Recently, Mr.Narayan Murthy commented about the falling standards of students of IIT, in terms of students and education system itself. Do you have any opinions on that?
What he commented, if I understood right, was that students focus on getting through the entrance examination rather than completing their school education. That definitely lowers the standard. They may get the minimum marks that are required so that they qualify and rest of the time in the last two years of schooling, they are focused on passing the competitive entrance exam. I think that is what he was commenting, it’s all about passing the competitive exam, rather than learning and making sure they have the right knowledge. That I feel should be looked into – we need the best students to come, not the best students who can pass a competitive exam. And then there are coaching classes which just concentrate on preparation for the exam.
Undergraduates and Postgraduates in campus today lead vastly distinct lives. Was it the same during your time? Do you personally recall any enriching interactions with UG students?
Luckily for us in my M.Sc we stayed in Alaknanda, so both the years I interacted with first year students. Not true ‘interaction’ but we did get experience with first years. Later, when I did my M.Tech, I moved to Krishna (Krishna and Cauvery were PG hostels). We were kind of separate from B.Techs which I think should be relooked at so that there is more mingling between UG and PG students.
For many students even today, going abroad to pursue higher studies in technical fields is till preferred than doing the same in India. So did you consider this option before/after M.Tech, and what do you think should be changed in India to make staying back here an attractive option?
I took the opportunity to switch to computer science after my M.Sc so I did not look at it. After M.Tech, I felt that I was not inclined to do a Ph.D, so I did not even look at going abroad. I felt that I needed to get into industry. In order to keep students here, we need to make the Ph.D programme more attractive, more challenging. The research in India has to increase its depth, its quality and its relevance. The industry opportunities are there, most MNCs are in India today. What we need to look at it is, how to retain more of the PhD students here.
As a prominent member of IITM alumni network, what do you feel about the state of alumni-student and alumni-institute relations? Would you have any ideas about improving these rather important factors?
There are limited interactions – it’s only a very small subset of alumni that continue to maintain a relationship with the institute. We need to broaden that, we need to make sure that majority of alumni continue to interact with their alma mater. If the institute continues to do well, your own profile, or your own recognition will improve. If the institute is not doing well and you say you are an alumnus of IIT Madras, nobody will actually care! But if the institute is doing extremely well and is seen as a unique institution in the world, you’ll feel proud and you’ll get the recognition that you deserve. So it is important from the alumni perspective also to make sure that the institute does well. Alumni can contribute to make that happen by supporting the various activities and projects that are happening in the institute and this interaction must continue as long as possible.
Indian Industry and Entrepreneurship
What was the motivation behind you leaving your first job to start-up?
For me the decision was very straightforward because there was, in my mind, no risk. So if the start up did not succeed I would go back and take another job. At that point in my life, yes I had just gotten married, but still there was not a lot of responsibility on my shoulders yet. So it was actually an easy decision for me to take, and the reason was that rather than working for somebody else, I felt that I should try this out, try to work with a team that was creating a business, and see how it goes. I like to take risks and I like to experiment, so this was part of that experiment.
In retrospect is there anything the seven founders of Infosys could have done differently?
The only thing I could think of is we could have achieved things faster. We’ve taken thirty years to reach where we are. So we could have done things probably faster or accelerated it. Other than that, the company is very successful so I don’t have any regrets or anything I’d like to change.
Would you advise students to start-up immediately after college or would it be better to do so after getting an experience of the industry?
Entrepreneurship is an activity where one has to be self-driven, self-motivated; it’s not for everybody. So I would not say that everybody must do a start-up. If there is desire in an individual, if there is strong motivation or strong passion about doing something on their own, they must try it and not get discouraged with the fear of failure. If it doesn’t succeed they’ll have to go back and take up another job. But again, it depends on the individual. If the aspiration is there I would say that the person must try and take the risk.
What do you think it gives the current state of the Indian industry? Are we still largely suitable as an outsourcing destination or IT service provider? There’s a view that the non-IT technical requirements are generally outsourced to other countries. How can this be corrected? Is it the right time for us, as students, to enter this area?
So the industry today is at a very interesting turning point. It has done extremely well. It has created about 2.5 million jobs in the country. It’s recognized globally as high-quality. There is respect for the Indian professional worldwide. And, it is truly high-quality because most of the companies are at the highest level of capability and maturity. And we’ve been very, very successful as an outsourcing destination. The industry has evolved over the years, from a technology solutions provider we’ve evolved to become a business solutions provider. We’ve diversified from application development and maintenance to full services – all the way from consulting to business process outsourcing. Several companies have started creating world-class products. Infosys itself has been a part of this; Finacle, our universal banking solution, is one of the top three core banking solutions in the world. So industry has gone beyond just outsourcing, to become a full services, consulting, IT services, business services product industry actually, which is very broad. And we’ll continue to do well and to evolve. The industry is not standing still and basking in past glory. It’s actually paranoid about its survival and about its future. Many new companies are getting set up; this is an industry where a lot of start-ups are being created. And India has also created a name for itself in the engineering field. Lot of work is being done for automotive or aerospace companies. There are specialized firms looking at civil engineering work. So there is actually a broad range of services provided by Indian companies today.
There are companies now that do outsourced R & D. They design and create the prototype of a product. We’ve done work like seat design, we’ve done wing designs for aircrafts. So a lot of interesting work is being done by Indian companies today – not just IT but engineering work as well.
What are the key emerging areas and trends in the technology sector in India that we should be looking at? Where will the action, so to speak, be happening next?
