At a keynote speech at the summit, Nasscom’s president Rajesh Nambiar also said that while emerging technology skills are in demand, institutes must also look to build professional skills, capabilities around critical thinking, problem solving, learning and self development, using artificial intelligence (AI).
Nambiar, former Cognizant India chairman and managing director, pointed out few imperatives which India cannot ignore to meet its tech ambition.
“The first one is around the R&D and the IT focus. Although India is globally renowned for technology services, there’s a need to elevate this R&D and solidify outstanding in science and technology. That’s something we are struggling to do,” he said adding that R&D can help get a higher percentage of GDP and be a mature economy.
“Future of India is in fixing the ability to build pioneering products, as well as capturing some of the new markets, which we are not doing today,” Nambiar further stated.
On the first day of the summit on Tuesday, the host Karnataka state government said it will establish three dedicated global innovation districts in Bengaluru, Mysuru and Belagavi.
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The state’s chief minister Siddaramaiah said his government also signed five memorandums of understanding with Microsoft, Intel, Accenture, IBM and a banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI) consortium to train about one lakh people with necessary skills.According to Nambiar, the second imperative is around empowering the workforce for the next decade as India will have one billion working age population by 2030.
“How do we make sure that we include this workforce in a very complex environment. This is not just about technology jobs alone, but also the ability to leverage technology for any job, whether in the manufacturing, retail, healthcare,” Nambiar said.
He believes this is because job environment will be complex where the job role skill set is one part of it, “then parallelly, (world) will be running on the efficiency game with generative AI”.
Amid the AI disruption, the shifts in the technology world is taking place with breakneck speed and that success will depend on our ability to stay adaptable, the speed at which we are learning.
“Companies must stay tactical in involving regulations and shifts, proactively focusing on emerging policies, on data AI, and ensuring full cybersecurity also,” he said.
The Nasscom chief believes the best is yet to come for the technology sector.
Speaking of the resilience of the technology industry, Nambiar ended on an optimistic note to say that the opportunity, including with AI and computing, far outweighs the challenges.
“As technology is becoming foundational for all our businesses, the path ahead is even more exciting, will be different from the past and requires us to proactively reimagine everything which is going to be a big task for all of us,” he concluded.
