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00:00:13 Govind Ethiraj: Hi and welcome to the Core Report’s Weekend Edition. India's tech industry stands once again at the crossroads at the pivotal juncture, if you want to call it that. There are several new complexities that India's IT services companies and indeed India too has to think of in this new geopolitical world. There are two or three things that are happening that we will talk about today. One, of course, is the election of Donald Trump and the fact that the geopolitical landscape is going to change and that is going to affect business one way or the other. The second, of course, is what's happening within industry and technology itself, the arrival of artificial intelligence. How will AI change the way Indian companies do business with their clients overseas? What will be the nature of those new business lines and how effectively can Indian companies deliver to those requirements and those challenges going forward? So, to talk about that, I'm happy and pleased to be joined by Rajesh Nambiar, the new President of Nasscom. And before joining Cognizant in 2020, Rajesh worked with Siank India as well as IBM and TCS. Earlier on, he also served on the Executive Council of Nasscom itself. Rajesh, thank you very much for joining me today. So, before I start, you've been in technology and IT services for all your life. But before you did that, you were graduating from or graduated from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta. So, I'm sure many of your colleagues have not taken the same path as you have, having encountered some of them along the way. So, what would you have done if you were not here or not in technology?
00:01:51 Rajesh Nambiar: Great question So thank you, Govind. First, it's an honor to be a part of the show. You know, thank you for inviting me for for this conversation. Man, are you right? I mean, you know, and if you look at Indian Statistical Institute, not many people have ended up in the tech ecosystem, you know, but you know, if I hadn't chosen this path, I'm absolutely, I would have gone out and you know, maybe hopefully would have done a, a little bit more education, gotten APHD or something and then entered into the education field is what what I would think. It was always a passion for me to be teaching. But I think the math and stat, which the Indian Statistical Institute teachers were a little bit too much for me. And I think you need to be a lot grainier than I am to somebody to succeed in that field. So I took the little bit easier out of being in technology.
00:02:33 Govind Ethiraj
And at that point, I'm sure you disappointed your family because this sounds like the kind of thing a family in India would expect their children to do.
00:02:41 Rajesh Nambiar: Yeah, absolutely. I think certainly some of the people are disappointed that I did not pursue APHD and then do something a little bit deeper in math and stat. But I thought this was a little bit more in the vogue at that point in time. Everybody was jumping into computers and technology and consulting and all of that. So I must tell you that it was a little bit of an easier path I chose at that point.
00:03:03 Govind Ethiraj: Anyway, so speaking about maths and stat, Rajesh, so one of the things that defines, let's say, the competitiveness of Indian software workforce or the IT workforce is our ability in maths and stats or and so on. I mean including the whole STEM universe. Tell us about where you see where we stand today as a country, as our workforce in the global competitive marketplace for talent.
00:03:29 Rajesh Nambiar: Absolutely. There is no question that, you know, India at this point in time has the world's best talent pool. And we continue to be the sort of the global talent hub for the world, especially given the importance of STEM. So, for instance, you know, a lot of people ask me this question saying, you know, with the new, the US presidential second term of Donald Trump, would there be a bigger impact for us? You know, I have always said this, look broadly, when you look at, you know, strategically there isn't much of an impact. You know whether it is the Democrat government or a Republican government, I think we've always enjoyed the right level of focus with the US and the talent hub that we have. The reason I am talking about the US is because 60 plus percentage of our $254 billion revenue which this industry creates comes from the United States. So that's important market for us, right. But tactically, the fact that the new president etcetera, we will certainly experience a bunch of things which are very different from what it is, right. While we have to wait and watch on the actual policies and Trump is also very big on executive orders and so on and so forth. So, you'll find some of that coming up soon. But the US historically faces significant shortages in STEM and digital talent, right?
