The knowledge industry in India is
on the verge of being able to make huge investments in global
brands, says Kiran Karnik, president of Nasscom, the apex
body representing India’s IT software and services industry.
Excerpts from an interview with Sanjay Gupta.
What are Nasscom’s plans in
facilitating India's leadership in the knowledge-based services
sector?
One of the things we are very keen
on is to create incubation centres where somebody with bright
ideas can translate it into a business plan or a product or a
patent and then use it.
We are also looking at working
jointly with universities and the ministry to see how we can
create an ambience within which knowledge is created and
respected.
Another area is building knowledge.
Right now the perception is that you are better off working for
two years rather than doing an M Tech. We are now looking at
changing that equation so that more people get into real
knowledge creation.
Why doesn't India have products
and brands? Isn't that more valuable than creating a
1,000-person sweatshop answering phones?
I don't see the two being exclusive.
I think the range of the knowledge, skills and expertise in our
country encompasses all that. You have people who have done a BA
general course.
I think opportunities like call
centres provide a great opening for them. By not giving up that,
how do we also move to create higher value-added things? And the
biggest value is in brands.
But building a brand takes huge
investments. Regarding the knowledge industry in India, we are
just on the verge of being able to make such investments.
One example in IT may be in the
banking industry where some Indian companies have created global
brands recognized within the banking industry. But if were to
create a consumer brand like Windows, I don’t think even for
the next five years Indian companies will have the size and
scale to do it.
But we can begin, as we have, by
creating brands that are recognized in the business world and
then move on from there.
Indian companies keep adapting to
the buzzwords such as call centres, BPO, bio-informatics. Should
they focus on what they can do best and sell it or do whatever
sells at the moment?
There are certainly some areas where
I think we have special advantage and we need to focus strongly.
One such area would be embedded software.
The second area, where we are just
starting but where we have special skills and capabilities is
design, especially chip designing. The third is bio-informatics.
We have very strong domain skills in
biology and biotechnology built up over many years of our
university system and research laboratories. Now combining that
with our IT skills gives us tremendous capabilities.
