KOCHI: There is much public outcry about layoffs happening in Indian IT services sector.Some questions need to be answered:
Did we have a work culture of design thinking, futuristic, product innovation processes for engineers in Indian IT services sector?
Did any of India’s IT sevices company provide appropriate exposure for IT engineers to product innovation eco-system?
Did we miss visionary leaders who could have built IT businesses beyond just IT services outsourcing?
Why didn’t our IT services companies build a product innovation eco system, although they had the superior advantage of tech talent, expertise, money and opportunity to revolutionize the tech world?
IT boom
In the late 80’s & 90’s, India made a tech revolution at global level. Contrary to how manufacturing jobs went to China which turned them into a world factory, India became the low cost go-to destination for mass IT talent & IT services jobs. In early 2000’s, IT industry reached the peak with several home grown billion dollar companies & global IT giants opening shops across top Indian cities creating millions of jobs for engineers.
Legacy Education System
Privatisation of education sector opened up thousands of professional engineering schools across the country. This resulted in creating opportunity for millions of students to get engineering degrees and attain basic qualification to get jobs in IT sector.However leveraging on basic fundamental tech skills available, IT companies invested in millions of dollars to open up captive job training centers to enable graduates and put them on client projects.
Bookish work culture
Indian IT services industry was riding on business models to take on IT services outsourcing projects. Software development, IT support, System Implementation etc were provided as low cost services through onsite-offshore business models. There was absolutey no vision to leverage existing talent, knowledge and expertise to promote design thinking culture to build futuristic product innovations that impact masses of people globally. Thus we always missed a made in India global tech product, although we had engineers, knowledge, expertise & infrastructure.
Eye-openers
The arrival of internet / digital economy, smart phones, social platforms and futuristic technologies such as Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, Data analytics, Robotics, Sharing economy etc triggered tremendous startup innovation opportunities. The world became a level playing field to leverage seamless connectivity, big data and innovations corresponding to multi sector automations.
Lost opportunity
Amazon began selling books and built a cloud system to support their e-commerce business, eventually turning that into a multi billion dollar business called AWS.Whatssap was founded by a bunch of kids when telecom companies fell asleep to be innovative although they had all the infrastructure, data, network, systems and talent in place.
Short-sighted Leadership
The billionaire leaders and their companies were glorified and celebrated as success icons across the country. They created millions of jobs, making significant contributions to the economical growth of the country. However India’s legacy IT leaders also reflected lack of sustainable, futuristic, visionary & innovative leadership approach. India’s IT billionaires celebrated their glory and they comfortably focused on investing their massive wealth in resorts, hotels, real estate, charity etc.
The glorification of Indian IT services industry is obviously taken a back seat. When a shop floor manager from European factory gets an error on his computer application, he logs in a ticket that lands at a helpdesk in Indian IT services company office, an IT engineer remotely checks it and fixes the bug. Now this is changing? The same job can be done by an Artificial Intelligence powered automation system invented by a tech startup which will eliminate the need for a remote IT support engineer from India.
Startups
Present buzz word in IT sector is startup. As such, startups focused on customer adoption, revenue, profitability & sustainable business models through continous innovation will be successful and define the new future of IT sector.
India’s legacy IT Companies and its engineers should proactively invest in acquiring new skills and adapt to new business.
The author is the CEO and founder of Corporate 360