“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new.”
Famous words by Free India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Fast forward to almost 7 decades later - there isn’t 1 specific moment that can be pointed out, but it’s safe to say that India once again is at the cusp of a new dawn - a digital dawn. No longer is digital just about the computer you are using or the electronic watch on your wrist. Today digital technology has permeated into every aspect of our lives.
The Do Big Symposium – 2015-2016 presented by Tata DoCoMo and powered by CNBC TV18 aimed to start a conversation with industry stalwarts and to hear from them about how they have seen digital disrupt their industry as well as other businesses across the country.
We pit-stopped at 7 cities - Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad & Chennai where a mix of established and upcoming business icons expressed their opinions on the topic "Digital Disruption: A CEO’s Agenda”.
Som Mittal (Former President, NASSCOM), who was our keynote speaker in New Delhi spoke about how voice as an activation tool is coming up & will make a marked difference. He left the audience of CXOs from small, mid & large companies with a thought provoking statement - "The only wrong move is to not make a move".
Similarly in Bengaluru, Vinita Bali (Former MD, Britannia Industries) spoke about how digital will be transformational and that one shouldn’t only focus on disruption – rather look at the need of the hour and use digital to find a solution.
Managing Director of SREI Infrastructure, Hemant Kanoria was our keynote speaker in Kolkata and he spoke about how his company is using technology to provide employment in rural areas. Further his company allows customers in rural areas, who don’t have access to banking services, to use their product offering (S-Cash) to buy products.
“No Business is an island” – the Executive Director of Bharat Forge, Amit Kalyani, chose to drive home this point to the audience at the Pune edition of the Symposium. He went on to stress on the fact that “Change is the only constant” in todays world.
The Mumbai edition saw Dr. Gopichand Katragadda (Group Chief Technology Officer & Innovation Head for Tata Sons) share his vision of digital disruption. He spoke about how the invention of new materials to be used in the manufacture of technology products would be one of the emerging opportunities for businesses.
While in Hyderabad the Joint MD of Apollo Hospitals, Sangita Reddy spoke about the rapid adoption of Internet of Things and how the growth of digital health start-ups in India is happening at lightning speed.
For a man for whom, in his own words, “hardware” has always meant the trucks & buses they build & “software” the seats that go in those vehicles, Vinod Dasari (MD of Ashok Leyland) spoke about how Ashok Leyland has moved from being “IT Supported” to “IT Enabled” to now being an “IT Led” company. This transformation has hugely benefited their operations. He left the audience in Chennai with some food for thought when he said that the Data generated from business operations and interactions with customers is the “New Gold”.
We also had a spokesperson from the Tata Teleservices team (N Srinath – the MD & Prateek Pashine – Head, Enterprise) share their vision for the digital future at each of the Symposiums. Their presentation shared light on how technology is feeding a growing sharing economy, where the largest hotel company (so to speak) owns no hotels- Air BnB- & how the largest taxi company in the world owns no taxis – Uber. Key parts of the presentation were some hard hitting statistics that showed the swift growth in the amount of data that individuals are consuming today.
Over and above these keynote speakers, we had a wide range of panellists from different walks of life share their views & opinions in an interactive panel in each of the 7 cities we visited.
Greg Moran (Zoomcar), Rathan Kelkar (Centre for E – Governance, Govt of Karnataka), Ashvin Vellody (KPMG), Nihal Kulkarni (Kirloskar Oil Engines), Vikrant Ponkshe (Cosmos Bank), Vivek Shrivastava (PwC), Debashis Sen (WBHIDCO), Swaraj Krishnan (Magma HDI General Insurance), Keshav Bhajanka (Century Ply), Varun Sood (Healthfore Technologies), Vijay Sethi (Hero Motocorp), Abhinav Sinha (Oyo Rooms), Ameera Shah (Metropolis Healthcare), Rachna Nath (KPMG), Umesh Revankar (Shriram Transport Finance), Dhruv Agarwal (Gati), Subhas Pramanik (GOCL Corporation), VB Gadgil (L&T Metro Rail - Hyderabad), Satya Prabhakar (Sulekha.com), Vellayan Subbiah (Cholamandalam Investment & Finance Company) & Sunil Subramaniam (Sundaram Mutual) were on the panels along with N Srinath & Prateek Pashine from Tata Teleservices.
The symposiums were also a great showcase of how technology could very well disrupt the way speakers interact with their audience at seminars. Delegates were asked to download the Do Big app on their smart phones when they registered for the event. The app provided them with the profiles of the speakers and other details about all the symposiums. Furthermore, during the course of the evening the audience members were asked 3 questions and they had to vote for the option that they thought was the most apt using the app. The results were displayed on the big screen, in real time, with the panellists commenting on them. Plus, the Do Big app allowed the delegates to ask a question of the panellists. The delegates had to type their question into the app and the question would immediately be sent to the moderator for him to put it to the intended panellist.
As I began, I will end with a quote from another famous personality.
Bill gates once said "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next 2 years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10".
Here's hoping that the Do Big Symposiums have been able to side step both of these in our estimations about the way ahead.