Tech Conversations.

Tea’l Time with PS Reddy | Cloud-based Contact Center- What’s New!

For a sector where employees have always worked out of their offices, how difficult was it to overnight build capabilities around any time, anywhere, work flexibility?

This was one of the biggest challenges faced, especially for the contact centre industry, where working from home was never an option. Even in sectors like banking, insurance, and healthcare, clients don’t prefer to work from home. The majority of our population was only working from offices. There was never a setup to work from home. So, during the pandemic, there was a need to enable this overnight. This varied from country to country. But in India, infrastructure was a major challenge because most employees had a shared infrastructure in their house, and many did not have a computer. So multiple challenges had to be handled, like enabling them with a computer and an internet connection. Immediately tie-ups were done with some logistics companies and service providers like Airtel, Tata, and ACT to provide them with dongles, internet connections, and UPS at home so they don’t get disconnected when there is a power failure at home. Within a week, the setup was done for 20,000 plus employees in India, and 80% of the people had started working from home.

Many large organisations like yours have relied on legacy on-premise contact centre solutions. Are there any challenges using those infrastructures to enable remote work?

So, there are two parts to it, one is behaviour, and the second is security controls and monitoring. Enabling security and monitoring is the easier part than managing user behaviour. Because there is a tendency to use the same computer for social media, their user credential harvesting happens from there, and snipping activities increase massively, requiring immediate implementation of security tools, like cyber work with redactor monitoring. In the last two years, there has been an investment of nearly 8 million in security tools to take appropriate action at the right time. For example, if ones is supposed to log in from, say, Hyderabad and work from 9 to 6, and if the activity shows login from 10 in the evening to morning 5, then immediately the security team will get an alert saying that this user generally works 9 to 6 every day and today is working at different hours. So, can you please check with this user? So, you get that kind of alert that a particular user is using another application that day etc. Artificial intelligence also plays a significant role in remote workforce security.

Cloud-based contact centre solutions are better equipped to manage remote work setups with limited infrastructure and setup costs. But what happens to investments in legacy infrastructure? How do you balance that? Also, what happens when all your employees are back in the office?

The legacy infrastructure is not built for cloud enablement or remote workers connecting from the Internet. It does not have the setup to take calls through the browser. So, we work with service providers like Genesys, Cisco, Awaya, and NICE, who help us to enable this and workarounds. When remote workers connect to our environment for security, we have a workaround technology and install a softphone on their system. This has been challenging and is not the right way of doing it. But still, it can’t be removed entirely because there is a lot of investment.

Do you see on-premise and cloud-based solutions co-exist? Which are some of the contact centre functions which are ideal for cloud-based deployment?

Both will have to coexist for three reasons. One is for any seasonal ramp-ups, and work-from-home is not a constant. The hybrid mode is changing on a daily basis in every organisation, in every city, and in every country. In that case, one can go to the cloud and enable them immediately. This is the kind of flexibility that a cloud contact centre gives. Also, most legacy systems are not equipped with the Omnichannel platform or chart contact centre. All this is not enabled. So, then we can use the cloud technology with the existing on-premise legacy systems, and this will coexist and work together. And for the voice platform, it will be on-premise. Cloud service providers are equipped with omnichannel platforms with social integration. So it will be easy to implement for today’s millennial and GenZ agents. Both will coexist for at least the next few years.

What are some typical implementation and integration-related challenges businesses face while migrating to cloud-based contact centre solutions? What are your views on Regulatory and Compliance related challenges?

There are a couple of challenges. One is in terms of regulatory requirements. Each country has its regulatory requirements specifically. In India, we have our regulatory requirements, which must be addressed and taken care of. Second, is the cloud conduct service. That is one of the biggest challenges. And the third is about security. Deciding on who is the best service provider for us to migrate. The majority of the contact centre providers earlier worked on the subscription model only. No one is talking about a fixed model license, like buying a license for the on-premise system. So, you will only go with the cloud instead of a subscription model. The cloud model's primary challenge is migrating legacy applications from our clients and integrating this into cloud infrastructure. But some applications still need to be modernised, and some need to be cloud-ready.

Cloud, they say it's a pay-per-use model, but consider a sector that is using certain functions on a daily basis. How does the ROI map up? Is there an analysis to see how cloud-based content actually maps up to legacy-based solutions from an ROI perspective?

Regarding the ROI, for some cloud solutions, say you are paying $98 per user per month, whereas legacy systems cost $25 per person per month. If you calculate the ROI over six or seven years, you still can't match it with the legacy. There are definitely benefits of cloud, but pricing is an area of concern because cloud pricing is way more expensive. And if you want more adoption of a cloud contact centre, the cost is a significant factor. So, it has become very important that the service providers revisit their pricing and consider reducing it. But the small contact centres can go to the cloud immediately because it is easy for them to get an on-premise installation going. But with the larger contact centres organisations with a larger number of employees working across the globe, it is not very easy to go to Cloud immediately because of the cost factor.

Tea’l Time with Saurabh Kishore | Rules of Omni-Channel Success

Why haven’t we seen much success in omnichannel retail in India?

Most retail companies predominantly started with one dominant online or offline channel. The future of retail is on the channel because customers want to be served the way they like, whether it's online or offline. Sometimes they want to experience, touch, and feel the product. Sometimes they want the convenience of these items to be delivered to them. As a retailer, we have to be ready for that. And that's where really the Omnichannel has become so significant. If you look at the COVID journey, many offline retailers had to expand their online presence to reach out to their customers. This is a challenging transition for many players. This has its own nuances and has its own complexities. For any retailer, customer, price, inventory, order and products are the five core data the business uses. It can be challenging how do you get a single source of data for both channels and how do you manage that? If you cannot get that consistent view across channels, there are challenges in implementing a successful Omnichannel model.

Role of technology in an omnichannel setup – physical store & e-commerce. Can the customer experience a seamless experience across formats?

Firstly, it has to be the same proposition; whether a customer interacts online or offline, the company should be able to offer a customer the same tool. The second thing which is extremely important is that the channels should complement each other. That's really where the beauty of an Omnichannel is. It's not only about customer interactions on one channel or the other; they can seamlessly travel through the channels. They can start offline but place an order online and end the transition online, or vice versa. When they research, they can start a discovery online and finally shop for it in the store and have it delivered to them. So that’s how it becomes a seamless customer experience.

How do you manage inventory visibility and data synchronisation across channels?

Your back-end platform must remain the same to build a successful omnichannel platform. So there is hardly any data transition. It's a single source across channels. Whether it's the product information, or the inventory position reno, one should see the inventory position. There is an element of store availability versus online delivery, but as long as you keep it as a single backend platform with the same data, be it the store, the website or the app. There are specific nuances of the data, as you might have certain products available in the store and certain products available in the store but only for display purposes. They are being delivered from a warehouse or like an online order. Keeping a single view of the data and a single source of truth becomes a lot easier.

Can we expect technologies like AR/VR to enhance the customer experience in the future?

Some of the best use cases of ARV are in the retail space, especially if you're a channel retailer, because this category is perceived to be a very touch-feel category. People like to shop more in a physical setting. But there is a change the behaviour and shopping trends. That's where technology plays its role. To enhance customer experience, certain retailers outside India have implemented 3D product catalogues. You get a more 3D view of a product that's as close as experiencing a product in a store because you get a steady picture of the product. It saves you the time to stand in the store. All you do is scan a QR code, open a PDP page of your app or from your website, and you get to see the entire product range. Here the advantage is also when standing in front of a shelf in a physical store; the information you have is minimal of the product. But when you open an online product detail page, you get all the specifications and details of that product. So that’s when technology comes in and bridges the gap between the online and offline experience.

What is the role of analytics in streamlining the processes of omnichannel retail?

To streamline the process, data analytics and data insights play an important role. For example, you have a customer shopping at the store, and you are delivering it from the store, and you also have an online order leaping into the same inventory on the same shelf. You have to service both customers. You can't have a very high percentage of online order cancellations simultaneously. Nor do you want your walk-in customer to go back disappointed. That's where a single view of inventory really helps.

How do you ensure that, in real time, you are dipping into the inventory for both your online and offline orders? How do you capture the information on a real-time basis? When should the order be dropped? When should the order be picked up, when should the order be taken back, and when should the order be shipped? How do you get the backlog of the orders? What is the capacity of that store? How many orders can they take? What is the inventory of that store for a particular SKU? Where should that order be directed? If they go to a specific store, there is a basis for computing the shipping costs, delivery timelines, inventory availability, etc. Now that store is not able to serve that order for whatever reason. You have to direct it to some other store or some other node. Or it could be a warehouse. So many data insights, computations and analytics are also needed. And then, you also provide the post-factor information on the analytics. You need to understand consumer behaviour; you need to understand the customer journey. Capture those at every step along the way. You can look at the browsing pattern and feed that into your offline channel.