So, with the demand for these skills are expected to continue to outpace non STEM roles through 20-30. This is across the world, more so in the United States as well. So, the Indian technology sector has been very, very critical and instrumental in bridging these gaps. And you talked about what is the play for the Indian ecosystem, whether it is math or stat, math, or technology. We have been playing this sort of bridging these talent gap for many countries, including the United States, particularly in states outside of the traditional take UPS. What I mean is that, you know, you have in the US you find these technology hubs, whether it is the New Jersey, you know, Chicago and so on, so that you know, the Bay Area, of course, California. We have also been able to provide these talents not just in these hubs, but in the hubs that you don't think of naturally South Dakota, for example, or Nebraska. And these are the areas where it’s very hard to find tech talent. And then that is something which the Indian technology ecosystem has played a phenomenally big role in filling those technology gaps as well.
00:05:41 Govind Ethiraj: Right. So, let's break down some of those things just so. One is, let's say the talent that has to onshore and that could be or that could see or face some challenges in the coming administration, and we'll come to that in a moment. But let us first talk about the extent of integration that we already have, whether as companies who are working with clients on shore, whether with people or without people. And the second, of course, is the reverse, which is, let us say, the entire GCC universe. And we have seen now the acceleration pick up to a point that several new GCCS are coming on board every day in the year. So, between the two, how is it all shaping up or how is it scaling up? And my question really is links to the strength of the bridge between the two countries. I mean, before we come to, let's say, the challenges that we'll face.
00:06:29 Rajesh Nambiar: Phenomenal as if you look at between India and the US, the technology relationship or technology trade relationship is at a certainly at a critical juncture, one which is of course as you, as you mentioned, they're both challenges and opportunity, but there are more opportunity than actually challenges in many ways, right. So, India is effectively capitalized on the shifting trade dynamics and obviously there's an arbitrage in that question, but it is more about technology arbitrage than the labour arbitrage over a period of time. Plus, we also finding that there's an innovation arbitrage. So, this is giving us a comparative edge over any other country which has a relationship with the United States. So, I believe that we're going to broadly be very, very successful. And even we talk about the second administration, second term of Trump administration, you know, we could also not just in technology, but even otherwise I think can accelerate the supply chain diversification, not just in our own sector, but also in sectors such as, you know, pharmaceutical, textiles, etcetera. So, I think I believe that it's a great opportunity here for the industry to capitalize on.
00:07:35 Govind Ethiraj: And let's come to the onshore part in the migration of talent. Now one of the challenges that we could potentially face is obviously you know areas like H1B visa and while there are a lot of tariffs, let's say potential tariff walls, that is unlikely to affect services, at least that's how it looks right now. So tell us about H1B visas and that part of the challenge and how is the industry or how is Nasscom looking at that?
00:08:00 Rajesh Nambiar: Great question though, because as I mentioned before, broadly, I think that you look at very high level, look at over a period of time, I think you've done decently well irrespective of which party actually came to the presidency in the United States. So having said that, if you get down to the brass tags and then I also mentioned earlier on the need for the same talent in the United States, clearly H1B types of programs, H1B being the majority of that. So, talent migration is a big topic for all of us, talent mobility, for instance. So, the stricter H1B policies will definitely restrict skill, talent mobility from India to the United. That is a very known fact. And this will affect the sort of the contributions of the Indian IT professionals to the US economy.
So, limiting, you know, this talent flow if you tend to have some policies around it could definitely pose substantial challenges to the US growth to begin with. And of course, the innovation at a time where the demand for skilled professionals is crucial for sustaining their industry competitiveness in many ways. So of course, this I'm talking from the the US side of the equation. Of course, there will be impact from India side equally as well specifically when we are talking about H1B visas. I also want to mention Govind that the biggest takers of H1B are the top US companies. This is something which is not a very fully known fact across the board, right. And they're also obviously, as you know are very top spenders in R&D. So, we have done some analysis and then you know according to that the H1B beneficiary approval data from the US Citizenship and the Immigration Services. So, India's tech industries, take all our Indian companies, whether this TCS, the PRO, Infosys, HCL, all, all of them put together, they've actually brought down their dependency on the H1B employment, right? They have brought it down by 60% in the last eight years. As you see it was huge. I mean there is BH1BL1B category visas 8 years ago that has come down by 60%, but in the same use of these same visas soared by 189% at the likes of the Amazons, Googles, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, all of them compared to the US based organizations use these visas a lot more to bring in talent from India than the India based employees. I mean the effect is probably the same. You know, if you really look at the talent mobility. I just want to make a point that this is not just an India problem, but it is also a a broad technology issues and then it'll affect the US economy equally when you look at it. And the the key though, Govind, we need to delink it from the illegal immigration and the broader immigration issues, talent mobility for specialized industries like such as us will have to be seen very differently from what they're dealing with in the from illegal immigration policy.
