INDIA HAS the potential to become a global leader in technology and offer next generation products and services to the world, said economist Roopa Purushothaman.
She was addressing the maiden batch of working professionals enrolled for the Master of Business Administration programme at the at the Central Institute of Road Transport which will operate as the satellite campus of Indian Institute of Management, Nagpur (IIM), Purushothaman. This is the first IIM to offer management lessons in Pune.
The role of the US and China have changed and India is also shaping its own position in the world. Since the pandemic, supply chains are rebalancing in ways that maximise resilience over efficiency, that too, in ways that we have not seen before. The geopolitical change offer tons of opportunity for India to become an unparalleled technology leader,” said Purushotaman, chief economist and head, policy advocacy at Tata & Sons.
Over the past two years, Covid-19 pandemic has reversed the poverty levels and widened inequality gaps but the acceleration of digital services will be the area offering newer jobs.
The pandemic has brought three major themes to the fore — global rebalancing , sustainability and digital technology against the backdrop of changing geopolitical relations, rise of cryptocurrency, among others.
The new India, she said, has the potential to be a leader in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning offering next generation products and services to the world. “India has the right human capital, we have the scale and what we now need is to make the right investments. For that, we need to start with the fundamentals,” she said.
Amit Kalyani, Deputy Managing Director, Bharat Forge shared how his MBA days gave him a toolkit to solve problems and the many benefits he reaped from the learning. He said that companies during recuritment are on the lookout for candidates who are team players and those who can offer big thinking.
Purushothaman suggested that countries like India will need to reimagagine and reinvent their national policy blueprint based on AI and digital innovations. “The pandemic has shown us there is urgency in improvising access to healthcare, education and safety for which technology is the key,” she said.
Pradeep Udhas, senior partner, KPMG, said that the students were at a crucial point of their careers and decisions taken now would decide the course of the remaining career.
The first batch comprises a total of 38 working professionals, including five women, all with an average working experience of 10.5 years. There are 33 engineers along with graduates in Commerce, Science, Pharmacy, Law or Business Administration. The companies where they are presently employed include HBSC Software Ltd, Infosys BPM Ltd, Deutche Bank, Cummins India, Capgemini India, and Congnizant Technology Solutions.