So, it combines the customer journey and how you manage the fulfilment and shipment and optimise different costs. And then pass on those benefits to your customers eventually.

Tea’l Time with Priya Kanduri | Zero Trust- Understanding the Concept

It is said that Zero trust is a framework. What exactly does that mean?

Zero Trust is the most spoken-about terminology in the last two years, especially during the remote and hybrid workforce days. There's so much emphasis on zero trust. It's a simple architecture framework built or should be built on the principle of never trusting anything, always verify, no explicit trust, and direct verification. And it applies to access authorisations, enablement devices, data sharing, and every operation within an organisation's network. So, we're talking about replacing Implicit Trust with Explicit Permission and verifying it every time to stop threats from moving within the network. That's what the Zero trust framework is all about.

Is Zero Trust, what we traditionally know as identity and access management, taking it over and beyond the traditional realms of parametric network security?

Absolutely. It is like the next level of identity access management. Most organisations on the journey of Zero Trust in the last couple of years have all started by implementing a robust identity and access management framework because we are saying don't trust anything and verify every time. It starts with identity and access authentication, stricter and multifactor authentication measures, and authorisation. But we should also not just limit it to people, but apply it to devices, and apply it to data access and every access point within the network and extend it to non-human identities as well, and try and verify as much as possible at the network and perimeter level. So, it goes beyond perimeter security and takes the overall identity management framework to an entirely new level.

How can an organisation implement it? Can an enterprise implement this on its own? Or does it require the expertise of a solution vendor?

Achieving zero trust is all about controlling visibility, context, and understanding the business. Both of these are key factors to successfully achieving Zero Trust. Organisations are not required to go for a rip-and-replace model that will be typically long-haul projects and may not guarantee success. They are not cost-effective and may only fit some sizes of the organisation. What's important is aligning the roadmap of zero trust. Have a vision of zero trust and align it with your enterprise. The roadmap and the page should be adjusted to align with your current and future IT and security levels. Whether to go for an SI or do it in-house also depends on the organisation and way of approaching IT and security today. If they are done in-house today, then there's no reason why they should go for an SI. Or if they already have partners, they are the best people to enable zero trust.

When discussing zero trust controls, we must understand who we cater to. Are we focusing on customers, employees, or banks and offices? What are your business priorities? How are they going to impact? How is your Zero trust going to impact where the data is stored? What are the points from which accesses are coming in, and can we continuously know who is creating risk, and are we focusing zero trust on those aspects? If these are figured out, then there are various solution design options to choose from that are cost-effective, which doesn't mean a complete rip and replace of what we are trying to do but focuses more on practical goals and implementation. But a clear vision should be in place. Why are we doing zero trust? How are we doing it, and what pains and risks will we address once they are figured out? If there is a technology in place today, similar technologies can be used to implement zero trust. Many seamless Zero trust integration products and solution options are available in the market today. But whoever is managing your infrastructure and security today, it is best to bring zero trust into it seamlessly. However, organisations must have a careful vision and road map regarding how they want to achieve it and guide their partners accordingly.

What about the existing investments in enterprise security? Are there ways where one can leverage existing security solutions to reach the end objective? Or does this require a complete overhaul or purchase of new solutions?

To decide on this, it's essential to assess where you stand concerning zero trust readiness quickly. Do a short evaluation of the risks today, the access risks, the attack surface areas, accesses from inside, and your partners and remote employees. What devices do the accesses come in, what are your critical applications, and who has access to them? Are my applications zero trust ready? Are the endpoints from which the accesses are coming in. Are they zero trust ready? Where am I storing the data, is that Zero Trust ready? And finally, networks, are they zero trust ready? If we do a quick assessment of these five or six areas, that's a perfect starting point to figure out what are the gaps to be plugged in and then define the roadmap and then talk to vendors and partners in terms of how to achieve it, not before, because then you get to hear multiple versions.

What are the drawbacks or challenges in deploying a zero-trust framework?

There are definitely challenges. We are discussing trusting nothing and explicitly verifying everything, introducing the business challenge of 99.99% availability. Before implementation, the first question is, will I be able to access the application if everything goes down because downtime is a loss of business? Everything is done to enable business growth, not to reduce revenue. So, there is a very fine balance that we need to strike. And the way to address it is to have a plan A and B and objective C and look at it in a full-fledged, foolproof zero trust model.

This is how the access is going to work. And if there is a challenge, this is a business continuity plan where we will give a restricted environment, restricted accesses, and business. This is how business users will still have access, and these services will still be shut down. That adds additional cost and additional uncertainty. It is not just with zero trust. This is what happens with security. It's a delicate balance between ensuring security versus ensuring productivity and not hampering business continuity. That's a challenge that continues to be there. And the second challenge is how to bring it in with little investment and make it a manageable task to achieve, which, again, requires careful introspection, definition, roadmap and strategy, and planning. So, the challenge once again is the fine balance between zero trust versus business enablement, business continuity, and business growth.

Does the end-user experience suffer as a result of multi-factor authentication protocols?

Multifactor authentication is designed not around security but should be designed around end-user experience. Only then can it be a huge success, and will it help users' experience?

For example, We recently implemented multifactor authentication, which did not require any password authentication for a healthcare customer. These are doctors who have to authenticate and swipe everywhere they go. They work across multiple hospitals, mainly because they are shared doctors. They must remember the hospital's ID and password to log into the system. Half the time, they call the help desk to remember their password or user ID. To resolve this, we introduced a multi-factor authentication or a password-less authentication where doctors don't have to log in and type in their user ID and password every time. All they have is one token. You touch it everywhere and are in the system, restoring your workspace. It's a tremendous user experience enhancement for them. It's like your day suddenly has become so good that you look forward to going to work. That's a simple example of how multi-factor authentication can help the user experience.

A simple case of what Microsoft did with Microsoft Authenticator. There were so many authentications that were required before. Now all you need is an authenticator app on your phone. When you are ready to go across all Microsoft platforms, all you have to do is, every 14 days, do your face ID on your Authenticator app, and you're done. So multifactor authentication can be a massive enhancer of end-user experience if designed and implemented correctly.

So to sum it up, some areas directly affect the end-user experience, and some are behind the scenes, like what we do on 24/7 operations or even zero trust architecture enablement where we do network segmentation software defend architectures. Those don't directly affect the end users. This happens behind the scenes. We are trying to protect their interest, but they don't physically feel it. But certain areas directly affect the end-user experience, and those have to be designed keeping the end-user experience in mind, not just security.

Tea’l Time with Avinash Velhal | Understanding BlockChain

What is blockchain? How is it associated with Distributed Ledger Technology?

Primarily a blockchain is a distributed ledger with transactions spread across the entire network of computers and nodes accessible to multiple people around the globe. So, each transaction is created in a block that is hashed. So, the next block again matches with the mathematical computation, discovers the hash, and puts it in the blockchain, and that chain is known as a blockchain. If somebody wants to hack or try to change the record, they have to get all the nodes in the network, which is practically impossible because it's spread across the entire network. So primarily, a distributed ledger is very immutable and secure. Earlier, blockchain technology was mainly used for crypto, bitcoin, but today there's a vast potential to utilise this distributed ledger technology in enterprises for multiple solutions.

What is the difference between distributed network or a distributed server versus a distributed ledger?

In a distributed server network, you have a database copy referring to a central server and distributed nodes accessing the ledger. A distributed ledger technology has no central authority or server managing the database. The whole thing is spread across the network without central authority. So, it's decentralised. Every node is a contributor. Few nodes are consensus algorithms that vote and add to the node. It depends on how you are configuring the network analytics.

For Web 3.0, or metaverse, there is the entire concept of decentralisation. Do you have some common ground when discussing blockchain and beta work?

In Web 3.0, you will create a blockchain environment without affecting your data privacy. There won’t be any central Facebook or central Google that will control the information. There will be a blockchain environment that will store those records, and that will be decentralised and authorised. So, if you talk in technical terms, it's called DAW - Distributed Authority Operations, wherein most people who have an influence will vote. The maximum votes will generate what will happen in the chain network. The blockchain 3.2 environment will come, but it will take time as Google, AWS, and IBM are working very hard on this.

What is the future of blockchain for enterprises?

The technological aspects of the blockchain are very important. So, you can create IDs that are like irrefutable IDs. That can lead to a lot of asset identification and asset creation. Like Nifty, nonfungible tokens are created digitally, representing real-world assets or art pieces. The music space has also latched on to this technology. But many environments can be utilised in multiple enterprises because of this immutable, irrevocable, secure, and prominent base. Today, if you have any asset, the record is in individual enterprises or entities, and nobody has end-to-end product visibility. But in blockchain technology, from the start to the end, you will know from where the product originated, who made changes, and what changes were made till the time of disposal. And it is available for all users to see. So, at any point in time, any organisation from any place can look at it. This significantly impacts the supply chain, where you must go through multiple agencies across multiple regions.

