Mike Canning, National Managing Director, Deloitte LLP, USA

I want to discuss with all of you three topics. First, I want to talk about my observation as an outsider about what is happening in India, secondly to talk about the recently accomplished research of how do companies excel to grow and what are the key factors that drive them; and last but not the least, the strategies and options which companies consider to make a business decision.

It has been a wonderful growth story in India in the last 20 years through various forms of reforms that have been adopted and the ones proposed recently have been welcomed by other countries. It provides a mechanism and a way to further grow and invest in India. It is interesting that many Indian companies have grown to become global participants and players. When you are in global spot, there is much difference in responsibility in terms of opportunities to push, drive and innovate. You have to bear the risk of global market and the risk to ignore innovation. You have to navigate as a global citizen through different times. We are probably living in one of the highest periods of uncertainty globally. Continue reading →

Mr. R C Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki Ltd

Manufacturing has spear-headed the growth of various countries like Japan, Korea, China, Thailand and other countries. Manufacturing sector has been the leader for the growth of a country. The area of manufacturing contributes 40% to the GDP. In India, we have had periods of high growth but manufacturing sector is contributing only about 15-20% to our GDP. The government of India recognizes the importance of manufacturing and the new manufacturing policy included in the 12^th plan brings forth various reasons why manufacturing has to grow much faster.

The growth of our economy so far has been led by service sector & IT sector. But to make sure the inclusivity in the growth and to provide employment to millions of people who will be joining the industries from rural areas, we have to focus on the area of manufacturing. That’s why manufacturing has been rightly given high priority in the 12^th plan.  Why has not manufacturing picked up in India like it did in other countries? India had been ranked by the World Bank as one of the most difficult company to do business due to its strict business policies. Continue reading →

Mr. Santosh Desai, Managing Director & CEO, Futurebrands India Ltd.

More things have changed in last 50 years than perhaps in all the generations preceding that and therefore the idea of living with change, the idea of living with uncertainty and drive change through it is an imperative for an organisation, business or any human being. What is interesting about this subject is that in the midst of all the change and uncertainty, we always try to resist change. The organisation’s tendency is to find ways to resist the change somehow, not accepting fully the extent of uncertainty and in some ways creating an island of stability. By talking too much about change, we actually insulate and immunize ourselves to stop dealing with it.

In stock market and election analysis, till the time the results come out there is a sea of comprehensions & mayhem of chaos. The day the results come out, everyone is an expert; everyone is certain what happened with very neat and ordered explanation & analysis about the results. Looking at the mechanism of uncertainty, we miss the fundamental and basic explanation of uncertainty with more proximate and comfortable explanation. You have financial markets worldwide, they are in a state of despair and yet we run away from acknowledging that. Therefore this kind of tension that exists between embracing uncertainty and actually being comprehended at a fundamental level starts many conversations in many successful organisations today. Continue reading →

Aditya Ghosh, President, Indigo Airlines

We are in a business that’s been here for around 100 years. Even in India, we are often called the sunrise industry. I am the youngest CEO of the youngest airline which is only 6 years old.  Clearly the opportunity is actually staring at us. India has gone from being an oppressed colony to the next superpower. India is seen as the next engine of growth for the world. Irrespective of which area you are in and what are the economic troubles in that area, these troubles open certain opportunities. During the 2^nd world war many companies got devastated and businesses were shut down and then some people built tanks, weapons, ships & jeeps and they made a lot of money from that. In every era including this we have to deal with the problems by seeking out an opportunity in each of those problems.

India is a country with population of over billion people but there are less than 500 commercial planes. There’s something wrong in this equation.  USA is a country which is 1/3^rd in size to India in terms of population but it has around 13000 commercial planes. India is therefore one of the under- penetrated aircraft market in the world. Less than 1% of rail traffic in India flies by Air, that means if we can convert 1% of rail traffic into air, we will need double the size of airlines in business that exists in India today. That is the opportunity we are chasing at Indigo. But like we all know that life is not perfect and it is never meant to be easy. There are few challenges that we face. We are aware of the economy slowdown and also concerned about the crazy fuel prices. Continue reading →

Mr. Sudhir Vasudeva, CMD, ONGC

Change being the important component of the ecosphere, clearly the challenges in front of us multiply. I have spent 36 years of my life as an oil man. A variety of factors contribute to the pricing of gasoline in the Unites States. These factors include world-wide supply, demand & competition in crude oil industry, taxes, regional differences in access to gasoline supplies and environmental regulations. The other factors are: speculations in oil futures, geopolitical risks, technology premium, pressure from competing fuel and other soft issues like human rights, ethical labor practices, responsible investments and anti-corruption practices.

How to deal with the uncertainty & the change in the economy? One way is to look at the past trends and get ready for the future. Another way is to use a lot of algorithms and work on a model for the problem with variety of inputs that produce probability based outcomes. This needs a lot of number crunching and supercomputers can be used for that. Another concept uses fuzzy logic. Continue reading →

Mr. Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd

Uncertainty is the new norm and I want to share with you the four strategies which Microsoft has adopted and helped us in uncertain times. The volatility that we are seeing today is not just a passing phenomenon, it is going to be a fact of life and all of us should start getting used to it. No industry, country or company is immune from it. If you look at the technology industry, India has moved from fixed line phones to pagers to mobile phones. We have moved from rise of emails to decline of emails to the growth of social networks. We have seen adoption of internet widely. We have seen the financial crisis in 2008. In India we have had our own self-inflicted injuries which have caused us grievous concerns in many ways. All this has happened in last 15 years. We have to start managing this kind of changing environment. I have been quite happy to work in these uncertain times as it is in uncertain times that the good gets better and the average decline. If you want to increase your market share, make use of these uncertain times.

How has Microsoft prospered in uncertain times? We are 38 years old and we continued to grow through this. We started with a vision of a PC in everyone’s home. Today we talk about our vision being how we can help individual, business & countries to realise their true potential through the magic of software and we are just about to modify that all over again as we believe time has changed. We have moved from the era of personal computers to the era of what we call personal computing. It is personal and you have the ability to access enormous amount of power with the computer now. The next phenomenon would be where all software becomes a service. We are moving to the era of connected devices. This requires a completely new type of computing & it changes the balance of power from the enterprise to the consumer and it is a huge change which requires a different type of coding, mentality & thinking. It also has huge challenges in many other areas like taxation, privacy & security; therefore it is something which as a nation we have to resolve. Continue reading →