00:10:37 Govind Ethiraj: You're right. Yes, you're right. The issues are completely different. But I think in the campaign there seems to be some convergence in the way it is being depicted. But I will come back to that in a short while. You know when you talk about industry, that's Indian industry, which is the Indian IT majors and so on, bringing down the H1B dependence by 60%, Does that also suggest that there are some structural changes in the way business is being done or projects are being delivered?
00:11:02 Rajesh Nambiar: Two things I broadly see. One is that these companies have learn to be little bit more reliant on the local talent. So, you find more and more of these companies are hiring from the local universities, creating an ecosystem, you know, acquiring companies with a certain talent base within the United States. So that is one part of it. That means you are creating some local talent base which is support what we need to do. Second is also the offshoring of all of them, right? In the sense if in a project when you initially had 20% onset and 80% offshore, now you are looking at a maybe a 10% onset and a 90% offshore. So, ability for you. And especially if at all, there is something which the pandemic is taught us, it actually taught us to, you know, getting this work done from anywhere in the world, which also means that there is a, there's an increased buy in, if you may, from our customer base broadly, who can say that now we know you don't act necessarily have to have somebody sitting next to me in my office in New York. You can do this from wherever you want to do. That is why not only the tier one cities in India, but the even the Tier 2, tier 3 cities are gearing up to meet some of these demands. So that has also given a little bit of not too much, but a little bit of easing of the dependency on the H1B.
00:12:14 Govind Ethiraj: So let us talk a little bit about the outlook for the industry maybe the next year or next couple of years at least. How are you seeing things as we have come out of this whole and appears that we've now emerged from the post pandemic phase and things are normalizing, at least we can see that in the rest of the economy. So how are you seeing things?
00:12:33 Rajesh Nambiar: Quite honestly, this is a very mixed bag. You know, I see lots of opportunities and of course there are challenges as well. This is very unique because I find they're very well balanced. You know, depending on that's why it is very it gets to a company specific discussion when how they're actually leveraging this. So let me give you a sense of what I'm talking about. On one side, let's say the global macroeconomic uncertainties we have, the geopolitical tensions that we are, you and I watching every day in the news. These are resulting in supply, supply chain challenges.
This of course casts a shadow the broader landscape. So these factors have led to definitely subdued discretionary spending from the startup ecosystem point of view. We're finding a little bit prolonged funding winter and and a little bit of a cautious investor sentiment. That's what you're seeing on the one side and let's call it for example, our headwinds if you may. So on the other hand, several tailwinds present a very, very contrasting picture of optimism. How do I say that? So you look at the accelerated adoption of AI, suddenly you're finding a lot of green shoots where people are doubling down on what they need to do around AI, generative AI, and what they need to get done.
Sustained growth in tech investments. So we're finding a, you know, really good growth in those tech investments. Rapid expansion in the domestic market. I know going there, I don't know whether you'll notice that trend in the last year, we actually grew faster in our domestic market than the overseas or the what we call export market, which is a fantastic statement to how the industry in India is developing double digit growth in the GCCS. You talked about the GCC segment and why they need to pay attention to that phenomenal growth. A very, very heightened focus on our engineering in R&D, E R&D as we call it. They've been growing really well, a very, very vibrant and and fairly diverse deep tech startup ecosystem and of course increasing funding for generally way start-ups. All of these collectively is signaling a very, very healthy growth trajectory. So I talked about the headwinds first and this is the sort of the bunch of tailwinds, so very balanced. I believe that we are on the bottom of those the cycle and that's what we are going on the upward trajectory. But you know, time will tell how this all the shapes up. So I I'm very, very bullish, very positive. If you look at what is it?