Which are the industries that are likely to drive blockchain adoption in India? Can you share some use cases of blockchain by sector?

Today blockchain is used in the supply chain, retail, government services, intellectual property, healthcare, oil and gas, real estate, manufacturing, agriculture, journalism, tourism etc. In India, RBI is working on a digital rupee. So BFSI industry, once that comes through with our UPI background, O and M network, will be a massive boost for India, and we'll leapfrog a lot into industries. Also, all the significant banks, ICICI, Kotak, HDFC Bank, and others, have launched blockchain loan systems in the country. Even the government of Maharashtra is already working on variable management and governing birth and death ratios.

In terms of education today, we have a massive issue in terms of fake certificates, paper leaks, and conducting re-exams. So, many universities have started adopting blockchain technology to derive all the unique ID certificates. When the certificates are issued, they can be easily validated across the network. In terms of healthcare, it is used for medical reports, etc. So multiple consolidations are needed. For example, the Maharashtra government with Hospitals has formed nodes of donors, hospitals, and agencies involving the health departments. This means the blockchain matches the demand-supply, maintains the donor's anonymity, and helps in record manipulation. The gem and diamond industry also uses it to certify diamonds, etc. Mining and energy industries use it for renewable land records. Eight years back, we are trying to push the cloud concept. So, blockchain is something like that. But now, it will catch up slowly as adoption grows.

How can an organisation assess where to start their blockchain journey?

So, the data you want to include in the blockchain is critical and must be validated on whether whoever owns it. It would be best if you mapped that. Then you need to validate who are the partners you need to share the data with, be it a business sharing partner or a supply chain partner—and finally, derive the value, which is a crucial driver and put it on a decentralised network. So, in today’s context, security is a big value driver, leading many enterprises looking at security to get onto the blockchain.

Does an organisation need specialised software or infrastructure for blockchain projects?

An infrastructure and software development environment is always required for your blockchain environment. Whether you need a bare metal infrastructure or a cloud environment will depend on the use case on how it will get access, which will decide a cloud environment. On software, multiple software applications are all based on different Ethereum-based blockchains that choose and derive the environment. So you may have a private blockchain, a public blockchain, or a federated blockchain. Also, you may have a permission blockchain where you are organised with permissions to the nodes or a permissionless blockchain. So it is a set of nodes, technology, and architecture that must be in place. Blockchain as a service is offered by multiple agencies like AWS, IBM, etc., and numerous collaborations are also coming based on the technology.

Can you share some learnings from a blockchain project you have worked on?

Yes, after being actively involved in forums today, you want to address the blockchain challenge. So primarily, interoperability means that when you enter a blockchain, you must assess your customers and the consumers. Because there are so many blockchains and consumers, since it's a distributed environment, how many nodes are on your blockchain network is critical so that you attract those nodes, and your solution starts with you. So, there are still a few of them right now, but this will happen slowly. But the first challenge is interoperability. Second, you have many legacy networks. They constitute a significant hurdle for blockchain because people are already invested in It. Technology is changing the whole economy; you can't rip and replace, which is why today, many things are still running in legacy and on cloud. Data is primarily a distributed network, and there is a question in people's minds since they are unclear about technology, ‘Will my data be available to all’? ‘Will my transaction be transparent’? ‘Will the competition copy my transaction if it is public’? Third, new skill sets are scarce and very expensive. So that becomes a challenge. But, the application base is enormous. That's where the use case becomes most important. Some things you really cannot put a cost to it, and it has to imperatively go on because of the security and flexibility of the business.

Cryptocurrency is a great example of blockchain, but how can Enterprises use it?

Crypto is a considerable use case and a significant component of blockchain today. And it's also part of the ICO (initial coin offerings) for start-ups. People are still trading and making money. Billions and trillions of dollars are involved. So blockchain is put on to that platform. But to distinguish between the crypto and the DLT, DLT is the one that enterprises will start utilising and leveraging. Today the government is coming down hard on any offerings of any companies in India. But at the same time, they are working on a digital routine. So, it means a barter system in Bitcoin for a distribution moment. We are coming up with Asia centric financial setup system because of all the Ukraine, Europe, and US complex geopolitical tensions. So, things are working out concerning the social mobility cloud, and today, it's like Bitcoin, IoT, and AI. New combinations that will work together and in sync will deliver massive potential for the business.

Tea’l Time with Harish Soni | Integrating Cybersecurity with Business Continuity and Disaster Management

Covid-19 has altered the contours of conventional BCDR practices, and operational resilience is built into the strategic BCDR plans of today. Considering this, how do you view business resilience differently today? What is the need of the hour, and how can businesses ensure a resilient environment?

Today the pandemic has changed the industry. It's not just for a specific industry; it has changed across. It has given me a new thought process. Resiliency, as a word, is more than just business. But also in people's life, people want it to be like how we can be resilient and then come back up. During pre-pandemic, resiliency focused more on natural disasters or calamities. But post-pandemic, we saw a massive jump into the digital journey of every organisation. Every organisation started thinking of the digital launch of their platform and supply chains, and all those old-school thought processes were disrupted, and a new mindset had to start post-pandemic. When W H O declared a pandemic in March, everybody had to rethink it. So there's been a massive change in the resiliency thought process where post-pandemic organisations had to think not just from the technology perspective but also from the people and the business perspective.

What are some of the commonly overlooked areas while creating a resiliency plan for organisations, and How’s a business continuity plan different from disaster recovery?

A business continuity plan is different from a DR plan. DR is more towards pointed solutions, like if the building crashes or somebody pulls the plug off the hardware. That's where a DR plan comes in, but business continuity is like an ecosystem in which you have to think across people, processes and technology; you consider all those and make a plan. So organisations need to think about it from that perspective. And what happens when they overlook this situation? So, organisations, from enterprise to mid-size, usually manage their organisation's assessment. For example, you talk to an enterprise or a midsize organisation that fails to do that assessment of their organisation or business, which we call a BI assessment. It is vital to your business to know how much the company's valuation is and how much downtime they can expect. So looking at all the scenarios, what if one thing goes wrong? What is the impact of it? So BI assessment, compliance and regulations are essential because post-pandemic, we've also seen that the regulatory has taken a hot chair. Because there are so many disruptions post-pandemic. So it is better to rewrite our books and see how we add those factors to improve things. So BI assessment is one of them, and secondly, what my architecture is like. During the post-pandemic, customers apply many quick solutions to get into the digital journey. But that meant they overlooked security; they made a complex architecture. Unless the architecture gets simplified, the problems will increase.

Do you think that other than RTO and RPO, some other elements to your BCDR plan are necessary to ensure that you are more solid and prepared for future challenges?

RTO and RPO have been standard norms. It is terminology used at how quickly you can recover and at what point you'll be able to recover. Cause organisations want to see how one can have their business run actively. If you look at the hyper scalers data, IBM Cloud, they all talk about how quickly we can get the business or the systems hosted in one environment into another, so we use near DR active landscape. Near DR is a terminology, like when you talk about a disaster that is 300 kilometres away. That's typically the Zones system in different states. But a near DR is how I can set up another data centre quake, which could be a hundred kilometres away, which is in closer proximity, so I don't have to spend too much on it. And I'll hop my critical business in that landscape. So in case of a disaster, my critical business comes in from that disaster location as compared to far DR.

How’s a business continuity plan different from a disaster recovery plan?

For business continuity, an organisation has to look at the entire landscape. In DR, People look at every component level. What if my specific system goes down? What if my particular application goes down? What if my building crashes? What if there is a cyclone? So that's a DR-specific situation. DR is part of more considerable business continuity. It would be a subset of business continuity. Because when we talk about business continuity, we touch on everything. What is the risk, and How can I mitigate it?

As the landscape of cyber security constantly evolves, how can organisations integrate their BCDR strategy with Cyber Resilience? What are some benefits of such combinational synergies between BCDR and Cyber Security?

Cyber-attacks have increased post-digital transformation. The attacks on government agencies or the attacks on manufacturing, healthcare and banking have just gone up. The numbers have doubled up after covid. So business continuity has to be planned for it. So, that’s why organisations or the CISOs need to think about how we can recover from it. You spend thousands of dollars on your security, but security is a hundred per cent guarantee. There's always a risk. And it's not just about the external risks; It's also about your internal organisation risks like phishing attacks. So organisations have to plan this well regarding business continuity planning, like how you make every employee aware of these attacks.

You look at your security from a larger landscape perspective, like a zero-trust architecture that is not product specific. That is how you can apply that zero-trust framework in your critical areas. It takes a lot of work to implement it. One server has so many components. Secondly is your ID access management. How do you give the proper access to everyone? If a person is from the HR portfolio, he needs to have access to that specific domain only. The same goes for your data, IP or your PI information. Like when we talk about a ransomware situation, your systems are hacked, or your data is leaked. It's so essential for organisations to go in and secure their data and only have that relevant access. So these are the key components that organisations should look at. In case of a ransomware situation, because of technology, Like near DR or far DR, you replicate very frequently. So, you cannot use DR to recover in a ransomware situation.

