Indian IT industry leader Vineet Nayar underscored the need for the industry to put employees back in the centre of its strategy here on Thursday.
“Employees are the reason we are here. Why are they a cost now?” he asked, making five suggestions for the industry to accelerate its growth rate. Besides renewing focus on employees, pursuing higher aspirations, being less risk averse, an emphasis on differentiation and taking a re-look at the sales strategy were suggestions that the former CEO of HCL Technologies had for the industry.
“These are the things that we need to think of if we need to get to a $100-billion industry,” Mr. Nayar, chairman and CEO of Sampark Foundation, told the HYSEA Innovation Summit-2019, the 27th in the annual series.
On the importance of renewing focus on the workforce, he said employees were behind the success of the industry.
“They worked nights and days. We empowered, energised and trained them, and sent them to countries they have never gone before… and they clicked and delivered this $50-billion industry. Why are employees a cost now? Why are employees a problem now?” he asked.
“We have to put employees back in the centre of our strategy, not as costs, but as opportunity. Every single global customer will tell you that the reason he/she chooses Indian IT industry versus some other place is because of people. We have to have faith in the people that they will navigate us out of this situation,” Mr. Nayar said.
“Let’s think about the employees once again and see if we are getting that strategy wrong. Cost-cutting is fine, I am not in dispute with that, but it can be done with finesse, with a human heart. It is done by energising people and not by threatening them,” he said. “Now is the time to make the change happen,” he said, adding that the industry ought to address the growth rate, people and leadership crises it faced.
Telangana Chief Secretary S.K. Joshi said innovation in governance was important and relevant to industry. The government, he said, working towards ensuring that ease of living and ease of doing business would get much more simpler and better in the days to come.
The session also saw presentation of the HYSEA Lifetime Achievement Award to T. Hanuman Chowdary, first Chairman and MD of VSNL. Awards under various categories such as exports, product development, CSR and newly-instituted best women-led start-up were also presented.
This year’s Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association (HYSEA) Summit saw participation of over 120 start-ups, 700 delegates and had 90 exhibiting stalls, a release said. A report ‘Scale@Hyderabad – The Global Technology Destination’, brought out by the Association, was also released.
HYSEA president Murali Bollu, STPI Director General Omkar Rai and Telangana IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan participated in the concluding session.