00:14:45 Govind Ethiraj: You know, you did talk about 60% of India's IT services revenue, that's $250 billion coming from the United States. Now, the US economy has been very strong in the last year and has also seen growth rates which have not been seen for decades. So all of this means that companies in America, I mean the geopolitics apart, but the companies are doing well, which logically means that they should be investing more in IT and technology and expansion, including obviously absorbing AI. What does all of this mean for Indian IT companies, or at least as we stand here right now?
00:15:18 Rajesh Nambiar: As I mentioned, right, the industry is certainly moving towards a very intelligent and a resilient transformation, right. So this is capable of absorbing certain amount of volatility. Of course, beyond a certain level, everybody will find it hard to deal with those volatility, but I believe that the industry is all set to build a very sustainable growth model. And then you're finding that the new kind of the tailwinds I mentioned, you know, especially around pivoting into the AI, genitive AI, looking at a broader understanding of our customer base, all of that is actually very, very positive for the industry. You know, also we look at the, the ecosystem around deep tech and and AI start-ups, you know, those guys are also been doing really, really well. So I believe that the broader industry is definitely poised to grow. And then I, I think extremely positive when I, when I look at what the companies are trying to do.
00:16:09 Govind Ethiraj: So, you know, I was talking to Sandeep Jain at Wipro on the same Series A few weeks ago and he was talking about how they've, you know, done sort of did knowledge transfer to 240,000 employees, including their top brass on AI and AI applications. And then of course, how they've applied AI within their own company, which I'm sure is the case with other companies as well. But if I were to ask you for a more check of sorts rather than a specific response, how would you say is Indian it in a broad sense coping with the advent of AI? To what extent do you feel or how happy are you as you see the absorption and assimilation to really move to the next stage of then delivering high end projects and so on for clients world over?
00:16:54 Rajesh Nambiar: Again, as a little bit of a mixed bag, there is so much of optimism around the potential of AI. Let's put it this way, especially with the advent of generative AI, we find that more and more PO CS are getting built. So if you listen to any of the company's earnings review here that there is there's so much of optimism around how much they're working and the narratives around the discussion, what they're having with the customers are all around AI. Has it been translated into real large enterprise level projects? The answer is really no, right? And that's where I think the gap is going to be. And then that's where I think the work needs to be done. And but there's the potential for having some of that is very, very high. And I believe that there is also enough discussions around, you know, responsible AI. And I'll be really making sure that we're doing this in the right way, building those AI systems the right way, while we're building enough security and cyber security into some of these AI systems so that we'll make sure that, you know, this will go the right way. All of those conversations are beginning to happen as we stand now. Obviously, there's a lot of discussion on the jobs as well. And if you want, we can get into the details on what the impact of AI is going to be on the job. So I believe there is sufficient conversations beginning to show some initial results. We haven't seen any large impact on the enterprise system. Of course you know there'll always be phenomenal effect on the productivity of individuals. You will find a lot of use cases around transforming customer service for instance Govind, that's something which all of us pick up. All of that is USC, but we're ready to see any large-scale enterprise level impact on this point.
00:18:26 Govind Ethiraj: So when you say a large-scale enterprise, you're saying that let's say ABFSI client sitting in America is not yet putting out large AI transformation contracts. Is that or are you speaking more internally?
00:18:38 Rajesh Nambiar: It's both. I mean these companies have of course internally you do a lot of productivity enhancing measures with using AI and generative AI for sure. As you rightly said, if you look at a large BFSA client, have they found a phenomenal use case where they could apply generative AI and ensure that, you know, transforming the company at this today? I haven't seen much of those large scale enterprise case cases. I mean, of course don't mistake it for lack of activity. I mean you find a lot of activity, but at the end of the day, so those activity will have to culminate in something which is really big. And I haven't seen anything at this point in time. And we have just certainly seen a lot of lot of you know, productivity gains, you know, clearly automating the customer service, all of that is happening very, very specific nuances around creating for instance, even cyber resilience, etcetera, using AI. So you'll always find those good use cases which we can leverage, but we are able to see some of those, you know, enterprise level transformation use cases using generative AI.