So when you talk about IT security, how do you secure to recover in a ransomware situation?

You need to have a warm copy, which is like, if I get access to it, I should not be able to tram through it. I should not be able to modify it. Then you look at the orchestration and automation part of it. So, isolation, called an air gap, is the second orchestration. Automation is the third one. Analytics is the other part of it. Because how do you know that the copy you received is good or tampered with? That's where the analytics come into the picture, and those are the four key areas that organisations have to look at. Any technology they adopt comes to recovery from a cyber situation.

Since security is an integral element of BCDR, whose charter will this be? Is it the CIO? Or Is it the CISO? Where is sitting amongst the CEO because there is a cost attached? Every technology investment is a project. How do you suggest to manage that?

When we talk about the CISOs, they look at the remedial and the response part of it. They'll focus more on the security side of it. How can I prevent attacks, and even if I get attacked, what do I do about it? What are the open endpoints? Have I applied where my landscape is spread out? Have I secured those? So while recovery has been parked with the IT Heads. It should go with the board level, the CXOs. Its Cross-functional. But the ownership has to start from there because, for example, what will he do if a CFO is on a negotiation table with a ransomware attacker? So it's across the C-suite for not just disaster but ransomware situations.

At the same time, we don't want to put fear into people's minds. Many product companies use that fear concept today, but they are right because organisations have to realise the challenges. Like for example, the healthcare, banking or the manufacturing industry, if they are out of business, it impacts our life. You can't imagine when a patient comes into a hospital and you say, Hey, wait, I have to recover my data. Then I'll know your, how do I operate it? That cannot be. So that’s why it is essential that the entire C-suite board level have to look at it and build up a strategy, not leave it to a CISO or anybody, but the board level has to take ownership and execute it.

What is your view on the future of business resilience?

Humans and technology have always been agile. Like Business, resiliency is something that people are looking at. Covid has taught us something new. If you look at the overall future of business resiliency, business resiliency is one of the critical charters which has to be at the board levels. And business resiliency does not just contribute to your people process and technology but also to the environment. As we talk about sustainability, that's how resiliency can help you achieve it, and looking at the resiliency plan, not just from a specific environment but from the larger ecosystem. There will always be new ways of learning and how we do it.

The area of disaster recovery as a service is evolving very quickly. So for an organisation with powerful G R C norms yet wants to have a solid posture, how would you want them to go about it? Considering you have a third-party provider coming into it. How do you balance this, and where is the future? Because given the quantum of business in India, there's tremendous potential in this area.

Yes, There is tremendous potential in it. And as an organisation or as a business, you can only cover some things. You'll focus on building; you have to outsource some; you have to focus on your business. How do I scale up my business? What new thing can I introduce? And secondly, ask about your regulations. Regulatory is asking, tell me how you're going to be resilient. For example, RBI asks about your norms. If you have to perform a particular set of drills, running your business on your DR or near DR sides would be best. So there are specific requirements that are coming up. You have to submit your reports, assessments, audits etc. So as an organisation, they have to invest considerably in it.

And then the second part is skills and capacity. You trust skills, and you may know what is required. You have the shortfalls of the right people. So they are looking at outsourcing this because they want somebody as a service provider to go and take care of that entire portfolio, go and respond to my regulations, and let the business run. And with all this, you have your SLAs or KPIs attached. So let's say if you fail on it, what are the SLAs you can now go and push back on it? And then, as a service provider, they bring in technology, they bring in automation, they bring in learnings. As an individual business, it's dynamic also. That's where the teaching is like what I brought in new to the system and where the outsourcing model works well.

What about investments? Everybody talks about the total cost of ownership. People have spent money; they're also repatriating. How do you see that you're not over-provisioning or underspending? How do you manage that?

It all depends on service providers. Service providers will just let you focus on that specific domain. But service providers are improving; they're focusing on how they take it as a larger landscape and how they solve your DR problem by bringing in people and the right technology. Like RPO/RTO. Am I also helping you with your RPO/RTO? So it's more consultative advisory, and you feel part of it. Unless you're part of the organisation co-owning it. Like what value you are bringing in. Even that's what the organisations are looking at. They want that he co-owns it. He owns my SLAs and KPIs, which I'm bounded to. So that it's like, we own it together and deliver to the business. That's where organisations see the value of it.

Tea’l Time with Radhesh S. | State of Mid-Market in India, Future Beacons

The Mid Market represents a group of organisations characterised by the nimbleness of small companies mapped with the scale of operations of large-scale setups. So how can an organisation manage both?

If you look at the medium business segment, people tend to look at it as a whole, but you have to look at it as two ends of a spectrum and in between. At the beginning of the medium business segment are the organisations trying to survive. So what do people do to survive? They try to maximise what they have. And they tend to ensure that whatever their product or offering is, all their investments are aligned to make it the best suited for their customer. The next stage comes when customers in this segment are sustaining; they have gone through that curve, gone through that bump wherein they have survived that, and now they are trying to scale up slowly. They're creating the revenue base to launch onto the next levels. That is where a mix is happening in terms of investment, but very prudently onto the other things cause at the survival stage, you would see founders doing everything. And when it is in the sustained mode, they start taking people from outside, bringing in external expertise inside and a little bit of prompting to trust external people who weren’t there till now. This is where innovation starts happening in a scale-out manner. Because internally, what they were able to do, they reached that at the survival stage. Beyond that, if they had to go, they had to seek external expertise. And that's where we are seeing huge jumps coming in.

The next phase after that is about scaling out, ultimately thriving. When they move into a corporate culture, scaling out their operations, they add more functional leaders, bringing more expertise. This is when they exit out of medium business into the corporate world.

The pandemic brought about the digital revolution. And this is interesting because the companies at this point are trying to scale out where technology has been the most significant enabler across the board, no matter the size of your organisation. Today it is becoming more accessible and manageable if you look at the start-up funding and the government of India and other organisations, seed fundings, and VCs coming in was a real boom for the medium business segment.

Has the Mid-Market come out more robust post the pandemic? Have opportunities opened up which were previously non-existent?

The Medium Business segment survived the pandemic because certain relationships were made, which they could carry forward from pre-pandemic into a pandemic. The enterprises had a business continuity plan in place. The medium business segment has two ends of the spectrum. One, which had a mirror of almost a corporate influence and business continuity kind of structure. They had a lower back that was innovative enough to adapt and jump onto that bandwagon because they knew that if they had to survive, they had to cross this barrier. They moved on to the BCP, which helped them come out with flying colours during the pandemic.

They could hold onto their customer base and expand because of the relationship, and their competition could not. Because if you were not connected to a customer, you couldn't have called him because the earlier connections were possible on the landline. During the Pandemic period, the landline ceased to exist. So if you had a relationship, you had a mobile number. Hence you were able to connect during the Pandemic. If people had changed their jobs, you did not have a connection with the guy who was replacing them. So unless a relationship was built, some companies thrived, and others did not.

What is the Mid Markets approach to technology modernisation? Do you believe that while large companies are stretching the boundaries of digital innovation, mid-market companies are trying to utilise technology to focus on core capabilities like sales and operations?

The Mid Business segment has three parts to it, one, the surviving, second, the sustaining, and the third, the thriving one. In the surviving one, you rarely find a CIO or a CTO. If it is not a technology company or a brick-and-mortar average company, you would have a CEO, CFO, and CMO, all of whom; will be doing multifunctional roles.

They could have done a better job if they prioritised IT. When we innovate, they add more cross-functional and more people for innovation. And that's when they get ideas on how to do things better. The CTO CXO helps give a charter to their digitisation from a digitisation platform etc.

How does the sector look at security? Do you feel enough is done by them in terms of investing in cybersecurity best practices and solutions?

When we talk about the mid-market industry at large, we interact with a customer, bring this to their knowledge, and share with them the consequences of needing the correct security practices. We share what are the proper steps to take. We give them the entire scenario and leave them with the choices they need to make, post which we believe they're making informed decisions. That is where we have to play an active role.

And as part of doing that, we are one of the few organisations rated on the cybersecurity side and who have been specially designated as well as the critical performance key product providers. We have been evangelising this from an industry perspective because this aspect must be understood and accepted, and organisations must survive. And hence, anyone ignoring cybersecurity is at risk of not just the loss of business but the loss of revenue and probably a closure of business.

Also, Consumers have multiple choices for every product, from a toothbrush to a car. Security is an important subject. And hence, if the organisation is in its early start-up phase or the mid-course, it should engage a consultant whose industry is relevant and validated and take his expertise on which solutions are suitable and tailor-made for them and also look at what kind of horizon they serve. Do they ensure they are cared for, for the next five, ten, or fifteen years?

