LEADERS CAN BE MADE IF THEY ARE BORN

    This piece is about “Samvit- 09” held in the campus on 25 Oct 2009.The conclave was themed- “emerging pillars of the Indian economy”. The title of this blog is taken from our director’s speech. I found the line quite intriguing probably an answer to the pertinent question – “Are leaders born, or can they be made?”

 

   The Emerging pillars as mentioned in the theme are reasons why the Indian Economy was able to withstand and emerge stronger from a recession that collapsed the major economies of the world. Also what are the ideas and strategies that are going to take us forward from here?

 

Ajith Balakrishnan – CEO Rediff.com.

 

I found him quite like I visualized Steve Jobs of Apple. He was an entrepreneur at the age of 22. Today he heads Rediff. Ajit spoke on “machine learning”. He compared the digital revolution in India to the growth of Indigo in the 19th century, and quite an eerie similarity emerged in the popularity and demand of Indigo with that of Digital expertise India. He explained how knowledge and ideas are going to make or break economies. A few excerpts noted from his 15 min speech are as follows:

•     Data mining (it will be the skill set most sought after for digital supremacy)
•     Pattern recognition ( US is trying a software to classify facial expressions as part of security and surveillance)
•     In today’s world for a digital economy, unlike traditional economic concepts, “there are positive returns to scale”, i.e. more the number of users the better. 
•    “machine Learning “ is the future of all industries

 

Pramod Bhasin – chairman of NASSCOm and CEO Genpact

 

      He is accredited for the success of the outsourcing revolution In india. He is the second in command at NASSCOM , with a very typical American tinch to his speech delivery. Two highlights of his speech were – “Building Disruptive Virtue companies” and “Suburbanization of India”. Highlights of his talk:

            • Globalization of services – services can be bought and sold lke manufactured goods.
            • Build “DISRUPTIVE VIRTUE” companies.
            • Broadband access nationwide.
            • India has sheer demographic advantage unlike Scandinavia, japan etc.
            • “SUBURBANIZATION” of India – great idea to spread wealth to the whole of the country.
            • Buy and sell shares and participate in the economy.

 

Kalpana Morparia : CEO JP MORGAN

 

           I found her name in the 100 most powerful women in the world, sharing the list with Sonia Gandhi and Hillary Clinton. Like a true banker, she spoke with figures and stats and few that she brought out were quite startling. Highlights of her talk:

•     In India, services have been the key drivers for the rapid rise in the economy not manufacturing like   in other developed economies.
•     Insurance sector is the most underpenetrated market, though numbers including the govt insurance companies are skewed because of govt policies.
•    There is less than 5% bank penetration in the country.
•    To reach all the rural regions and all across the country stop thinking “MORTAR AND BRICK “ and use DIGITIZATION.
•  “BIOMETRIC HAND HELD DEVICES” are innovations to reach banking to the remotest villages.

 

Biswajit Mitra: Texas instruments india

 

           He is the head of Texas instruments and he focused on the technical pillars of the economy. In his time – slot, he stressed on the increasing need of accessibility to world class technology that India has and stressed on the following:

•      Need for “TECHNICAL INFRASTRUCTURE” : eg . need for hand held portable ultrasound   device that can be equated to a doctors stethoscope in the future , and make accessibility to health care more accessible and cheaper at the same time.
•      It is imperative to keep affordability and accessibility of health care independent to provide better healthcare management in india.
•     Tech innovations : Incandescent lights(CFL) to LED lights.

Meera Sanyal: CEO ABN AMRO

 

             The head of ABN AMRO India had the perfect smile and was probably the most articulated speaker of them all. Having stood in elections in Mumbai, she impressed upon the need to disrupt the political monopolies in the country and work towards transparent and effective governance. She stressed on CSR and covered the following:

•  “HUMAN INFRASTRUCTURE” 
•  it is a tool to motivate, engage and retain employees. It is found that many professionals like to work for companies that “feel” 
•  Need to create a “DISRUTPTIVE VIRTUE POLITICAL PARTY”

Dr. Sandeep Pandey - Ramon Magsassay award winner:

 

                 He focused on the other side of the all the good which was the focus of all the other speakers. He took the example of “Kinley” and “Bisleri” and emphasized on the monopoly and exploitation of large corporations. Excerpts from his talk.

•  Economy of India is doing fine, the people are not . 
•  Why is bottled milk more expensive than milk in india, a good example of the monopolistic pricing by organized companies namely coke n pepsi as against the unorganized sector ie farmers.