00:19:37 Govind Ethiraj: So then let me ask you the flip question. You know, I'm reminded, I think it was in a discussion perhaps where Nasscom was the host and someone telling me that you know while we are talking about advanced, let's say computing systems and so on that many BFSI clients at that time, this must have been a few years ago, were actually looking for fairly age-old programming languages because their ATMs needed that and that is what their requirement was at that point. So in a way, are you saying that some of the biggest contracts and business requirements will still be to do with most likely more traditional? IT and IT services with a sprinkling of AI.
00:20:15 Rajesh Nambiar: Obviously, it's a combination that, you know, you cannot move away from what we have today. So technology shift, while it is rapid, you know, you'll really find that, you know, AI and generative AI etcetera will catch up in terms of, you know, doing a lot of new systems. Let's not underestimate the power of some of the systems, current technology systems be traditional legacy, etcetera. That doesn't go away in a jiffy, right? You know, eventually, I mean, over a longer period of time, they'll might get replaced. You know, even today with the advent of any technology that you see, you still have a lot of legacy left, right? You still have, you know, people still have to run their, you know, core systems day in and day out. And to your point, you know, look at the languages that being used, right? I mean, you know, today if I go out and ask which is the popular computing or programming language, you know, the answer actually is English, right? Because of the fact that, you know, you could technically, you know, not know any of the programming languages to really start to doing some customization and programming, etcetera. And that's a transformation that we have arrived. But does it mean that there are no programmers record answer is definitely no because this as I said, a significant piece of, you know, over 90% of the systems have, you know, no AI influence at this point in time. So that will continue to gradually change over a period and not in a hurry.
00:21:33 Govind Ethiraj: That brings us to now the job landscape and how that is changing. So in the last year or so, we've definitely seen Indian IT companies shrink and maybe expand a little bit once again. But the shrinking has happened for the first time in decades quite clearly. So where do you see that and what is sort of driving the jobs paradigm? Is it changing technologies? Is it slow down in business? Is it a structural change in business or something else?
00:21:59 Rajesh Nambiar: So the numbers that you're referring to are as too many parameters which is going into it to make what the trend that you see. First of all, the good news is that after several quarters of quote UN quote, the headcount, the total headcount declined for some of these companies. They've all have actually registered a little bit of a growth this quarter. I don't know that he noticed it. So which is the good news that I think people have finally turned around that broader employment curve, if you may.
Second thing is that happens because of several parameters. And I'll come to the generative AI and then impact it stay in a bit in a bit. But you know that there are several factors. Some of it is efficiency factor. When, you know, things got really tight, people looked at inwards and made it more efficient. You know, people used tools to make most of what they want to get done. I don't know whether there was a lot of AI productivity impact, but there was a little bit of those certainly. But there's also other things, for example, you know, getting a little bit more efficient, you know, looking at positioning, what they were trying to do internally into what they could do for a client. Lot of stuff happened for that period of temporary decline that you saw in some of those headcount numbers. Now, coming to AI, I've always said this, right? I don't think AI will replace jobs. People with AI will replace people without AI. Let's put it this way, right? Which means that you will still find some churn in the lower end of the spectrum. You will still find people are doing mundane jobs if they're not able to apply their their specific capabilities and skill set, if they don't understand AI and the especially generative AI and the impact of what they could do with their jobs. There is definitely a churn which is going to happen. I'm not suggesting in terms of the numbers, you know, maybe the total number of jobs getting created, maybe even higher than the total number of jobs getting replaced. That's something which we'll wait and see how that all spans out. But there is certainly this notion saying that people with AI will will, might end up replacing people without AI. And we are also witnessing, as I mentioned before, a sequential increase in hiring.
