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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Thanks for tuning in to this broadcast.
00:12 We are trying to talk about AI and the threat
00:16 or the opportunity that it presents for the tech
00:20 sector at large.
00:21 Remember, innovation in Gen AI in 2024
00:24 has continued at a frenzied pace.
00:26 A report that I was reading spoke
00:28 about how many companies in India
00:30 launched proof of concepts while deploying their first Gen AI
00:32 powered apps into production as well.
00:35 Big tech vendors have brought their models
00:36 to India for a range of options for enterprise users as well.
00:40 What is Indian IT doing in such a scenario?
00:43 And is AI presenting a threat, an opportunity,
00:47 or a combination of both?
00:49 Now, what we tried to do in the panel that we have today,
00:52 both of them joining us from the US,
00:55 are two hats, somebody who is currently
00:58 the CEO of a brilliantly performing IT product/IT
01:04 service company.
01:05 And that's Sandeep Kalra, needs no introduction,
01:08 executive officer and executive director of Persistent Systems.
01:12 And somebody who's worn that hat very effectively for LTI
01:16 in its previous avatar and currently
01:19 is the operating partner at Chris Capital, Sanjay Jalona.
01:21 So we technically have an interested company
01:25 and an interested investor on the panel together.
01:28 Gentlemen, both of you, thank you so much
01:29 for taking the time out and being with us.
01:32 Thank you.
01:32 The pleasure, Riya.
01:33 OK, so I would like to start off, and either of you
01:36 can start off with this.
01:37 But is AI presenting a threat or an opportunity?
01:43 Because all through the last few disruptions that we've seen,
01:46 and both of you have lived through that
01:48 in the previous two decades of your work life,
01:51 whether it's Y2K or digitization or what have you,
01:53 Indian IT only emerged stronger there.
01:56 Sandeep, you want to start?
02:00 Sure, I can.
02:01 Thank you for having us.
02:03 And as you rightly said, look, Indian IT
02:05 has seen many of these waves.
02:07 And every wave has brought in a new set of opportunities
02:10 for all of us.
02:11 So if you look at the AI side of it,
02:13 AI is not new to any of us.
02:14 We have been investing in AI.
02:16 We have been delivering projects, products,
02:18 leveraging AI technologies.
02:19 We have done work, for example, in health care,
02:21 tracking renal diseases, tracking lung cancer,
02:24 and many others using traditional AI.
02:26 Generative AI is just an advanced form of that.
02:29 Yeah, it presents far more opportunities.
02:31 And the percolation of this will accelerate the percolation
02:34 of AI in an overall sense.
02:36 So I do think for companies that adopt AI,
02:39 engineers that adopt AI, there are far more opportunities
02:42 that will emerge.
02:43 And even the overall market will emerge in a bigger way
02:46 from an addressable marketplace.
02:48 Would be happy to hear what Sanjay has to say as well.
02:51 Yeah, Sanjay, you want to add to that?
02:54 Yeah, look, I think we have all seen many waves in our lives.
02:59 Not many have panned out very effectively.
03:03 There have been lots of discussions
03:05 on how things like blockchain will change the world, which
03:09 had not.
03:10 There are lots of dialogues that happened
03:12 in terms of how Indian IT will not
03:15 be able to cope with the entire digital engineering when
03:20 it started.
03:21 Agile DevOps things, and where team sizes have shrunk,
03:24 and people had to be in the same geographies,
03:27 teams sitting together, much smaller teams.
03:29 But Indian IT typically has a way
03:32 of coping up with all of these challenges
03:35 and coming and becoming more effective,
03:37 as we have seen in the past.
03:39 But Gen AI and all the advances in AI
03:42 have become a lot more pertinent and effective today,
03:47 simply because of three broad reasons.
03:50 One, I think there is an ecosystem readiness this time.
03:54 Whether you talk about the silicon, the chipsets, the data,
03:58 the LLMs, the investments that are going in
04:00 from large companies like Microsoft, OpenAI,
04:03 and open source.
04:05 Overall, it is helping adoption of this technology
04:09 in a meaningful way.
04:11 Second thing that is happening is consumerization.
04:14 Just step back and think about how many of us, our children,
04:18 are using chat GPT, for example, to do their homework.
04:21 Us using chat GPT to plan our vacations, and so on,
04:25 so forth, in a meaningful way.
04:27 There are lots of apps like FinChat.io,
04:32 where you can actually analyze a lot of data globally
04:35 on stocks and equities all over the world,
04:39 through all, and very powerful LLMs
04:42 that have been developed over the years.
04:44 And lastly, besides the ecosystem readiness,
04:49 besides the consumerization, the whole discussion
04:52 about operational efficiencies and the benefits
04:55 that we have seen.
04:56 That makes me think that, yes, this
04:59 is a lot more pertinent in today's times.
