Manjiry Tamhane
Global CEO, Gain Theory

- What does your job entail?
Gain Theory is a marketing foresight consultancy and our aim is to help marketing and insight professionals make smarter, faster business decisions. We do that using data, technology and analytics. I guess my role is really to find the best talent, to create an environment for innovation and to attract the best clients that are really forward thinking in what they want to do.
- How did you get where you are?
My journey started with a love of Mathematics. I’ve always been interested in Maths; I was good at it at school growing up, and I’ve always enjoyed the elegance and the logic of Maths. I knew that I wanted to study it at university. I had no idea what I was going to do with it afterwards, but it was a subject that I was passionate about.
- What’s your favourite thing about working in the data industry?
What I love about working in data and analytics is the fact that I’m now applying it in a marketing setting. Marketing is very much an art, not a science, whereas with data and analytics it’s very much a science – there’s logic and precision. So it’s a balance between art and science and being able to fuse the magic of the creativity of marketing with the logic from a data perspective. Being able to see data actually driving business decisions that result in a change in the creative output is incredibly satisfying.
- What gives you confidence?
I grew up in an incredibly competitive environment. My mum was quite pushy, my brother was very competitive and I was the only girl amongst a group of boys. they gave me quite a hard time and often they tripped me up, but I found that it was better to get back up again and keep going. All of those experiences helped me to build on the confidence that I naturally had already.