Economic transformation and employability is a key factor towards making India’s demographic dividend, the young workforce, a significant competitive advantage. In this context, the National HRD Network (NHRDN) Mumbai Chapter, organised a Career Fest at Nehru Centre in Mumbai recently to provide a platform to bring together industry, academia and students and helping students to make informed career choices.
Jatin Meswani, Cloud Leader – Global Business Services ISA, IBM, talked on how IT is changing progressively and how it is helping to create job opportunities worldwide, which are across industry. Jatin has over 25 years of experience in IT industry with various management roles in sales and marketing. In his current role at IBM, he is responsible for IBM driving cloud business solutions for global business services in India/South Asia
In the last couple of years, key changes are happening across the world. While the world has moved towards protectionism, 70 per cent of Indian IT industry, which accounts to $144 Billion, is export driven. Forces like Infosys, IBM etc. work for companies outside India. It is very important to understand that as this happens, what will be the impact on IT industry. A major impact is the digital disruption. Many times, it is called Uberisation of industry. Today, Uber is the largest transport company in the world by valuation. They have more value or market capitalisation, which is not listed but the way it is funded, it has more valuation than Ford, General Motors, FedEx… all these combined. Currently, they are valued at $68 Billion and they don’t own a single asset. Similarly, AirBnB is the largest in hospitality business, ahead of Hilton and Hyatt, without owning a single hotel. What I mean is, increasingly, some people are thinking that a tech startup will come and disrupt the business, whether it is hospitality, banking or insurance. Walmart’s market cap was highest in retail; Amazon has taken over them. CEO of every industry, not just retail, is worried that there will be a small startup, which will replace us and change our business model. Right now, it is a CXO agenda and in that sense, there is lot of promise for IT industry, even though there is threat of protectionism. Meanwhile, many opportunities are opening up worldwide. Believe me, India is in such a sweet spot that despite the H1B’s restrictions, today, they cannot afford without India because they don’t have this much of talent available locally. Even if they want to decide to stop these many H1Bs, the companies will figure out how to manage because it is not about salary alone, it is about getting that much talent. Therefore, they will be quite well placed in terms of sustainability. Whenever you hear IT industry is going down, don’t worry, it is still growing at eight per cent. Let me put it in this way, when you are a $20 Billion company and growing at 20%, you are still adding only four billion of actual and 4 billion translating into number of people, you are still adding x number of people. When you are $144 Billion industry, which is growing at eight per cent, you are talking of close to 12 billion additional addition which translates to x number of people, so there is still a significant opportunity available in IT industry or the area of Cloud, mobility and social, all these are opening up a huge opportunity for IT industry. If you read the annual report of an IT company, you will figure out that they all are talking about Cloud or digital disruption. After demonetisation, India has become the highest digital payment adoption country in the world. All this is powered by technology in the IT industry.
“When you talk about driver less cars, it is due to artificial intelligence. We are all consuming cloud based technologies, whether it is the e-mail or Facebook”
Today, almost all businesses will have some data available in the connected world, which indicates progress. Firstly, you don’t even realise that your personal data is being tracked by different companies, for instance, your location, age, language and other such parameters. I met a friend who is from Google and their job is to go to various advertisers and sell collective data, they don’t sell individual data. There are marketers who will give you a very specific advertisement based on where you are, what is your age, what is your language, etc. There are many parameters. Imagine if this data is leaked, the company’s reputation will be in a grave danger. That is how it becomes a CEO agenda– how secure is our environment, which means that IT is extremely relevant.