05:03 I think a lot more investments are going in there,
05:05 a lot more effectiveness and operational efficiencies
05:07 are coming in play.
05:08 So this will continue to be a very important lever.
05:12 But linking it to whether it's an opportunity or a threat,
05:17 I always-- and I was a strong believer on that.
05:20 My entire life has traveled in technology, just like Sandeep.
05:24 And I think there is--
05:25 Indian IT always comes out first.
05:27 So there's a lot of investment that's
05:29 going in from tech companies globally,
05:31 and more so from Indian companies in this whole AI.
05:34 It's not new, as Sandeep called out.
05:36 But the important thing is the culture
05:39 is changing for companies.
05:42 Where everything has to be AI and Gen AI first.
05:46 The way products and SaaS products are created.
05:48 Now I see-- in my past, I saw more of technology.
05:51 Now I see BPO companies, KPO companies,
05:54 RCM companies, SaaS companies.
05:57 And there's one thing that's weaving them all together
06:00 is how can they produce amplified business outcomes
06:04 using Gen AI.
06:06 So yes, it's going to have an impact.
06:09 Yes, Indian companies are investing,
06:12 and they will still come out on trumps, is my view on that.
06:16 Sanjay, just a follow up.
06:17 You reckon-- I mean, because now you're on the buy side, right?
06:20 So I can technically ask you that.
06:22 When you look at companies and what Indian IT companies are
06:25 doing, whether software or product or ERD, what have you,
06:29 are they investing in the right places and the right quantum
06:32 and the right talent to be able to tap into this opportunity
06:36 that AI might present?
06:38 And then we'll talk about the disruption, of course.
06:41 Absolutely.
06:42 I think what you've got to remember,
06:44 it's the easier part is to buy a company.
06:46 The difficult part is how do you make
06:49 that company more attractive?
06:50 How do you make them a better company to operate in the world
06:54 and create a reason for them to exist and make
06:56 a difference in the marketplace?
06:58 And I believe, strongly believe, whether you
07:00 look at ops companies, services companies, engineering
07:04 companies, SaaS companies, they all
07:07 are making tangible investments in there.
07:10 I was talking the other day to a company which
07:13 is working on a stealth mode and launching a SaaS platform.
07:16 The most important feature is to create a co-pilot whereby
07:20 any consumer who is using the app
07:22 don't have to write complex things you can write in English
07:26 and prompt, saying, look, this is how it looks like.
07:30 What was it a year back?
07:32 And it just gives you a lot more powerful systems in place.
07:37 So yes, I do believe strongly that companies are investing
07:40 disproportionately in there.
07:43 There is enough of gas as well, if you believe.
07:48 There are-- you feel weird when you see an advertisement on TV
07:54 saying this is a driver or a bat made with AI and Gen AI.
07:59 So there people are stretching it to the limit.
08:01 But definitely, in our world that we operate in,
08:04 I think there is a lot of investment that is going on.
08:07 OK.
08:08 Sandeep, two-part question.
08:09 Actually, can I first--
08:10 before I come to the investments that Persistent
08:12 might be doing as well, I just want
08:14 you to come off from the plane of Sandeep Kalra, the CEO,
08:18 and the brain behind Persistent to a more human plane,
08:21 a more mere mortal plane, and just try and tell us.
08:24 The common thing that I've heard in the last 12 months--
08:26 and maybe it is just layman language--
08:28 but Indian IT companies do a lot of coding.
08:32 Coders will become extinct.
08:33 That business will go away.
08:36 AI will increase efficiency in a meaningful fashion.
08:39 Indian IT companies thrive on human talent
08:43 being placed in other companies and earning money.
08:45 And that will also go away.
08:47 And that will disrupt.
08:48 And three, that AI will be a disruptor.
08:51 Are Indian IT companies ready to disrupt themselves in order
08:55 to get on the plane of AI and try?
08:57 So there's so many rumors out there.
08:58 Don't know how many true, how many false.
09:00 Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
09:03 So I'll bring it to very simple, easy to understand things.
09:09 AI is a tool.
09:11 Generative AI is a tool.
09:12 Anyone who's an engineer, a software engineer,
09:15 who uses this tool will be more efficient than an engineer
09:17 who will not use that tool.
09:19 So first and foremost, the software engineers
09:21 have to adopt this tool.
09:23 Second, when you adopt this tool, as companies as well,
09:27 you will be able to, whether it is Indian IT
09:29 or any other company, you'll be able to differentiate
09:32 yourselves against your peers in the industry.
09:34 So if you can use this tool to be faster, better, cheaper,
09:37 you'll be better off in this market share game, growth
09:41 game, whatever, getting more from the market.
09:44 Third, as more and more people use AI,
09:46 the use cases of AI will also increase.
