Strategies to deal with Uncertainty [Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd]

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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 →

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Young Generation: An asset for India – Shri Sachin Pilot, Corporate Affairs Minister

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Sachin Pilot is Minister of State in the Ministry of Communications and IT

 

In any company whether Indian or foreign, the lines are getting blurred as more and more foreign companies which have set up shop in India. Over the last decade foreign companies have tried to make themselves as Indian as possible to appeal to the large domestic market that we have and individuals like you who are working in these companies have done a commendable job in getting foreign companies to come here and establish themselves.

What is more remarkable now is that entrepreneurs and enterprises from within India have gathered enough strength, determination. And I think the resources were available in past perhaps but not to the extent of how much they are today. But what has taken companies and individuals across the political borders has been the fact that the kind of self confidence we have within our own system and economy is the reflection of kinds of investments and acquisitions Indian companies are making overseas. Continue reading →

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Women making it big in extreme sports

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Skydiving is known as an extreme sport and we enjoy it to the max. I remember one journalist who was literally dying to ask me: Are you normal? To him and all others who wanted me to comment on why women are getting into this bizarre phenomenon of adventurous extreme sport , I want to say “Take Wings my friends and fly and you will discover the magic called life.”

The lady who is No. 1 in competitive skydiving is almost 50 years old and there’s nobody to take away her number one spot in competitive skydiving. In skydiving, like is relevant in every other field, one has to take that first step, that first plunge into thin air, the first step to do something.  That’s when you find yourself sooner than later that you are really being reckoned in an elite group of path breakers like how I am standing out here in front of you. I have had a very short journey. I started skydiving in 2009. But October 8th 2011 was a big day for us because on the 79th anniversary of Indian Air Force we were launched as the first ever official women skydiving team of the Indian Air Force.

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Brand Leadership in Volatile Times – K. Ramakrishnan, President Marketing, Cafe Coffee Day

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“Someone once said, that coffee is a serious man’s drink.”

We, at Café Coffee Day believe that the café culture is inherent and so is the need for people to connect. We saw the opportunity to humanise the affair and that’s why we went ahead and added a smile to it. Talking about challenging conventional methods, we often hear people stating, “I have 25 years of experience”.

One needs to understand that what matters more is wisdom and not the number of years, unless things are done differently.

Talking about challenging conventional methods, Social Media has been a great revolution and we as a brand have adopted it in a big way. It has been the cause, catalyst and outcome of challenging convention. The core of this medium is that it catalyzes change and that’s the first step in challenging convention!

We believe that simplicity is of utmost importance and it is critical to ignore the noise around you. Further, it’s not necessary to re-invent the wheel all the time.

I would like to share some examples from our own experience back in 1996, when Café Coffee Day started its first CCD in Bangalore. People, at that time couldn’t imagine paying more than 3 rupees for a cup of coffee. When we launched, we started with a cup of coffee for 25 rupees and with the concept of providing cyber cafes where people can manage to carry on their work using free Internet while enjoying a cup of coffee.

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Managing Risk: New Approach to Sustainable Growth – Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister of Telecom and IT

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I think the greatest risk taker in life is a politician, because even when he detects the risk, the emerging risk, he cannot avert it, but embraces it, and then at the end attempts to manage it. So, I think if you were to do studies on the life of a politician, and how knowingly he embraces risks and manages them, it will be a great study for management institutes.

Every time in the morning you get up, you take a bus, you take a risk. You walk out on the street, you cross the road, you take a risk. You go out in a restaurant and eat; you take a risk,because there’s nothing that happens in life without a risk.

Knowing well that you are at risk all the time, you should constantly be conscious of the fact that you have to manage it if you want to survive, and that we try and do in our daily lives. But that’s of course at the individual level. When you get onto a plane for example, there is very little you can do, because you cannot manage that risk. There’s a machine that flies you, there’s a pilot who takes care of the machine and you are at the mercy of someone else. So, someone else is managing your risk, because he has to make sure that you actually reach the point where you want to go, without risking your life. So, in a sense, somebody else is managing your risk. Then, of course, when you go to larger entities like social structures: the state, the national and the global economy, there is nobody who is managing that risk for you.