You look at the pedigree of the organisation. Do they have the wherewithal to last 10 to 15 years? Do they have enough cash on board to continue innovation? Because security is one area where you have to continuously innovate because every second, somebody is discovering a way to break into your system, and you are as vulnerable as you were yesterday. So unless an organisation has deep pockets to innovate and develop solutions for today and continuously.

Which technology themes or areas should mid-market companies dabble in to pivot for their next growth phase?

So when we look at the challenges that mid markets typically face, it is Access to technology and finance. You take care of these two parts. If you have a solid product or an offering with a compelling reason for their customer to buy from them, if they have a good business case, then I'm sure they will get finance. You have the clientele and the finances to upgrade, and You will get the candidates, also. When you have the candidates, you have the finances and access to better technology. With these three, you will be able to manage the entire spectrum. You are hiring with the right technology and enough finances to work all three. In this case, if you can get all of this in a package, that is how he survives, and once he's got the product in place, he moves into the sustained phase, and from there, they scale out. That is when they start innovating. Then you have the right technology being used, enough finances to take care of, and the candidates available now, which is outside of the foundation. And In every kind of job, it's always the basics that matter. And more often than not, people need to improve at that.

In Conclusion, this time is suitable for the mid-markets. As you hear in different forums, this decade belongs to India. This decade belongs to the medium business segment because the future growth of this country is dependent on how this medium business evolves. And this is going to contribute a lot to the GDP as well.

The government has also taken note of it. They've developed many benefits and schemes to help these organisations, which need more technology or expertise, skills, and finance to enable them. Because the micro, small and medium enterprises, all of them put together, are the single most prominent job creators in the world. And if we can scale them, we will be able to reduce unemployment in the world. Plus, we use our skills to meet the requirement of the organisation.

Tea'l Time with Manoj Chugh - Staying Ahead of the Curve

Mr. Manoj Chugh’s journey has been both very inspiring and enriching. We bring you a very insightful discussion with Mr. Chugh, who has been a leader in a true sense in bringing about digital transformation and innovation and staying ahead of the curve.

How was your early life, your student life, and your college days? What transpired you to enter the corporate/private sector when the whole of the country during those days saw government jobs as the only option?

I belong to Delhi. I come from a middle-class family. My parents came to this wonderful city after the partition of India. This beautiful city provided them an opportunity to build their lives. And therefore, I must say, in every true manner, I am a Delhite. My mother was a schoolteacher. My father was a government servant. From the beginning, as it happens in middle-class families, the focus is on only one thing: education. So, my early childhood was very much focused on education. I was blessed and fortunate that I got to go to IIT Kharagpur for my college. And being from Delhi, going to eastern India, everyone says, are you going to the right place? But then, destiny takes you where you want. And I was very blessed to study at a wonderful institution.

I give tremendous credit to it for what I am today. It provided me with an opportunity to be a wholesome individual. I was not focused on my studies but loved my dramatics and literary activities. It was just fascinating. And therefore, I owe a lot to IIT.

In those times, most of the jobs advertised were government jobs or jobs in government-led institutions and public sector undertakings. Having studied in a good premium institution, we had the corporate sector who would come to campus to hire. I had done a five-year course. At that time, engineering was five years. But, in the last semester of my fifth year, as I was graduating, I was blessed and fortunate for the opportunity to choose from one from four firms. It just happened by providence that two of the four firms were in the chemical engineering industry. I studied to become a chemical engineer. And two of them were in the IT industry. Both of them were with start-ups.

Then, IBM had left India. There was a big focus on homegrown Indian IT companies. So they were just mushrooming. So I reflected and thought that if I took a job with one of the stable engineering firms, I could see my career in front of me, and I wasn't sure if that would be truly exciting. But I knew it would be stable. I would have a good job. I'll have a decent standard of living. I knew that I would retire from a senior management position. But it may be more interesting to do something exciting in a new area, something that my career could take a different trajectory. But it was unknown. The firms were too small. They may or may not even exist a few years after I joined them. So, I weighed the risks between the two. I was 21 years old. When you are 21, you sometimes tend to make rash, brash, impulsive decisions. I chose the IT industry when I graduated.

I joined one of the computer firms with whom I began my incredible journey, which has lasted 41 years in the corporate world. So, I give full credit to IIT for the opportunity it gave me, for letting me be the individual I am, and for allowing me to follow my passion and do what I want.

Can you share some pivotal moments or experiences in your professional journey that have shaped your ability to be ahead of the curve in the business world?

First, destiny plays a role if I were to make a disclaimer statement. If you look at the pivots in my career, this started when I had to decide between two kinds of job roles—one in the IT sector and one in the core engineering sector. So, I chose the IT sector. I could have gone to engineering; I might have headed a plant somewhere, but this is where I built my career and switched to telecommunications, which was actually in satellite networks then. I have been in the systems integration industry for quite a few years. One of the roles towards the end of my systems integration career was establishing a telecommunication business unit, which means taking I.T. technology to telecommunications service providers. And that allowed me to look at what the telecommunication industry could look like in the future. Now, there were feeble signals at that point in time on what it would look like. But I realised that something interesting was happening in that area. I knew that telecommunications would undergo significant rapid change, not just from a technology perspective, but in terms of adoption and the kind of services one could see going forward.

India had liberalised from an economic perspective. It was post-1991 that many global firms were looking at India as an essential market. One of those firms was in the satellite networks business, a firm called Scientific Atlanta. They came knocking at my door and said here's a wonderful opportunity for you to set up our operations in India.

So, I asked them how large is the team. They said we are looking at the team. So we want you to come in and start now. Here, I was the general manager of a business; many people were working for me, and I was very comfortable. I had gone through the aches and pains of working for small firms, and we had grown the business. So, this was the time I would sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

And I thought to myself that here is an opportunity maybe for me to reinvent myself. One of the things that has always bothered me, and perhaps that's why I took the decision that I did, was that I used to ask myself a question now and then. Am I succeeding because of the firm that I am in, or am I succeeding because of me as an individual?

Because many times you can get confused. You think you're doing a great job, but you later realise that it was because of the company that people were willing to open doors and meet you. So I said, What if my business card changed to a firm nobody had even heard of? And that would be the true challenge of myself as a professional. And when you are in your thirties, you don't mind challenging yourself much more; your risk-taking abilities are much more. So I decided to take the job with this firm. It was in satellite communications, and we were in an area that was very helpful and positively impacted our country.

Because our tele density was poor, our terrestrial infrastructure needed improvement. Therefore, if we wanted reliable communications in our country, whether it was for business, disaster recovery, or government applications, the only way you could provide that was through a satellite network and bringing the satellite network through the corporate and private sectors in addition to bringing it to government-owned entities as well as to governments, was super critical.

There's so much happening today in the V-SAT business. Everybody who's a big set-up in the tech world is gunning for that sector. In the nineties, I took the plunge. We were very successful. So, I think that was an important pivot in the telecommunications industry; the challenges we saw in India and the opportunity I saw with satellite networks to help improve the quality of communications, particularly for critical infrastructure, motivated me to make that change and take that plunge.

A few years later, we started seeing early noises and hearing about the Internet. And therefore, I chose to move into the networking industry. And my motivation for going into the networking industry was because I knew that the Internet would change how we exist. And so I made that switch from satellite networks to terrestrial infrastructure so that I had the opportunity of really shaping Internet adoption in our beautiful country. As we set up the Internet infrastructure, what I realised was that the volume, velocity and variety of data were so significant that we had to find ways in which we could keep that data, manage that data, store that data, and harness that data, because I believed that at the end of the day, when you talk about information technology, The ‘I’ comes before the ‘T’. We always talk about technology, but we don't talk about ‘I’. So if IT begins with ‘I’, we must focus on information and build infrastructure for information.

So, I switched gears and moved into the information infrastructure industry. Because I felt so much data was flying through these networks. We need to build parking lots. So that's what I now need to do: go into the information infrastructure industry.

I saw that data is going to be critical. The need to build information infrastructure as a prerequisite for leveraging data as an important asset would be vital going forward. It would be mandatory as we peek into the future.

I worked by then for about 30 years. And the entire stack of technology was well understood over those 30 years. I thought this was an excellent opportunity for me to take a different view on leveraging and harnessing the technology stack that I had helped in my small, humble way to build, which was to bring applications on top, drive services, and help customers worldwide. And that motivated me to make the change to Mahindra Satyam, which then got integrated into Tech Mahindra. And my learnings and experiences from the technology world helped me a lot as we were able to help customers move on with their digital transformations.

Can you share an example of when you took calculated risks or embraced unconventional strategies that ultimately paid off in business growth or market leadership?

