<div><strong>Subroto Gupta</strong></div><div> </div><div>“The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed”. William Gibson’s quote is remarkably relevant for India today as the country witnesses an unprecedented transformation driven by a combination of technological and social changes. NASSCOM, in its recently released report on ‘Shaping the Digital Revolution’ predicts that the share of digital technology investment in India will rise from 10 per cent in 2014 to 60 per cent in 2025. In addition, research done by McKinsey indicates that a number of new, empowering technologies will have an annual economic impact of up to 30 per cent of India’s incremental GDP over a similar period. </div><div> </div><div>Thanks to creative destruction, more than 80 per cent of Fortune 500 companies have disappeared over last few decades and digital technologies like social, mobility, cloud and internet of things (IoT) are accelerating that trend. These technologies are fundamentally changing the way companies define growth strategies, innovate and do business from building new products and solutions to managing global operations. At the same time, companies today are struggling to effectively leverage or gain meaningful returns from digital investments. Recent research shows that while 71 per cent companies have a high or extremely high focus on digital technologies, only 65 per cent are seeing some benefits at best.</div><div> </div><div>So how can governments and enterprises in India better harness the power of digital? What is happening today and how much of that is hype versus reality? A few areas deserve a closer look.</div><div> </div><div>The first is disruption of business models. Across the world as well as in India, ‘Uberization’ is becoming a defining trend. Any business model that has middlemen between say a manufacturer or service provider and the end customer is open for disruption. In education for example, digital models are becoming more important creating new revenue generating models. And suppliers of core learning content are reaching out directly to end students bypassing traditional incumbents such as institutions.</div><div> </div><div>What many companies are struggling with today is to decide what technology choices can help transform their business models. Fortunately, in most of the cases technologies like IoT, mobility and cloud based software applications are already proven and commercialized. Traditionally, many businesses in India have been reluctant to change and invest whole heartedly in digital technologies due to availability of cheap labor. Fortunately, many enterprises today are starting to experiment and trying to make the hard choices required. </div><div> </div><div>Start-ups are a big driver of disruption in business models and there is an incredible number and variety of companies coming up. The start-up eco-system in India continues to thrive and recent reports suggest that it’s the third largest start-up environment globally after the US and UK. While some think that many start-ups in India are copying Western or Chinese business models and therefore not really innovating or disrupting, this is not completely true. Start-ups like AlmaConnect, an alumni networking portal started before US based companies like Nextdoor came into the picture. They defined a niche because larger social networks like Facebook were too noisy. Unfortunately the investment community has had more exposure in developed markets and tends to back models where they have already seen success.</div><div> </div><div>The second area worth a closer look is re-imagining customer experience. Companies in India today are looking at using a combination of capabilities from design thinking to social engagement and big data analytics to understand and engage customers better. This is possibly the biggest focus area for digital transformation for most companies today. Since 65 per cent of all new internet users in India access the internet for the first time on mobile devices, mobile first design has become a critical driver of customer experience. </div><div> </div><div>The third is transforming governance. For Digital to have transformative impact across the country, two things need to happen. Everyone needs to have some version of a smartphone and everyone needs access to high speed mobile internet. Indian companies are aggressively pushing to make smart phones available and accessible to the bottom 700 million users. Once this happens, Digital India will become real and applications in specific sectors like healthcare, education, e-governance services will become widely available. As an example, fishermen in remote Karnataka take photos of their catch using their phones and share with wholesalers on WhatsApp for immediate price discovery driving speed and transparency of transactions. </div><div> </div><div>What role can the government play? The general perception that the government is not active is misplaced. The challenge lies in is bridging the gaps between existing solutions and what the government can effectively deploy. For example, many smart parking solutions are available but it is unclear how the government can incentivize the adoption of smart parking in a country like India. While technology will facilitate and help scale e-governance solutions, for effective delivery an ecosystem of partners need to come in place, for example to provide low cost hardware for education. </div><div> </div><div>This will drive transparency and accountability. For example in Maharashtra, service level agreements have been put in place with escalations to make it easier to set up a new business and similar services that citizens find tedious today can and will improve over time. </div><div>The last area I would like to draw attention to is rethinking the way we work. Many jobs today like social media managers didn’t exist 20 years ago and many will not exist 20 years from now. In addition to this, there is a big threat of intelligent automation to the future of work. With millions of young people in India joining the workforce every year, new skills and capabilities will be required and the workplace of the future will, in all likelihood, look very different than what is today.</div><div> </div><div> While for the first time, each one of us can realistically have a global scale of ambition, companies in the future will not teach employees everything and will not hire people just because they passed out of great institute. Start-ups for example usually have smaller teams and therefore really do not have time to train people in the classical way. As information becomes more freely available, the expectation will be that workers will be a lot more proactive in building knowledge and skills. Having said that, all expertise cannot reside in any single individual, so people also need to be able to connect and collaborate with resources inside and outside organizations to solve problems effectively. </div><div> </div><div>The same is true for leadership. As information gets democratized and nature of work and organizations evolve, there is already a shift under way from the command and control, top-down type of leadership model that became widespread as a result of the industrial revolution. Leadership of the future will place a lot more focus on empathy, curiosity, collaboration, flexibility, engagement, and most importantly, humility. For example, institutes like the Gurgaon based School of Inspired Leadership (SOIL) are helping prepare students by bringing focus on digital education, understanding new opportunities and by taking a more holistic approach to learning and leadership so students can realize their potential in this new world.</div><div> </div><div>Digital India will result from many transformational activities across industry, society and government that together can create widespread change. Examples are all around us. Traditional textiles communities in areas like Tirupur are adopting digital technologies to meet needs of international retailers like WalMart and using technologies like IoT to monitor energy levels for improved cost efficiency. As schools in most villages get connected on national broadband networks and people get internet access for basic services like healthcare and education, an incredible wave of human capital will be unleashed within the country. Aligning demand and supply effectively coupled with adequate investment in digital infrastructure will help us realize the dream of a Digital India.</div><div> </div><div><strong>The author, Subroto Gupta - Vice President, Digital Transformation & Innovation Leader, Genpact</strong></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div>
