NEW DELHI: Genpact chief executive Tiger Tyagarajan said that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation-related efforts of most enterprises across verticals, and has cut timelines to 6-12 months from 4-5 years.
ETGlobalTownhall: Genpact CEO Tiger Tyagarajan on digital transformation, skilling, and India opportunity
“The transformation has been driven primarily because the customer has no option but to change to online. So, we see five trends that are driving this trend ideal shift from offline to online. If during a particular industry, the web penetration was 5%, it’s moving very quickly to 15-20%. If it absolutely was already 20%, it’s moving to 40-45%. So in every industry shift from offline to online,” he said during a panel on digital transformation at the ET Global Townhall.
“Shift to the cloud is picking pace globally, besides enterprises leveraging virtualization.”
The objective of digital transformation, he said, mustn’t be cost reduction because it won’t yield desired leads in the long run.
Governments and corporations have to work on reskilling people to come up with more employment as businesses change the way they operate using digital technologies and tools.
“The challenge is that transition…reskilling if you solicit from me is that the single biggest challenge the globe. you’ve got to reskill people. you have got to reskill your own people,” he said. “Skilling is totally variety one priority within the tech industry.”
“Global unemployment is at an all-time high at once. And yet, I believe as we expect about newer and newer skills, demand for talent will never decline. That’s where India can top off that space by learning new things…it’s a young population,” Tyagarajan said.
Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said that reskilling must be the national priority of the Indian government and firms.
“These are a few things we’ve discussed with the Prime Minister and he strongly supports and agrees that skilling needs to be the foremost important thing that India has to do. Talent is one place where India has a bonus,” Ghosh said.
Both Tyagarajan and Ghosh said that the role of colleges and better education needs to fundamentally change with a spotlight on aptitude.
The Genpact chief executive also said that India is being checked out because of the new destination under the companies’ diversification strategy. “Companies that haven’t been in India, but are in other parts of the planet, or wont to lie with only in their home markets are realizing that they have diversification.”
Nasscom’s Ghosh said that India is the most preferred destination for GCCs. “We have the most important number of GCCs doing R&D within the world. So that’s already happening which has tremendous potential for growth for further investment therein sector, especially as companies have seriously started gazing ‘China+1’ strategy. Especially for high-tech companies.”
Sunil Dixit, administrator at the new digital business at BBVA said that partnerships will become the new norm for companies across sectors as they’ll examine co-creation rather than building everything by themselves which could be capital intensive exercise.
“…the availability and access to innovative startups become an especially important consideration for these companies,” Ghosh said.