Finally, you know, quarter on quarter, you know with a little bit of a boost in demand, companies also by the way improve their current utilization levels, right, while attrition kind of remains unchanged over a period of time. So that's not a factor. We're very, very optimistic that we look forward to the next couple of quarters, quarterly results to see where this trend is, you know becoming a reality or it's only a aberration that the fact that we have increase in hiring. But I can tell you this though, the demand for digitally skilled talent continues to remain unchanged. I don't think that we saw much of a change in that. And it's also implicative that we should strengthen our capabilities in this areas, mistake areas. We talked about some of those new technology areas and also the focus on, you know, broader skill development in emerging technologies, business fundamentals, you know, for this industry to sort of have a long term success in the coming years.
00:24:45 Govind Ethiraj: So you touched on deep tech and AI startups or startups in general as well and some of the challenges that they faced on funding. But you also said that, you know, things are easing out when we talk about technology today and including AI. We are also obviously obviously touching on the hardware side of it, which we perhaps would not so much earlier. And when I say hardware, I mean semiconductors. You've written about the big challenges of, let's say the NVIDIA H100 GPUs and how it's revolutionizing the tech world, but also obviously, you know, taking up energy usage and energy costs. So we have to think about a few more things than we used to perhaps earlier. So what are your thoughts here in as we, you know, try and build this whole semiconductor ecosystem? We invest in high performance chips which comes with it's own sort of challenges. And how should India be looking at all of this?
00:25:33 Rajesh Nambiar: The global downturn in start up funding and in Europe have also seen there's an impact on the Indian deep tech, you know, clearly has caused a little bit of a, a deep start up ecosystem, right. In the calendar year 2023, Indian deep tech start-ups secured roughly about 850 million in investments. That was a decline of 77% over the the year 2022. So it was definitely, there was a bit of an issue with AI startups garnering a majority of this trade because now there's also an AI slant to it. And whether it's good or bad, I think people were, you know, the, the people with sort of AI in their whatever they're trying to do received a little bit of the better positioning compared to those without AI. Both the early and late stage deals have witnessed a reduction of roughly about 60% this year. Now this downturn is actually, you know, you can sort of say primarily attributed to the smaller average investment sizes at both the seat stage as well as the late stage and the investors remaining a little bit cautious largely due to the extended gestation period in, you know, typical of these ventures in some sense. Now, if you look at specifically into the Gen. AI startup investments, the country's Gen. AI ecosystem has demonstrated very strong and little bit broad based growth with, you know, certainly significant advancement in innovation funding, talent development, all of that. Now in the quarter 2 of 2025, generative AI startup funding witnessed roughly about, you know, 6X quarter on quarter search, which is good red fuel primarily by the B2B platforms and you know, productivity solutions and so on so forth. So funding gained a little bit of a momentum in the quarter that I mentioned, second quarter of 2025 with a record of 20 funding rounds, which is I thought was great, marking a very, very strong recovery after, you know, as I mentioned before, the very, very sluggish Q1, I think Q2 we picked up a little bit. So anyway, the Long story short, I think I see a lot of recovery in those funding areas as well. The quarter, of course, globally saw about four unicorns in the space, so pretty good broadly. Now having said all of that, while India is ranked #3 in the technology startup ecosystem, it is the sixth position when it comes to deep tech startups globally. So we need to do better in the deep tech ecosystem, much better than what we're doing today. Lot of positive things, but still startup must shift their focus from valuation games into sort of really value creation in some sense. So those are all the things that we need to be careful about. Now the second part of your question was around semiconductor. So that's a very, very, what should I say, hot topic at this point in time. And I'm just coming fresh from Dubai.
