IT industry is facing a bigger game changer today: Lakshmi Narayanan

Interview with Vice-Chairman, Cognizant Technology Solutions'

Last week, it was announced that N LAKSHMI NARAYANAN would leave Cognizant, the multinational information technology (IT) entity he had co-founded and led, first as chief executive and then as vice-chairman. On March 31, the company announced Narayanan and another Board member would not seek re-election at the annual general meeting. He talks to Gireesh Babu on the reasons and his plans. Edited excerpts:

Why did you move out of the Board?

I have been associated with this firm for probably the longest time, compared to anyone else. This is a transition I have been planning for quite some time. It is essentially our internal philosophy to provide opportunities, particularly in India, for younger people to move up. That is one reason why left my CEO job (in 2006) when I was 55. We declared that at least in India, we will look at 55 as an age when we give up the bulk of responsibility. It is a kind of unwritten rule we have been following, primarily for younger people to take up responsibilities sooner.

What has been your biggest challenge in Cognizant?

Every time the industry went through some turmoil --- the dotcom bust, new solutions coming in, financial meltdown or recession in the major markets we operate -- of a kind, every time it is a new learning.

The big challenge as we go into the digital era are the opportunities. There are so many opportunities and technologies, that picking the right few for the future will be a challenge. There are so many things we can bet on -- to experiment with some of these, establishing a dominant position in a few, identifying which will be the future one. This is the biggest challenge for us. This is a bigger game changer than any of the others we witnessed in the past. What we have seen in the past in terms of communication, broadband availability, devices, etc, are the basic infrastructure for what is going to happen in the future, in terms of IoT (the internet of things), cloud computing and others.

Tell us of one such challenge you faced in Cognizant.

One big turning point, where there was a lot of learning in the firm, is the dotcom (upheaval) era. In early 2000-2001, when a number of new technologies were coming about, we were not present in the space, as we were just coming out of the year 2000 remediation -- that consumed all our effort. We were coming from behind, to capture market share in a new area where we had very little familiarity.

There were consultants who said, 'either you are fast or you are dead'. Coming out from our traditional business, we were not fast. So, we were very worried. At that inflection point, we invested heavily, got some good people, empowered them and made partnerships that helped us scale that big mountain. And, we were quite successful in that era; during those days, we came to be known as one of the leaders in the e-commerce and digital space. It was a huge challenge, transforming the company, although it was not very big at that point of time. That transformation really helped us to get to the billion dollar mark very quickly.

The IT industry is facing several headwinds such as the US visa curbs, slowing traditional business, etc. What should it do?

This is not the first time. The industry faced similar visa-related challenges after 2008; it faced downturn in a significant manner. Then, the dotcom time, when we were behind and had to pick up, learn and innovate out of the situation we were in. So, it is not new.

But, there are two differences this time. Earlier, the industry as a whole was not as big as we are today. As a result, steering of a much bigger ship in a new direction is going to be a little more challenging than steering a more nimble growth earlier. The only solution is that we cannot direct the whole ship together; we will have to do it in parts. Individual companies will have to identify their own direction and start moving in a strategy that is very specific to them.

The second important thing is that we need to innovate even more aggressively. A fortunate thing we have this time is the number of start-ups, the small companies that are experimenting, will contribute to the bigger companies, learning and partnering with them, taking solutions and building scale.

What is next for you?

In the past two to three years, I have been working in the space of education and entrepreneurship. In the past eight years, I have been chairing a company called ICT Academy, a Government of India-funded academy to develop IT professionals who can be employed in the IT industry, and more importantly to take that IT training and education to tier-II, tier-III cities, so that we can get them to be competitive.

In the first four years, we accomplished training of 5,000 teachers in colleges, 250,000 students, and fulfilled the project objective. So much so that the proportion of students from tier-II and tier-III cities is among the highest in India today; the proportion of students coming out of Tamil Nadu colleges in the IT mainstream has increased over the past four to five years. NITI Aayog has said this is a good model and has to be replicated in other states. That is a task we have started, of creating ICT Academies in different states, in partnership with the local government and the industry. This going to impact thousands of people, to be digitally savvy.

Another activity is working with the start-up system through various forums such as TiE, Chennai Angels and NASSCOM's (the IT sector's apex association) start-up initiatives.