In 2011, IBM developed a computer to play a game of Jeopardy! It is kind of Kaun Banega Crorepati type of a game, very popular game in the US. There, they put this computer with two past winners who were extremely intelligent and who have proven themselves. At that time, Watson Computers had a supercomputer, which was able to answer in natural language. The interesting part was the computer can do all of this and there are various other companies who work in this same field. IBM had that early lead, we developed this computer, and it can now do humongous tasks. We signed up with Manipal Hospital in India for cancer assessments, that being said, more than one lakh papers are published on caner every year. Traditionally speaking, what do you mean by an MBBS. They have studied medicine long back and they prescribe same medicines year over year. While the medical field is continuously updated, one cannot prescribe same cancer medicines over a long period, you are not talking about cough and cold, you are talking about life and death. So the Waton’s Computer assists doctors in Manipal Hospital to find out the most probable and the best treatment for cancer. It will not replace the doctors but assists them. Today, doctors at Manipal Hospital treat patients at various parts of the world through telemedicine. Firstly, the computer reads the available content, understands it, processes it and based on the reports, the computer will tell the best treatment to the doctor. This cognitive or artificial intelligence is being applied in various fields. Medicine is one of the active field right now because it is still emerging.
When you talk about driver less cars, it is due to artificial intelligence. IBM even said that ‘We are a cognitive and cloud company’. We are all consuming cloud based technologies, whether it is the e-mail or Facebook, etc. Earlier what used to happen in schools and colleges was you would use computers at the computer laboratories. It used to restrict from what you can do. Cloud environment is changing that equation; it is changing in terms of how fast you can develop applications. Today, any project, which takes more three months, is not considered viable. People want small projects, which will not take much time; all this is possible due to cloud. In India, IBM did a project based on cloud with an animation company. That company works with lots of Indian movies and overseas as well. You might have heard of Karan Johar’s movie, Bombay Velvet, in that movie all the historical locations of 40s and 50s were created by this company. They engaged with IBM to create a huge animation for one of the largest theme park for Universal Studios in USA. The project was done on cloud in Universal Studios. The project consumed more than 1000 servers for three months, and they don’t own anything. In that way, cloud is extremely important.
Due to Internet of Things (IoT), all the devices are being connected through a small sensor. Many devices are connected with other devices. For example, we had signed up a project with Whirpool, in which, every device of Whirpool comes with a sensor, which tells which part has failed and which part is likely to fail. There are going to be so many sensors, which are going to connect devices more than there are laptops or mobiles.
“Today, any project, which takes more three months, is not considered viable. People want small projects, which will not take much time; all this is possible due to cloud”
Whenever you talk about IT industry, first thing many of students in college will think that ‘IT industry means it has to be export’. If I have arrived in US then I have accomplished the goal’. That is not the case. Those who are working in domestic are close to the customer and they develop much better skills as compared to those who are doing project, which is onsite and doing some mundane work. IT industry is not just this, there are multiple small companies and because of these small companies and cloud, I think there are opportunities maybe for a small startup to become a worldwide leader.
When Facebook acquired WhatsApp, WhatsApp had 55 employees worth $19 Billion of valuation. Wipro with 1,50,000 people has $17 Billion of valuation. Fifty-five people are driving more value than 1,50,000 people are. I see that tomorrow there will be companies who will generate similar amount of wealth and value for everyone, including employees and other stakeholders. People think that if you are not from a big college, you can not get into IT industry and there is no point in joining IT industry.
One important thing you should keep in mind is that IT industry is not going down, more industries are becoming technology companies. Ford Motors has gone to the extent saying that, it wants to be a technology company than a car company. Across industry, there will be technology components so that way IT industry has a huge potential.
As 70% of Indian IT industry is of export, the perception of career growth in India is that he/she will start as a developer then be a project leader and finally become a manager. This is not the case. In fact, there is a trend in the industry of creating a small cross-functional team-it is not about the designation anymore. There is more value to a programmer as compared to a manager. In India, people don’t put lot of efforts on specialising in something. While on the other hand, I find so many people who are working in US, they will do programming for a very long period and they are very good at it.