We had a Nasscom executive Council, had an offsite and then we had lots of discussions around, you know, semiconductors. So in some sense, we believe that it's a great opportunity, you know, for companies to sort of look at it seriously, the likes of Micron doing just fabulous jobs in terms of, you know, creating whatever they're doing with a very significant investment, as you know, COVID. So that's a good thing. We're also looking at it from the point of view saying that, you know, where are the adjacencies, for instance, you know, you're familiar with this ER and ecosystem that we have within NASCAR and and that has been growing leaps and bounds. Now is in some sense they are better poised to serve the semiconductor industry. In some sense, they can extend that. We know whatever they're doing. So we're also looking at some of the opportunity for them to get a little bit more involved in because they've already been involved in high tech manufacturing, high tech, you know, serving some of these the likes of the Nvidia's and the apples of the world. So how do you make sure that the semiconductor ecosystem is served by this group? So that's something which we need to see or, you know, probably create a separate focus around what we want to do with semiconductor. So traditionally I think we had stayed away from the true hardware, true semiconductor industry, but I believe, you know it's a time for us to, you know, truly look at them and say what is the impact because there is more getting packed on to the silicon these days and software than the traditional hardware that we are used to or we have tried to sort of look at it differently. So now I think with the semiconductor focus that we have as a country, I believe that you know, we are, we cannot, you know, let that pass by. I think there is there's so much of focus around what everybody how how does the rest of the ecosystem serve this industry and try to build a viable ecosystem for semiconductor in India is going to be the topic for us as well.
00:29:51 Govind Ethiraj: And this is something that I'd love to come back and do a separate conversation on because it's this is so fascinating about how, you know, the sort of the ground has shifted in some ways, you know, from our traditional separated worlds of hardware and software. So I'm going to definitely come back on this, you know, last couple of questions. So what is, you know, we talked about deep tech and AI startups and you also talked about how there are areas within that, which is Gen. AI, for example, where where you've seen now a funding, you know, resurgence or surge. Now, what are you telling people who are starting out in space or what would you like to tell them, particularly if they're thinking about diving into this right now? I mean, what are the areas that they can look at? What are those kind of specific use cases that people would either want to fund or actually more importantly, want to use in their enterprises?
00:30:36 Rajesh Nambiar: One of the things which is still a challenge in this area would be this patient capital as we know, right. And that's something which is we always struggle with it as an industry while we have made some progress, will continue to have the same issue. So when somebody was starting up now I think it's very important for them to focus on the solution that they're creating and you know, what problem are you really trying to solve? Because if they get too caught up in technology, I don't think they're going to succeed too much. Because you know, it is very easy for people to get carried away by generative AI or AI deep tech and all of this and then try and you know, get take a very technology view of things. I don't know whether that will go too far in my mind, if they creating, you know, they're starting up something which will truly solve a problem or address great opportunity for the industry, for the humankind.
That would be probably what I would where I would start and then leverage the technology such as generative AI or AI or you know, quantum doesn't matter what it is, if you can leverage those technology to solve the problem. But but if you start with technology, I think you'll end up in the wrong place. I honestly believe that if you start with something which is profound, something which is meaningful, something which you want to really solve and then use technology to solve that problem, then I think you'll get better and you'll get ease of funding for you to sort of really go out and make sure that you're building something which will be sustainable. I feel that you'll succeed. The chances of you succeeding will be far higher. We've met with a lot of startups last week when we were in Dubai, you know, they were leveraging the the DIC ecosystem there, DIC ecosystem, they're all places will actually encourage the startups to do something really well. And we found that these startups are really, you know, solving some really good deep problems for the humankind as opposed to sort of saying that, oh, I'm going to be a a startup, right. That becomes a little bit in my mind. That is, you know, unless you're creating technology, which is fine, you know, you can always create technology such as deep tech company will do, which is fine. But if you're trying to build a solution, I think you want to start problem rather than.
00:32:34 Govind Ethiraj: You know, when you talk about jobs and you've dwelt on that in some detail already, again, what's your advice to young engineers who are entering the workforce? And I'm sure you get asked this question every time, but the question is relevant literally every six months because things change. What are you telling them today or what would you like to tell them today in terms of getting themselves up for this opportunity that we have in Indian IT or for that matter even global IT?