Going back in my journey, I speak about risks, how to mitigate risks and the kind of risks one needs to take. Risk is an integral part of life in the technology business because things are changing so rapidly that you have to take bets. You have to look at what will pay off and what will not. Let me take a few examples and share some very interesting points at which I could have failed very badly. We go decade by decade. In the 80s, multi-user systems were built based on microprocessors if multiple users had to work on a specific application. The big challenge with some of these systems was that the application performance would decline substantially as you added more users. Now, so many more users are sharing the same limited resources. There was a very large RFP with a very significant government organisation. And they were planning to revamp their entire I.T. infrastructure. They had come out with an RFP for many multi-user systems. When I looked at the RFP, I asked myself a question: if I am going to be the n plus oneth guy who's going to turn up with another mousetrap, what difference am I going to make to this organisation? What is the impact that I'm going to create to help them achieve their goals and to help them achieve what they are setting out to do? And given the sensitivity of that organisation, I felt that we should be putting our best foot forward. I was one of the ten shortlisted bidders, and I knew that I would only succeed if I did something dramatic and different because, ultimately, what would they do? All ten guys look similar. I'm going to take a commercial approach and be done with it. And I said that's not how they will get the best system.

Mid-eighties, Ethernet was not well-known. The CSMA/CD protocol was becoming quite famous within academic circles but outside the commercial domain. And indeed, in India at that time, we were a closed economy. We didn't have the technology at that point. And I took a big, bold bet and went in and said that I was going to offer a solution that is based upon CSMA/CD technology called Ethernet. I told this agency that rather than every user sharing resources, my architecture will deliver 100% of the help we give them in terms of compute, network, print, etc. Everyone will get the full thali rather than having to share the thali. My ability to show them that this technology exists, it will work, and it will get delivered in the timeframes they were looking for finally motivated them to decide in that direction.

So, in the mid-eighties, we had a massive Ethernet-based multi-location network operating with one of our very important government agencies in India, all delivered by the private sector. This was one of the largest deals we had won in that year. What's important is that this then got replicated in the government and the corporate sector. And today, if I ask anyone, do you have a LAN in your office based on Ethernet? It is like, what is this guy smoking? Who doesn't have it? Every little mom-and-pop shop has it, but I am talking of the mid-eighties when nobody had even heard of this technology.

So, taking risks is very important to bring about significant societal change. If you don't make a big bet, you could fail, but it also provides you an opportunity of moving the needle.

I’ll give you the second example, Scientific Atlanta satellite networks. I got into satellite networks at that time because of bandwidth; they were using satellites going up 36,000 kilometres and coming back, primarily used for data. And my point of view was that data is good but not good enough because if you have a disaster, you need video; you need voice. Imagine if, on data, you are trying to communicate and you're trying to resolve issues, it is not going to happen.

So, the technology I put forth was voice, data, and video, all three over a satellite network, by giving a clear link. It used to be called DAMA technology. Cybermedia played a vital role as a firm and worked closely with me to get the message out to the market. So, we moved a lot of the market from data-oriented applications on satellite networks to voice data, video and voice-combined multimedia applications using satellite networks.

How do you manage the bandwidth? Because you have a specific bandwidth for data, do you equip that for audio, or do you equip that for video, which is very data-intensive? How do you manage that?

You give a clear channel and allocate your bandwidth based on media type. It was called DAMA technology at that time. The technology that was used for data was TDM/TDMA. So I said, you need data that's important, but you also need voice and video. So, if you have applications or an organisation that wants to write voice data video over a satellite network, here is an option. Therefore, moving the needle and providing an option to the market, which allows new world use cases to shift how they operate dramatically, was very positive. I took a risk in the market. I could have happily just tried to sell TDM/TDMA. Everyone knew data was essential and moved along. But I said, let's move the needle.

I come to networking. You know how the Internet has changed the world. I'm blessed and fortunate to have been a part of building our Internet infrastructure in our country, but the bigger story here is I realised that India would have a dearth shortage of talent around networking because you build these networks, then who's going to be there to deploy it, support, sustain architect and so on.

So, I partnered with Academia and brought a new world curriculum into many of our institutions to create a pool of networking professionals in India. And when I was doing this, this whole play and this whole journey, many of my colleagues at that time came and said, What are you doing? I said, Why? The work that you are doing.

You will see the results only years later. So it is going to benefit your successors. It will not benefit you. And my only answer to them was if everyone thought like that, nobody would ever grow a mango tree. So I said, Guys, let's focus on this. And India has created the largest pool of networking professionals in the world, so you have to take those risks.

I did not live in the organisation to see the whole fruit of that, but today, when I look back, I'm incredibly proud that if there is one thing that India doesn't have a shortage of, it is of networking professionals. As you look at the CVs of engineers coming out, you will see that in front of you.

The next story is around information infrastructure. When we got into the industry, and I moved into that area, I found that the entire focus of customers was on compute. My story to them was compute is good but not sufficient. What is more important to you is data.

And so, it took quite a while to bring about a mindset change in the market that when you are looking at architecture, it needs to be data-centric. You must first look at the data infrastructure and then at the compute. And it is not one computing platform. You could have one compute running, let's say, an email application, another compute running your ERP application, another compute running data warehousing, and so on.

But the data that you're working on is the same data set. So, data has to be at the heart of your architecture. Believe me, that is not the way the world thought. So, in the mid-2000s, as I moved into the information infrastructure industry, the first thing we had to do was change the mindsets of the industry. It is about data and data infrastructure that must be at the heart of your architecture rather than computing. The challenge I always have is when I go to a customer, they would first get the guys offering compute, and I would say, Look, what is more critical, compute or data? They would ask, Why? A computing platform will get obsolete, not your data. You will continue to need your data. You're going to build upon this data set in the future. That's why that whole concept of data scientists.

So that's when we were talking about a mindset change with customers, telecommunication service providers, with large enterprises, with governments turning around and saying that if you have to look at architecture, you have to look at the next generation, you have to look at data and then basically architect everything around that. So, that was the other pivotal piece that drove a lot of my thinking. At each level, there was a risk from Multiuser to Ethernet in satellite networks, from voice and video data to multimedia, not looking just at the technology piece, but looking at people, looking at the impact on society and therefore creating a new pool of professionals which never existed in the country.

And then, as I move to information infrastructure, how do I bring data to the heart of the conversation and decision and not continue with the old-world way we were thinking? I am blessed that I could move the needle a little in all of these areas.

Do traits like honesty and integrity pay in a hypercompetitive market like India? Share some personal examples.

When you've had a long career in the corporate world, these are home truths you need to face. I come from a middle-class family, and what has been very important to me through my years of growing up have been the values instilled in me by my parents, teachers, and the institution I have studied.

And these values have been incredibly important to me. I can tell you I've always operated within the sandbox of integrity. There have been so many people I have come across who are susceptible and have been susceptible to inducements, but I have decided to stay away and walk away. I've been blessed and fortunate that I have had the honour and opportunity to work with many people who are honest, sincere, hardworking, and have the right intent in their hearts. And therefore, my experience has taught me that like people beget like people. And you spoke about sincerity and the impact. And I recollect two of the organisations that I worked for. I think my dedication and sincerity pushed me to look at life a little differently and not just from a selfish point of view. That also motivates you to follow the path of righteousness. When I worked for these organisations, I realised we had a lot of good talent in India, which we needed to leverage. Everyone wanted to go to the U.S. and work. Therefore, if I could convince these technology companies to come and invest significantly in India, that would help keep a lot of engineers here and provide good, honest jobs because that's also very important.

So, if we get high-quality jobs, we can ensure that the overall quality of our people in society improves. I was blessed and fortunate to convince two very large technology companies, and they became the pivots for more and more technology companies coming in and setting up shop in India. Today, we talk about how the GCCs are such a big success in India, but we have to go back into history to understand who were the early guys who came in. Why did they come in? My only statement to them then was because everyone knows people will come for the cost. I said, No, people will come for the cost, but they will not stay for the cost. They will stay for quality, and they will invest in innovation. So we have to make sure that we keep moving up the value chain, and honesty, integrity, and sincerity of everyone working will enable that to happen.

So, your own value systems have to reflect in the decisions that you're making, and those decisions have to have a more significant societal impact. It is not about me making a number or not. This was not about that at all. I wholeheartedly agree with you that those value systems are incredibly important. I want to send a message to everyone that, please, guys, if you're honest, if you're sincere, if you're dedicated, good guys can still sail through.

India has a vast rural population. How can cloud, edge computing and 5G collectively bridge the digital divide and bring transformative services to underserved areas?

There have been two great levellers in our country. The first is the Internet, which I have personally been a part of, and the second is smartphones. Both of these have been powerful enablers as far as rural India is concerned. And you spoke about generative AI and other things. And I think because of the usage of the Internet, which has deeply penetrated rural India through smartphones and similar technologies, the good news for us is that today, we have a much deeper understanding of the real needs of rural India.

