WHY THIS CAN BE INDIA’S TECH CENTURY

Shailendra Katyal, Managing Director of lenovo india, asks whether india can go from being the “Office of the world” to the “Factory of the world”? People are looking for more diversified supply chain options and that’s where Make in india comes in. Edited excerpts from a video interview…

- Sunil Rajguru

CAN INDIA TAKE ON THE WEST?
Increasingly what we see and hear is it's not: Us versus them. It's more about: Can we solve problems at a global scale? That's where a lot more appetite is coming in. Earlier it was only India solving for India. But now: Can India also solve for the world? That mindset and confidence is coming through over the last 5-6 years.

We've shown that we're able to leapfrog a lot of technologies. For example, many people never had a landline but suddenly we became the second largest smartphone market in the world in a very short span of time. The fact is that people had never used the device but became very comfortable with the Internet without knowing the language. Innovation, affordability and access are a few things, if you do really well, you can enable the country to do a lot more on the technology front.

We've done that in ITES successfully, also solving for scale. Maybe we have not done it in some sectors, but India forever has been the office of the world with all the offshoring drives and the fact that we have very qualified people and engineering talent. Language has not been a barrier too.

Going forward, India from being "Office of the world" can it also become "Factory of the world"? That's the new topic with Make in India as people are looking for more diversified supply chain options. The government has done a good thing in terms of promoting PLI schemes in many sectors, not just electronics. Many corporates, including us, are encouraged by it.

WHAT ABOUT STARTUPS? 
Startups are a true innovation for new and disruptive ideas coming in. Given that India has some of the biggest problems to solve (we have become the most populous country), if it can be solved for India, it can be replicable in a lot of other markets.