00:32:58 Rajesh Nambiar: So go in and honestly, I think when you, when you look at this today, if I were to make a suggestion or recommendation, I think people have to double down on this capability called learnability. I'll tell you what I mean because today we are talking about generative AI. You know, I can guarantee to you that three years down the line, we're going to talk about something totally different. So you know, if somebody is doing their undergrad and then they invest all their time and their money and energy on learning generative AI is a good thing. But no, let's make sure that they're also able to pivot into something new come three years down the line. And hence, fundamentally, if you cultivate this skill set called learnability, which means that your ability to switch into anything different, maybe in adjacency, maybe not, that is the biggest skill set you need to acquire in today's world, either not double down on one's technology or the other. Broadly looking at saying that, you know, can I, can I be a lifelong learner and then ability for me to switch from 1:00 to the other should be very seamless. Because you know, if you double down on one technology or the other, you can 100% guarantee that, you know, 3-4 years down the line, you're going to be looking at you, you'll be obsolete. And then you have to look at something differently. So the days where you learnt one thing, you worked on the same thing for your entire career and you're retired, that's no longer exist anymore, right? So you, you got to be, you know, you got to be learning something and then knowing fully well that what I'm learning today will not be useful for me. And down three years down the way, I think that's what technology has done to us. You know, the rapid pace at which technology evolves means that you've got to be a technologist, not be learning one thing or the other, but ability for you to learn anything new. So learnability is my top pick on on that.
00:34:43 Govind Ethiraj: Last question and I can give you a few seconds to prepare. What's the best times that you've seen and the most challenging times that you've seen? And what's the one or two takeaways from that overall in all these years in IT? And what would you take away from that? Or what can we take away from that that will help be useful today in this very interesting time? Going back to our early questions about, you know, Trump and this new world and so on.
00:35:07 Rajesh Nambiar: One of the things we for the industry, let's talk about the industry, each company would have gone through the cycle very differently. Individuals would go through this differently. But if I look at the Indian IT services industry as a whole, then I would say the pivotal movement for us was clearly the Y2K. If I go back in history, why am I saying that? Because that's an opportunity that we saw ability for us to demonstrate as as an industry, we were able to solve that broader problem for the world and truly prevent and then make the rest of the world known. The capabilities of what India could do, the Indian technology systems could do. The reason why I'm picking on Y2K is because remember when come 1st of January 2000, all the businesses that you've built over that last three or four years solving the Y2K issue vanished overnight. Clearly the whole industry was trying to see how do I grow from that point onwards. And I think the industry took a phenomenal, I would say a very resilient move of saying now that we know these systems so well, customer systems so well, can we build a business around maintaining those systems? Can we build a business around leveraging those capabilities into developing something new for our clients? That is exactly what, you know really propelled this industry forward. So from that time onwards and if you look at the growth trajectory, it was just short up instead of declining those, you know, revenues because of the fact that you don't have this cash core business which we develop on Y2K, the industry actually grew better than what it was before. So that is one thing that is clearly the best moment when we were able to pivot into something new. And now I mean the most opportunistic moment at this stage is exactly something similar. What got us here will not get us to where we want to go, right? I mean this is a pivotal moment where people might, if the the promises of AI and generative AI etcetera comes true, you will gradually going to move stuff away from the traditional way of doing software development, traditional way of doing software maintenance, traditional way of addressing broader business process management. All of that is going to change significantly. Are you ready to make that move? So as an industry, we need to learn to make that pivot, learn to make that move into something which is fundamentally going to be different. I believe that there is a lot that the industry could do leveraging the data, for example. And we are very, very good at leveraging data as a as a country. And then we produce more data than anybody else. So how do you make sure that we are able to make the shift very seamlessly from a from a world with everything was done in a different way to a new world where the artificial intelligence, especially with generative AI, things are going to change for the good, but also will change the way we would actually live and work.
00:37:45 Govind Ethiraj: Rajesh, that was a great note to end on. Thank you so much for speaking with me and it was a pleasure talking to you as well.
00:37:52 Rajesh Nambiar: Thank you so much Govind, really appreciate the conversation.