Secondly, we also have a much better understanding of their earnings cycles. We know that in rural India, most people earn their own livelihoods. They are for the lack of any other virtue entrepreneurs. Whether it's a farmer or somebody who is self-employed, In rural India, that becomes incredibly important. But we have never really understood what those income streams have been because a lot of that has not been in the formal sector, but because of technology and the penetration of technology, our understanding of their spending patterns and our understanding of their behaviour, their cash flows and the cycles of those cash flows is much, better today. Because of that, we can help them improve their living standards by, for example, offering them better credit terms. They will be motivated to spend if we offer them better credit terms. And if we can marry their credit terms with their earning cycles, it becomes a win-win situation for everybody.

The second is local produce. Marketplaces providing an opportunity for those. The third is technology. These technologies today offer the opportunity to drive standardisation and test many of the products produced locally, because once you can brand them as quality products, the world is their market.

In the past, we just couldn't do it at the local level. Today, we can do it at their doorstep because of these technologies. Then we talk about the whole thing around bringing jobs to people. Today, we are bringing people to metro cities where the jobs are; with these technologies, wherever we find talent, we can create a micro hub. We can create an ancillary, which is the need today.

We can go and create local industry, and we can provide significant motivation for people to continue to live where they are living because they love their quality of life in terms of fresh air, in terms of just the environment, which certainly is much, much better than what we have in the cities that we keep grappling with every day. As far as rural India is concerned, these technologies will be game-changing. They are going to drive rural prosperity—20 years from now. Rural India is going to look very different as compared to what it is today because of our ability to leverage technologies, whether it is in precision agriculture, whether it is in terms of contributing to their livelihoods, or whether it is in terms of opening the window of the world to them.

With emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the IoT gaining momentum, what opportunities do you see for the IT sector in India to innovate and create new business models?

It would be best if you didn't look at IT for the sake of IT. We have to look at IT from the lens of a customer.

The Indian IT services industry has done a phenomenal job over the last many decades in terms of understanding the customer's pulse and delivering that promise. And I am very confident that in the future in the future, the Indian IT industry will continue to do so. We need to remember our undying focus on the customer and the needs of the customer. What does the customer want? And as long as we remain focused, we will be successful. So we need to understand the customer. We need to understand the customer's customer.

We recognise today that the customer is becoming incredibly intelligent, thanks to generative AI, which can create complex information. So, you have to remain ahead of the curve. That means you need to upskill yourself day in and day out so that you are ahead.

The second thing is that today's customers differ significantly from yesterday's. You look at the younger generation; the younger generation today wants to work with organisations that care for the environment. They want to work with organisations that want to work with people who care for the planet. Sustainability and carbon neutrality are real and significant issues, and customers will work with organisations doing their bit to sustain the earth.

So, if you start looking at technology, whether through products or services, we should look at it from the eyes of the customer. What is it that the customer wants? So, I would say for the Indian IT services industry, please continue to remain focused on the customer, and you will never go wrong.

What would be your advice to future leaders in the making?

I would only ask everyone to reflect on the recent unfortunate pandemic incidents. When we had the pandemic, you would recollect that overnight, all of us were working from home, studying from home, shopping from home, and entertaining ourselves from home.

Everything worked. Have we asked ourselves how did it work? Had any organisation planned their disaster recovery, assuming 100% of employees would work from home? Did any university know a drill saying What if 100% of our students were home? Would we continue to be able to teach them? The fact is that everything continued unabated.

Everything continued in a way, of course, except for physical connectivity and presence and so on. Organisations recorded the highest profits; organisations spoke about the highest level of productivity during the pandemic, all that was enabled by technology. How many of us have reflected back and thought, How did this happen?

We had not really planned for it. So somebody decades ago had been plotting and planning. Whether it was networks, whether it was network infrastructure, whether it was skills, whether it was the thought that we need to create robust, resilient abilities as an organisation. Somebody was thinking and doing this work. It was happening simultaneously.

And I give this entire credit to my generation of colleagues in the industry. All of us can pat ourselves on the back and say when it came to the crunch, we did not let our country down.

And my real message to all the youngsters is, are you guys thinking about the future?

Are you guys helping build the future? What are you guys doing to ensure that, as a country, we continue to remain resilient and strong going forward? 30, 40 years from now, will you be able to say that I pat myself on the back, did something good, and enabled my country to succeed.

That is my message to future leaders in the making.

Caffeinated Creativity: GD Prasad's Transition from Advertising to Entrepreneurship | Think Teal

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India Vision 2030 with Dr. BN Suresh | Unveiling the Aerospace Horizon: India's Flight to 2030

How would you describe your early life, student life and college days; what sparked your interest in science, particularly aerospace, during your formative years? Was there a defining moment that led you to pursue this field?

I am from Hoskote, a small village called Koppa in Chikmagalur district. My studies up to the 11th standard were all in Kannada. And then in those days, we did not have many schools in our native village. There was only one school up to fourth standard with one room, one teacher, and four walls, And we all sat in that one room learning everything. So, up to primary school, it was near our village. We had to walk about 1.5 KM. Then, for middle and high school, which was a Kannada medium school, I went to a town called Koppa, and the school was about a 3 to 4 kilometres walk from home. And after that, I moved to Shimoga, the nearest town, for my pre-degree. Then, I came to Bangalore.

We did not know what aerospace was in those days, especially coming from a village. When I did my pre-degree, I did not know I could go for engineering. That was the kind of ignorance. I joined a Bachelor of Science in Bangalore at Vijaya College; those days, it was the second-best college in Bangalore and did Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. That’s when I learned that one can do engineering, and I immediately joined the engineering course.

My 1st degree was in Mechanical engineering. Then, I got into IIT Madras. I was very fascinated by machine tools and manufacturing. So, I studied how to design various machine tools and completed my course. While I was in the final year, we saw an ad in the Hindu paper for a program that was going on at the Space Science and Technology Center, and we were interested in going there to try and look for a job. Because in those days, getting a government job was the most fascinating thing. And to my surprise, out of six people, only two of us got it: myself and one of my close friends. We joined in July 1969, and that’s how our career started; that's the first time I came to know there is something like aerospace and I could contribute to that.

The Space Science and Technology Center was later named Vikram Sarabhai Space Center. There was a church building and then a Tumba equatorial rocket launching station, and when I joined in 1969 for one month, we were sitting in the same church building where Dr. Kalam used to tell us how religion and science amalgamated and took birth for space.
And then onwards, our journey continued. It was interesting because Dr.Kalam was there, and I was fortunate to work closely with him for almost 16 to 17 years on many developments.

You being the backbone of ISRO, What is the culture of ISRO? There are two things ISRO is known for: ISRO’s culture and the second is how they made the program at such a low cost. How do you achieve that?

Regarding ISRO’s culture, we were fortunate that our whole program started with Vikram Sarabhai. He was a visionary who had a clear thought process of how to take the space program forward. His baseline was that whatever we do, these so-called advanced technologies must be utilised to benefit mankind. He always said it's not about building giant rockets compared to other countries. Unfortunately, he died very young, but I was fortunate to have interacted with him for two and a half years.

He used to come once in 40 days and encourage youngsters. He believed in nurturing our talent in India, and he recruited children who were from Indian universities and Indian educational institutions. Only once he went to the US to hire 5 to 6 leaders who were senior to us, bring them to India, and give them different responsibilities like property, control and guidance, manufacturing, etc.

So that's how we started. He called it the Space Science and Technology Center. After his death, we are very fortunate to have a person like Satish Dhawan, the director of the Indian Institute of Science and a visionary himself at that time. Sarabhai encouraged healthy competition and high-speed development of various activities. So, how Sarabhai started and then how Dhawan implemented the management structure were commendable.

The foundation Vikram Sarabhai laid continued. The ISRO culture is to encourage youngsters and Indian talent. Third, there was no hierarchy, like a boss and subordinate, and the best thing that happened was they brought the culture that any newcomers who joined could be a part of the discussions and meetings. They were free to ask questions and even tell us what we suggested was incorrect. And the second thing is decision-making. We learnt both these things from Satish Dhawan who always listened to all viewpoints synthesised and then finally took a decision. And a decision that benefited the organisation, making the organisation stronger and healthier. Everybody knew that any decision made was in the organisation's interest, not the individuals and that's where the difference came in, and people accepted that.

Everyone at ISRO was moulded into the culture because of the visionaries and stalwarts who brought this kind of culture. When it comes to the project, as Sarabhai rightly said, “We do not come out with projects that are not going to help the country. For example, remote sensing is required for agriculture, fishery, rural mapping, tele-education, telecommunication, or disaster management. We take the requirements for each project and then develop a report. That is number one. The second thing is that it undergoes very severe debate and discussions, not only among ourselves but a fairly good number of specialists from academia, R&D and industry. They are also part of the discussion to get a holistic view, and everyone's opinion is considered. We don't consider the cost initially because that comes later. If you start taking the cost and bring everything under that, we may end up with a different project.