In today’s world, the focus is on good programmers. Those who love programming they need not have formal education. I will explain with an example, one of the most successful startup from India is called Zoho. This company from Chennai is one of the few cloud startups, which has scaled to a level, which is recognised worldwide. The reason for that is they recruit students, the students who are underprivileged. They pay their fees, the students are given a test while they are studying, and in return, students do programming for them. This will help the students to have an early talent. What I want to say is, please don’t keep in mind that if you are not from IIT you will not have a great career in IT.
Today, because of cloud and internet, many resources are available for doing what you like. Don’t think that whatever the technologies I have mentioned, focus only on that, it is never like that. There are companies which do 70-80% of work in the area of traditional IT, where there they still do system management or application maintenance. Do not restrict yourself considering that right now, if I can’t get in those sectors, I will not work. IT is not only for engineers, if you like programming or if you like some of the other fields. IT is for every field.
If you are from sales field, you will know that sales job is everywhere whether it is insurance or IT. The only thing is one should have is a flair for understanding technology for he/she to be successful. For example, those who have worked in manufacturing companies like Siemens or L&T, they can also join, because the IT solutions are for specific business requirements.
In addition, those who are CA (Chartered Accountant) or from commerce field, they also bring value in IT and they can be assistant analyst or a functional consultant. They are the people who understand the business and they will translate that requirement for someone to program it. Infrastructure is another vast field, which earlier used to be a very domestically focused field but since last five years, there are companies who do remote management of infrastructure. When I say infrastructure, it means the computer’s hardware, which is installed somewhere else. Indian companies are managing out of India because even in a cloud era, you have servers and storage units and you need someone to manage it and because of internet, we have that advantage. You can manage servers from Mumbai or Bengaluru or from any part of the world. You can be a security specialist of all this spread out network. There is a famous story of two brothers who started as ethical hackers and later made millions by selling their companies back to back. Security is a high growth area, so those who are intuitively into that, they are interested in how the stuff works, a kind of detective mindset. There is huge potential in that field too.
“Please don’t keep in mind that if you are not from IIT or an engineer you will not have a great career. Today, because of cloud and internet many resources are available for doing what you like”
First of all you will not always have a choice, when you keep this framework in mind. You will know where you are and you will know what should be done. Look at your job in three pillars, what is the brand? What is the company status–is it a wellknown brand where I am joining, what is the role that I am going to get and what is the salary that I am going to get.
The framework is very easy to analyse and it will help you to analyse your job opportunity. Even if two of these questions are answered then also it is okay. First, if you have worked in big company such as Wipro, TCS or IBM, maybe without a get good salary but you have a good role. Second, you may have a good role and good salary but the company is not very reputed. The company is a startup and it is offering you a stock option and it is offering you a fantastic role then it is good. On the other hand, the third possibility is you are working in a big company doing small work with a good salary. If you are getting only one of the above three possibilities then you might always a check that am I in a right company or not? Keep this framework in mind.
You need three things in order to be successful. Attitude, knowledge and personal brand.
Harsha Bhogle had given a lecture at IIM-Ahmedabad and one of the important thing he said was, ‘the most successful people are not always most talented. If you have more talent then it does not assure you success’. The reason is absolute attitude and sincerity towards work. There might be someone who is more talented than you are but if you have the right attitude, you will be successful.
There are so many changes happening, are you adapting to those changes, are you learning, if you say I have learned Java and I will work only in Java, then you will not be able to survive. Learning never stops.
Everyone has his or her personal brand, what he or she is known for. For example, whatever you post and comment on Facebook and LinkedIn, interviewer might check social media accounts while hiring. Develop your social media profiles and make yourself recognised to as many people as possible.
There is a website called klout.com, where you can check your rank of your social media profile. Based on social media analytics your profile will get a score from 1-100 (100 being the best score).
It is good to have breadth of knowledge and better if you have depth of knowledge, pick a topic and go and develop in-depth knowledge of it. People don’t want superficial knowledge, they want in-depth knowledge.
By Vineet K
