“ Dear Milind, Deepa, It is time for me to hand over the baton of Unilever Nepal to Amlan (my dear colleague from Unilever). I will be moving back to Mumbai and will be leading the Global e-Route to Market work for Unilever. I wanted to use this mail to thank you and also to take this opportunity to introduce you to Amlan and see how could you support him (through your experience of working with our team here through some insights, etc) in the next leg of journey that Unilever Nepal Limited (UNL) as an organization will take. Amlan is settling down in the new role and I will request Ashish J to setup some engagement with you after a few weeks. Lumiere team have been an ally for us in driving the entire business turnaround for UNL in the last two years, where the understanding of the existing culture of the organization, the key strengths and values of the people through the Strengths Based leadership development approach was really useful for us to try and develop an organization culture that was a wonderful amalgamation of Unilever core values and the local business and our people’s inherent strengths and values. Basis the work we did together and the changes that we made along with the new behaviours that we embraced helped us in winning the hearts of our people and they led the entire transformation of the business into a high performance business underpinned by core values of an ethical and meritocratic business. We have tried to create in Nepal a business which is an oasis of a good global organization culture in the country that I feel the young Nepalis entering the workforce were yearning for, but did not experience in most of the existing organizations. Thank you for all that you have done during our engagements! Wishing you lots of success and happy times ahead. Ashish ”

“ The Setco Foundation underwent a transformative journey with Lumiere’s founder-directors Deepa & Milind Soman, beginning 2017. The leadership development program is based upon the Gallup’s Strengths-based approach. This approach allowed us to not only recognize, value and harness our own talent & potential but also understand and honour our diversity in strengths which allowed us to be more respectful, harmonious, strategic in role-task allocations, and hence far more effective as a team. Whereas earlier, we had many interpersonal challenges amongst team members, the strength-based approach as well as some structured and customized intervention on collaborative norms and leadership by Lumiere, really helped us make the leap towards being a high-functioning team, even on a relatively stringent budget. This finally not only translates into a much greater and sustained impact on the ground with existing programs but positions us far better to handle depth & scale in projects and multi-stakeholder partnerships or collaborative efforts as we grow. ”

“ Singapore January 2020 To whomsoever it may concern Milind Soman, Director, Lumiere Business Solutions I have known Milind for a little short of ten years. And each meeting or interaction of mine with him has been of opportunity, growth and of course positivity. These are the very elements that Milind innately brings into his interactions. His capability as a coach doubly supports his business conversations. His areas of expertise touch the bandwidth of business, i.e. strategy, consulting, entrepreneurship, research, innovation, and education. The visioning intervention with Lumiere gave us the belief and fuel in driving our audacious goals, which I believe, is critical to startup founders. The qualitative research initiative that we commissioned in 2019, with Lumiere for LeadThink Pilot 1.0, was an incisive tool. The learnings achieved out of this study, have been incorporated into our ongoing Pilot 2.0 and early responses indicate that these inputs are being received well by our subscribers, leading to significant outcomes and engagement with them. Therefore, Milind, while allowing the flexibility of approaches and innovation into business strategy, is able to, especially with his consulting and coaching experience, influence mindfulness of business realities and entrepreneurial challenges for mindset change for business and startup founders. The tripartite outreach that Milind has driven in Lumiere, along with his partner and wife, Deepa Soman, is now a thriving and vibrant community of professionals, entrepreneurs and educational institutions. Their social media handles on Facebook and LinkedIn are shining examples of their conscious efforts in this direction. The sensitivity to the people outside and beyond Lumiere is a case study on ecosystem growth and business opportunity. Happy to be in touch, in case of any clarifications. Minal Jagtiani Principal Co-Founder LeadThink Social Media Ventures Pte Ltd www.whenchangehappens.org ”