09:49 The use cases of software, product engineering,
09:51 data engineering that will get spawned off because of this AI
09:55 and AI entire work will increase.
09:58 So at the highest level, the work is going to increase.
10:01 The people who can make use of these technologies
10:04 to automate the stuff which is more repeatable,
10:07 more manual, repetition, et cetera, can be taken away,
10:11 will gain more.
10:12 And overall, I think Indian IT is smart enough.
10:15 It has gone through the things where people said,
10:18 SaaS software will take away the implementation side.
10:20 So when SAP goes from SAP, on premise to SAP on the cloud,
10:24 people will not need so many SAP engineers.
10:26 Not necessarily true.
10:28 Salesforce came in, so you will not need necessarily people
10:31 for CRM.
10:32 Not necessarily true.
10:33 Whether it is us, whether it's many others,
10:35 we have many, many people who are trained on these
10:37 technologies and who have thrived
10:38 by learning the new games that need to be done as you are
10:42 upskilling.
10:42 So it is all about upskilling.
10:44 It's all about adoption.
10:45 It's all about change management.
10:47 If we do that effectively, there's
10:48 enough and more to be done.
10:49 And the smart will become smarter with this.
10:51 There is no dearth of work.
10:53 OK.
10:54 In effect, Sandeep, what you're--
10:56 and again, I'm just trying to correlate this in ways
10:58 that I would understand and hopefully maybe my viewer would
11:00 understand--
11:01 Sure.
11:01 --that if I look at the post-COVID opportunity,
11:04 digitization, if I can use that term loosely,
11:07 simply increase the market size available for all IT companies.
11:10 And therefore, there was more business to come in.
11:13 Does AI reduce that market size?
11:15 Sure, the efficient one will get more business.
11:18 But does AI reduce the market size,
11:20 or does it expand the market size
11:22 in whichever market it brings to IT companies, software
11:26 companies?
11:27 Yeah, so let me give you an example
11:29 so we can make it a little real.
11:30 Otherwise, we'll be going round in circles.
11:32 Sure.
11:32 So for example, today, it's a mind-share game.
11:35 Everyone wants to talk about AI to customers.
11:38 So do we.
11:39 So when we went to, for example, a listed company here
11:41 in the US, in the insurance, resell kind of business
11:45 in very simple terms.
11:46 So they are a listed company.
11:47 They basically have 50 partners that they take products from.
11:50 On the other side, they have customers.
11:51 They do risk management and underwriting in the middle.
11:54 So they're selling the products from here to here.
11:56 We were basically telling them how
11:58 Gen AI can make them more efficient
12:00 and how Gen AI can help them analyze their data
12:02 from the last five years, what they have taken from partners,
12:05 what they have sold, how has it panned out, and so on.
12:09 All very interesting work.
12:10 Proof of concept's great.
12:11 But now to implement this, you need the data to be cleaned up.
12:15 The data engineering part plays a big role.
12:17 You need a software product/platform,
12:20 more like a platform to be built.
12:21 So for us, while the Gen AI part is only 500K in this,
12:25 this whole deal is roughly about $12 to $15 million,
12:27 spanning around 2 and 1/2 years.
12:30 So in my mind, there are many, many downstream things
12:32 that AI and Gen AI will spawn off.
12:35 And it is going to be making sure
12:36 that there are many more kinds of work that
12:40 will be spawned off that.
12:41 And even for hyperscalers, if you look at it, if you ask them,
12:44 what is your Gen AI revenue?
12:46 That Gen AI revenue may be very minuscule.
12:48 Gen AI on a standalone basis may be a loss-making proposition
12:50 for them right now.
12:51 But for them, the data-related work, the cloud consumption
12:54 it is pulling through, many other things
12:56 is what makes it very attractive.
12:58 And so in a way, it is a much bigger plate.
13:01 Gen AI is just the tip of the iceberg.
13:02 There's much more beneath it that
13:04 is a market for all of us, whether it is us,
13:07 software product companies, hyperscalers, many more.
13:10 In your conversation, Sanjay, with IT services firms
13:13 in India or elsewhere, you think there is enough investment
13:16 happening, because I heard you say something
13:18 to that effect at the start of the conversation.
13:20 Oh, absolutely.
13:21 I think there's tremendous investments happening.
13:23 I can talk about one of the portfolio companies in IT
13:27 and engineering that we have is Zorient.
13:29 I think training thousands of people, literally 80%
13:34 of the population on all things Gen AI,
13:37 creating a platform called Orion for Zorient, Infosys
13:42 as a topaz, TCS as their platform, Persistent.
13:45 Sanjay will talk about, I think it's SaaSware
13:47 or something it's called.
13:48 A whole bunch of companies have invested disproportionately.
13:51 There are also companies that have
13:53 mushroomed in the marketplace, which are typically
13:56 leading with AI and a platform in there.