So once these things are done, and at the same time, the costing starts, and that also goes through very severe scrutiny in terms of request, what we call frugal engineering? Second, being in space requires many advanced technologies, instruments, equipment, etc. But from the beginning, we had to buy or build options.

For example, in a gyros accelerometer, we didn't have it when Dr.Kalam started the project SLV3. We had to buy. We went to France and bought for 15 launches. But we didn't stop there. We started developing our own gyros accelerometers so that at some point in time, we stopped the import. It happened with the engines, it happened with the materials, it happened with many other things. So, this is one of the ways how we bring down costs. And here, I credit the Indian industries who shook hands with us and had the national spirit to help the country apart from their own profit motive. This continued, and we were able to make many things in India. Indian industries were always ready to help; not only the public sector but also private, big, and small enterprises all participated, and thus, we could contain the costs.

The second reason is that the manpower cost in India is considerably low. We have done the risk management very efficiently. For example, you produce ten pieces of hardware to prove their system in various tests. But we have done it very judiciously to optimise the hardware and cut down the numbers, so in the same process, we are able to qualify and then prove the technology, and once it is done, we succeeded. So, it is the amalgamation of different approaches that evolved. It has helped us to bring a good product and involve others in reviewing the process. It undergoes internal review, then goes through a second review with experts from academia and industrial knowledge.

Third, it goes through the National Level Committee and the Planning Commission and will go to the government. The approval cycle has been very smooth at ISRO because we would have gone with our homework to convince everyone and the whole nation was with us to go ahead.

Many articles say that the world's two leading agencies are NASA and ISRO. Nasa has many Indian scientists, ISRO doesn't have a single American scientist, and they work independently. This gives a lot of credit to ISRO scientists. They are doing so well, and our contribution to NASA programs is huge. How do you achieve that? Another question is whether ISRO has a truncated view of applying ISRO outcomes. For example, sending their spacecraft to the moon is not the only objective. It is one of the objectives because the technology that you are developing at ISRO is also helping you in many other ways. So much is happening in ISRO. Many offshoots of technology are very useful. For example, you started your passenger graph for our country. Can these two initiatives be connected?

Initiatives can undoubtedly be connected. Ultimately, we firmly believe that we must promote, we must encourage, and we have to see that it happens. We started regional transport aircraft so vigorously because the debate was going on with other stakeholders like HAL, development agencies, government, and industries.

However, an academy like the National Academy of Engineering has no stake because it is not linked with anyone. Our intention was to promote the various technologies needed for the country. So we took it as an initiative. And we have succeeded because, in all, we did a survey based on the inputs available.

And I would like to recall the contributions made by the Prime Minister. He was one person behind us, and we took his support and pursued it further. Even today, you look at the orders from Indigo and Air India, like 500 aircraft each. Countries like the US and Europe are celebrating because they got a huge order and so much employment was generated, improving the economy. And we are happy to say that it has made good progress. They could set up what we call a special-purpose vehicle. And we firmly believe it must happen for a country like ours. The government is also looking to collaborate with major companies.

And now, Make in India is coming in a big way that will generate employment and help industries to come forward, and we can export things. The requirement is enormous.

With space exploration becoming increasingly competitive, how can India foster a nurturing environment for young scientists and engineers to pursue careers in aerospace, and what advice would you give aspiring professionals looking to follow in your footsteps?

ISRO mission is not only Chandrayaan 2 but also so-called interplanetary missions. It's only a small percentage of our entire work. We always work on space applications that touch the common man regarding remote sensing, communication, navigation, disaster management, etc.

So we have structured our activities by developing the thematic spacecraft, the land & earth, the cartography, and the education; like this, we have several satellites specifically designed to meet this kind of application program.

Post that, you also develop what is termed as the payloads applicable to that. It could be a camera, it could be a spectrometer, it could be some other instrument. All of them are built, and then you create the spacecraft design to meet the end goals. Today, we have various applications. For example, agriculture has soil monitoring, soil fertility, and weather monitoring. Then, the fisheries. These are the areas in remote sensing, communications, and navigation. I have compiled the requirements and took it upon myself to compile this space application, which has been done for as many as 31 applications that reach out to what it is.

When the Honorable Prime Minister took over at the centre, the first thing he did was because he had experience at Ahmedabad as Chief Minister of Gujarat to utilise the space for common purposes; he organised a huge meeting at Vigyan Bhawan by inviting 70 different ministries and told them, that ISRO is generating so much of data in various things, I think we must utilise and use it in the National Development.

When he came and addressed Chandrayaan, he touched upon the idea that space should not only do these things but also touch on the various developments that will help the common man, which will help the nation develop further. That was one of the primary objectives, and today, more than 130 projects are going on that help the government.
Today, space is contributing so much to the governance of the country. So, with these things, we are able to launch so many satellites. Today, we have as many as 57 active satellites in space from this Indian continent, serving all these things.

And today, directly or indirectly, the space program is followed, by every single person of 1.4 billion population. That is the kind of reach it has achieved.

Coming to the next question on education. Yes. Youngsters should know how they can contribute. Today, many institutions teach aerospace, analytical, and aeronautics; they teach remote sensing, communication, flight dynamics and many other areas. More than that, how to work as a team, bring system engineering and put them together and make it a success.

For example, when we launched Chandryaan 3, it was not the work of a small or big group. It is the whole ISRO participates in some form or another manner. All the different centres, all the engineers, scientists and supporting staff are a part of that. It is a feeling like “we will do it” that each one has, and not only the scientists and engineers, but even their family members become a part of it. It is also said that whenever we have a launch, it is not the engineers who sit in the control centre and pray, but the entire family prays.
Once you develop this cutting-edge technology at one end of the spectrum, they can do anything else in the country. They need not necessarily work for ISRO. They can take up any other job, but they will be accepted.

The aerospace industry often addresses complex challenges, such as sustainable space exploration and climate change. How do you believe the collaboration between scientists, policymakers, and businesses can drive solutions to these global issues?

From the beginning, our approach has always been to carry out various tasks and project activities relevant to the country.
We are not there to bring any competition; that is not the intention. We intend to fulfil our fellow citizens' aspirations and ambitions. That is what is essential.

One may ask how Chandrayaan or Mangalyaan will help. In our opinion, it is essential that we also undertake some very cutting-edge technology and challenging tasks and then prove to the country we are second to none that.

But at the same time, the money we would have spent is minimal. For example, 316 crores we have spent for Chandrayaan 3 is a tiny percentage if you compare it to the National gross product. Today, we can sit shoulder to shoulder-with equal responsibility.

So people treat us with respect always. Kalam used to say, “Strength will respect strength”. That brings some confidence in people.

Once, I met a girl who was just 12 years old, and she told me she wanted to pursue ocean development. I asked her how, at such a young age, you think of ocean development. When you see things like Chandrayaan, people believe many untouched avenues exist.

Ocean development is one area where there are lots of possibilities, particularly biotechnology. People are saying new antibiotic sources are available deep in the ocean. But the wonder is a 12-year-old thinking like that. That is progress.

You need not be a scientist, but science is for everyone. Aeronautical engineering is for everyone. It is not only to send people to the moon but has broader implications. It is going to make a much better world.

As a closing note, what would be your last words for our youngsters?

Many areas unexplored in India have contributed to science and technology. And deep sea exploration is a very prominent area like space. While we send people to heights, there are challenges like their health, but going deep into the sea, to the depths of 5000 & 6000 meters, is more difficult than sending a person to heights because of the hydrostatic pressure.

I'm very happy that the government has noted and sanctioned up to 6000 crores for Deep sea exploration. Because of our experience, they are involving us in some of these projects. And I have links with the activities that are going on. And as you rightly pointed out, many resources are available in the seabed.

So what I want to say to our youngsters is don't just get logged on to what has been done or what is likely to happen. There are many unexplored areas which are required for the country. How do we look at it? One is the deep sea exploration. Second is environmental studies, and third is how things are happening, the weather fluctuation and global warming. These areas need deeper study. If we don't focus on these particular areas, I'm afraid the future generation will suffer.

We have to look at it from a much broader perspective; science is the only solution for all this. But science coupled with technology will make a significant movement in the country. Space and electronics started around the same time, way back in the early sixties. But the thrust and attention given in space has brought us where we are.

But then the thrust given for electronics was different, and we are only opening and looking at it now. The fabrication technology, like the chips that are required in the country, is suffering, and there are many such areas where we need attention. The students and the younger generation interested in science must look ahead, widen their horizons, spread their thinking, and try to see how we become a strong nation and position India by 2047 as a developed country.

One last thing I want to add is that it's not just science. In India, we have tremendous capability regarding youngsters, education, etc. But we can achieve similar thinking from the governance and administration that we have the capability and support by increasing the funding for science and technology.