Nina Bhatia is Managing Director, Centrica Connected Home, responsible for the Hive brand that focuses on making smart home products and services accessible to everyone. Her key focus is on putting the customer at the heart of Centrica, and transforming the business through innovation.
Previously, Nina was Commercial Director at British Gas responsible for all brand, marketing, product development, digital, sales and insight. She also ran one of British Gas’s home services businesses delivering electrical, plumbing and drainage services across the UK, including the Dyno-Rod franchise.
Earlier, Nina worked in management consulting across multiple sectors and countries. She was a partner at McKinsey & Co serving clients globally. For over 20 years, she worked in various markets around the world, specializing in media, energy and healthcare.
Nina has a double First in law from Cambridge University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. She is married to Alessandro and they have 2 teenage daughters.
How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
I am fortunate to come from a family background which valued education and hard work. As immigrants to the UK my parents always encouraged me and my sisters to seek the best education and to excel in whatever field we chose. Those high standards motivated me to go to Cambridge to read law, Harvard for an MBA and McKinsey as a first job. I have a certain passion, tenacity and drive which has made seeking new challenges part and parcel of my experience.
The professional drive is leavened by compassion and an understanding that work isn’t everything and things don’t always work out. We lost our first child when he was just 7 months old and I think that experience made me realize that work isn’t everything and that a balance is so vital to being an effective, emotionally intelligent leader and a rounded human being.
How has your previous employment experience aided your tenure at Centrica Connected Home/Hive?
Being a partner at McKinsey was an intellectually stretching experience and gave me the confidence to take on new challenges in new sectors – you have to get your head around new and ambiguous things all the time as an advisor. I had been at the heart of building two new practices in healthcare and government, and understood well how established sectors like energy could be disrupted by new technology. When I was asked to lead a ‘hothouse’ on smart and connected home by Centrica, which led to the creation of Hive, I was well prepared. I also had the ability to deal with clients at board level and had the people skills to build good teams.
But it was really my exposure to running a home services business in BG, with c.2000 engineers in vans, dealing with real customer problems in real homes, that prepared me for building Centrica Connected Home and Hive. Of course, Hive is underpinned by technology, but it is all about helping customers and making life a little easier. I found an affinity with that mission that actually sits at the heart of the Hive brand today.
What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure at Centrica Connected Home/Hive?
This year, we are expanding our footprint to new markets, taking the Hive brand from leading UK-based thermostat company to a multi-market smart home services provider. Of course, there have been both huge highlights and challenges along the way!
Today is a special highlight because we are celebrating the launch of our new global mission with our Let’s Get Living advertising campaign and entry into the North American market. We also unveiled new research which tells us that Americans feel it takes a lot of work to manage the home, with seven in ten wishing it took less time and nearly nine in ten feeling freer when they have more control over their homes. The launch of our Let’s Get Living campaign demonstrates how we can differentiate ourselves as a customer-led brand, and brings out how the Hive smart home experience frees customers to prioritize what means the most to them. This marks the moment that we go from single market heating to multimarket smart home. I couldn’t be prouder.
Looking back from today, there have been many highlights: the first was actually being entrusted with the opportunity to build the business in the first place – that doesn’t happen often. It has been a terrific journey from the start with a very rudimentary product to having over 500,000 customers today. Launching our beautiful Hive thermostat in 2015 to real acclaim was another great moment. And knowing that our customers use the product at least twice a day in the winter is very gratifying.
The challenges are what you would expect in this kind of tech-led venture. It is risky, and you have to have a tolerance for uncertainty and be prepared to reset if required. Going from a start up to a mid-sized business is hard from a leadership standpoint. And ensuring we stay laser focused on customers is vital: it is not about the tech, it is about solving a real customer problem. The core challenge at Centrica Connected Home has included working out how to take a truly revolutionary technology and make it simple, accessible and affordable for the mainstream market.
What advice can you offer to women who want a career in your industry?
I am often times considered a bit of a rarity, a female leader in the tech sector, which continues to be dominated by men at the top. But things are changing.
My advice to women interested in thi space is to seek out an opportunity and try it, early. I also encourage women not to be afraid to take risks, to continually reinvent themselves and to seek out new and even unconventional opportunities. You never know where they might take you. I am not a technologist – it didn’t stop me leading the leading IoT business in the UK, and starting to take it global.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in your career to date?
To really listen. Ultimately in business you have to make decisions with imperfect information and live with the consequences. But don’t forget to ask what people are worried about – you often have all the answers in front of you if you care to listen. I once had to close a business we acquired. I had assumed that this was the right call and failed to challenge the rationale – and if I had asked the right questions and really listened to the answers I might have avoided a lot of pain.
How do you maintain a work/life balance?
I don’t regard this as a challenge unique to a woman. As someone with a demanding career, a partner who has the same, and two daughters who are 14 and 16 years old, life is complicated and balance is a challenge. That said, it is something that my husband and I strive for together. We certainly couldn’t do it without help and we’re lucky that we’re in a position to have support and also family close by.
Some days I feel like I can tackle anything that comes my way, and some days I wonder how we will get through the week – which is a feeling that I’m sure a lot of people can relate to – male or female. I think there needs to be greater flexibility in many areas of life to help people cope with the busy day to day.
I think it is important to have some boundaries around work and home and to take care of oneself – in my case it’s about going to the gym, having my hair done, a weekly piano lesson and lots of travel – there are no prizes for not taking vacation!
What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
Firstly, I think there are issues that we all face with the pace and demands of modern working and living, whatever our gender.
From a specific women’s focus, I think we need to continue to focus on creating role models in senior positions and ensuring we track diversity as we would any other important business metric. I also think we need to be demanding of headhunters to seek out talented women – they are there and they are often very well qualified, but they often remain hidden or modest.
Women themselves need to step up, take risk, and take opportunities when they come along and build a portfolio of experiences which will create options. It’s our careers, we have to own them.
How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
Mentorship is a personal thing and I actually think it is a two way street. Successful mentoring relationships have impact on mentors and mentees. You can’t allocate a mentor, you have to find one. I have one or two successful mentoring relationships and they have lasted many years.
I also like to say that while mentorship is incredibly important, we need to take it a step further. Women (and men) in positions like mine should take on the idea of sponsorship, where we can identify young talent and help create meaningful opportunities and career paths for rising stars.
Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
History and business are often chronicled by men and so I think often the great women who made contributions were never recognized or written about. We are lucky to live in an age where we have some phenomenal female leaders who have impact across many fields: I think Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde, Ruth Bader Ginsberg are great examples of women in traditionally male environments who show how it is possible to be competent, powerful and influential. I loved the film Hidden Figures – a story of inspiring leadership which was never recognized at the time. I think Malala Yousafzai reframes all our definitions of courage and is a leader despite her youth. I can’t choose!
What do you want the Hive brand to accomplish in the next year?
2017 is a critical year for our growth trajectory. Centrica Connected Home is expanding to new markets, having just launched in the US and Canada with more on the horizon for 2018 and beyond.
Key to this expansion is our ability to provide our customers with services that make everyday life a little easier. Based on my own experiences as a working parent, I know how challenging it is to keep up with everyday life and responsibilities and to stay connected with my home and what goes on in it.
We want to enable people to focus on the things that they love in life, and to let our smart home solutions make their homes easier to manage.
If we can deliver on this customer promise, I will feel like it’s a job well done.