delhi, it is easy to move to any hill station."

Asked about the advice she would give to a 17-year-old Litisha if she were provided a chance, she said, “I do not think I would give her any advice at all. Because I think we all do the right thing at the right time. We take the right decisions in order to be wherever we are right now. And no matter what advice you give me, I would have never listened to and would have done whatever I liked in order to end up right here. I am very happy where I am right now and I would not want to change it,” she concluded.