Nasscom India Leadership forum: Here's what top leaders had to say on the first day

The Nasscom India Leadership Forum 2017 (NILF 2017) is underway, and it is in its silver jubilee year. The conference will go on till 17 Feb in Mumbai. The first day saw leaders from various industries talking about the importance of IT, the growth prospects of India in the post-Trump world, role of technology and so on.

“Data is the new Oil. And intelligent data is the new petrol”, said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Ltd, while announcing that Reliance Jio has crossed 100 million customers.

“To my mind, data is the new natural resource. In that sense, India is blessed with 1.3 billion people, for it to have real value, it has to be processed into intelligence. Data is the new oil and its benefit is immense to society. India with its young population will have a competitive advantage,” he added. “Jio stands for affordability. Jio is conceived at a time when the world was in the phase of digitising. Data is the new oil,” Ambani said.

Ambani also mentioned that Trump’s tenure could be a blessing in disguise for India, as it would enable the domestic IT industry to focus on solving the problems in India, which is a huge market in and of itself.

Speaking on the changing landscape of the IT industry, N Chandrasekaran, Tata Sons chairman designate and former CEO of TCS said that there will be immense opportunities ahead for businesses. He said that companies will need to be 100 percent agile. “Earlier, technology used to be embedded in businesses; now businesses are embedded in technology,” he said.

Chandrasekaran also stressed on the fact that the Indian government initiatives such as Digital India, Smart Cities and Make in India should be woven together else each will grow in isolation. According to him technology will be the common factor connecting these initiatives.

CP Gurnani, Chairman of Nasscom, said that the Indian IT-BPM industry is projected to grow at 8.6 percent to reach over $155bn by the end of 2017 financial year.

“The digital tsunami is reshaping our industry. The priority is to reimagine businesses and unlock new opportunities. The Indian IT-BPM Sector is emerging as a digital solutions partner for global corporations and we are excited to work across stakeholders – customers, start-ups, academia and others to build this exciting future,” Gurnani said.

R Chandrashekhar, President of Nasscom, acknowledged that there would be some uncertainties in the short term, but data from global analysts on tech spending in 2018 was promising.

Paytm founder and CEO, Vijay Shekhar Sharma was also one of the speakers at the NILF 2017. Fresh from the success that Paytm has tasted post demonetisation, Sharma said that he had never expected India and Bharat to come together so soon, highlighting that demonetisation was the major inflection point.

Speaking about his learnings from investor Jack Ma, of Alibaba fame, Sharma said, “Aggressively entering new categories and building them is what I learnt from Chinese companies.”

NILF 2017 will go on till 17 February. More prominent leaders from across industry, analysts, are expected to speak over these two days.