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Future of Indian IT and Knowledge Industry – Pramod Bhasin, Non-Executive Vice Chairman and former President and CEO, Genpact

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Pramod Bhasin is the Non-Executive Vice Chairman and former President and CEO of Genpact.

Reshaping the IT and knowledge based professional services organizations of tomorrow is critical for us because that’s where we belong. Let me try and address it in a number of different ways as to where I think we can take this if we really take it to our full potential, both as a country and as an industry.

Firstly in my view, this industry has barely got off the blocks. I hope others on the panel will agree. But do you know that 15-20 years is very young for any industry; we have years to go ahead of us, we have miles, miles to go before we sleep and the range of opportunities and the range of potential types of businesses that we could is enormous. It is ours to take! Given our demographics, given our population, given where our country is sitting in terms of costs and as a developing country, still the opportunity to get beyond what we do in our industry today, is immense.

It may often seem choppy, it may often seem difficult because as the developed world, Europe and America and all those other places, goes through their ups and downs, we will always feel the heat. But the fact is that our industry grew and NASSCOM predictions talk about a 13 to 15% growth. These are astonishing growth rates for an industry that is large; a hundred billion dollars. A hundred billion dollar industry growing at about twenty per cent for the last ten years is an astonishing number by any standards.
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Pursuit of Inclusive Growth – Shri P Chidambaram, Union Minister of Finance

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P Chidambaram is the Union Minister of Finance

I’m very happy to be here to inaugurate the 38th National Management Convention. The subject is important. We are on the threshold of the 12th plan which will begin in April 2012. The theme of the 11th plan was faster and more inclusive growth and the theme of the 12th plan is also faster, more inclusive and higher growth. In the initial years of economic reforms and liberalisation, the emphasis was and I think rightly on growth. I think we need to get away from our belief that India can’t grow at more than 5% or so and that with reforms, with liberalisation with greater openness and competition India can grow at 8 or 9 % was something we had to believe in first before we could have achieved it. It took some time for the Indian people including the business community to believe that we have a capacity to grow at more than 8%.
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Future of Indian Management – Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Group

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Ratan N Tata is the Chairman of Tata Group

On an evening like this one tends to be overwhelmed when you, if you might rendered a bit naked in terms of your past and even more embarrassing when what one has to say is nice and flowery so as I set listening to this my mind went back to the late eighties where we had all come to believe that JRD Tata who I love and adore like a father was immortal, one didn’t think what the Tata group would be without him and then one day all of that changed and he called me & told that he would like to step down. He was 90 years old and I would take over. I had the same sense of being lost when I was 17 years old and started flying.  Continue reading →

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It’s the Age of Women – Sangeeta Talwar, Managing Director, NDDB Dairy services & Former Executive Director, Tata Tea India

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Sangeeta Talwar is the Managing Director at NDDB Dairy services & Former Executive Director at Tata Tea India – Tata Global Beverages

To move up the corporate ladder, you must be someone who’s “recognized and trusted”, than just being “the busy bee sitting in the corner room”.

According to popular study, it is believed that corporates with women have better profitability. But what is most important is how to recruit women talent, train them and most of all retain them!

Looking at how women are perceived in the corporate world today, we must first look at stereotypes. Pretty? Yes, also a mother. Proud? Don’t know, but should be perhaps. Accept some of the things about yourself. Yes, you do look pretty, presentable and value some of those good things that you bring to life. It’s even worse to try and do reverse on stereotypes, don’t try to be a super human being, you are not a super man or woman. However, there are certain irrational biases that exist about women. May be women are not good at reading maps and doing mechanical things, but they are wonderful team makers! They are better sniffers than men, that’s why they can prepare for the uncertainties of tomorrow. Continue reading →

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Technology leading to Good Governance – Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of the new Unique Identification Authority of India

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Nandan Nilekani is Chairman of the new Unique Identification Authority of India

Before I start talking about technology and intrusive growth, we need to understand that the challenge is very clear. We need to address the need for aspiration as we are a high aspiration society and we must address the challenge of migration for social welfare.

It’s critical to understand why technology is so strategic in solving the problem! I would like to cite five key trends in technology that will pave the path for improved public governance.

1. Ubiquitous spread of communication – millions of people with mobile phones
2. Communication revolution will get newer and faster technologies like broadband, 3G, national fiber network
3. Everybody in some sense will be connected
4. More apps on the cloud

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