13:59 So definitely, investment in a platform,
14:02 training your employees.
14:04 You will see partnerships with Qualcomm, Intel.
14:08 I think Infi has a partnership with Intel.
14:11 Cognizant has a partnership, if I'm not wrong, with Qualcomm.
14:16 Partnership with Academia.
14:17 There are people who are making partnerships with IITs,
14:20 people who are making partnerships
14:21 with MITs of the world to just be
14:23 at the forefront of what is happening in the marketplace.
14:26 So definitely, I see not only IT.
14:30 And let's move on to RCM company because I have a portfolio
14:33 of RCM companies as well.
14:34 I think the kind of investments that they
14:36 have made in AI and Gen AI, even though they work for health
14:40 care where a lot more discussions have to be
14:42 happening in face-to-face, I think it's tremendous.
14:46 There's another company that we have,
14:47 which is on the contact center, really, really very,
14:51 very powerful contact center company in health care area.
14:54 They have also invested tremendously
14:56 on how can we use Gen AI to actually provide
15:00 more consistent, better services to our customers.
15:03 So I'm of a strong belief that realization is not a problem.
15:07 IT companies do understand that they
15:08 need to do a lot more to be growing
15:11 and be differentiated in the marketplace,
15:13 and they are rightfully investing in the companies
15:15 with this technology.
15:16 In this curve over the next four, five, seven years,
15:19 what have you, or maybe shorter, do you
15:21 believe that there could be a period wherein the time
15:24 and material kind of business that IT service firms have
15:29 done, or maybe model as a service as well,
15:32 business that might be there for some companies,
15:34 could that revenue pie get disrupted?
15:39 And maybe it could show up in a quarter or a year or two
15:43 for some IT companies.
15:44 Could that happen?
15:46 Some part of it definitely can be disrupted.
15:48 Some part of it will still remain,
15:50 because look, today, the development
15:53 of any new platform, any new application, anything that
15:55 is done is done in an iterative manner.
15:57 Nobody does two-year, three-year programs,
16:00 and so on and so forth.
16:01 So as long as there's iterative development
16:02 that is going to happen, as long as things evolve,
16:05 there will be a need for programs
16:07 which are time and material.
16:08 And there are programs that can lend themselves
16:10 to a fixed bid where we can bring in tools, IP,
16:12 reusable components, and accelerate it,
16:15 capture more value.
16:16 So time and material will remain in some form and shape.
16:18 The proportion of that in different companies
16:20 may differ based on what they provide as services
16:22 to their customers.
16:24 OK.
16:25 Sanjay, I have one question, though,
16:27 in case you have a question for Sandeep.
16:28 Sure, but I have one question for you, Sanjay.
16:30 I do have a question for Sandeep.
16:31 OK, let's hear your question first.
16:33 Then I'll ask you the question.
16:34 Yes, please.
16:35 Look, I think Sandeep runs probably
16:38 one of the best performing companies in the tech space.
16:42 So our compliments to you, Sandeep.
16:44 You have done a fantastic job, and all the power to you
16:47 and your leadership team.
16:50 I think two things which are always
16:52 important when you look at the company and the investments
16:56 that they are making in any new technology-- one
16:59 is how do you dog food within yourself?
17:03 So how do you dog food your HR processes,
17:05 financial processes internally within Persistent
17:08 to make things happen?
17:10 How do you do technical support for your staff
17:13 globally using Gen AI technology?
17:15 Because that's what you need to go and sell
17:17 at the end of the day.
17:18 And more importantly, the second question
17:20 is I strongly believe that one is knowing
17:24 the tool and the technology.
17:25 But I think the more important part
17:27 is how are you creating a culture of AI first and Gen AI
17:32 first?
17:33 I think that is the most important pertinent
17:36 that everyone, every IT company needs
17:38 to put a hand on their heart and answer.
17:40 And these will be the two questions for Sandeep for me.
17:44 Pretty good questions.
17:45 And see, from our perspective, we
17:47 have been taking ourselves as a customer zero
17:49 for a number of things that we are doing.
17:51 Now, when you talk about the HR side of it, HR side,
17:53 we are doing two things at a very high level.
17:55 We have taken all our employee policies globally,
17:58 because we operate in more than 21 countries.
18:00 And our employee policies, let's say maternity policy
18:03 in India versus Mexico versus, let's say,
18:05 Costa Rica versus US, very different.
18:07 Similarly, there are many other policies and so on.
18:10 So we have fed that into OpenAI APIs and so on.
18:14 We put a chatbot on top.
18:15 One of our employees, for example,
18:17 if she joins from Mexico, wants to figure out a policy,
18:19 doesn't need to talk to anyone, puts in the chatbot.
18:22 The chatbot answers and says, do you want me to bring it up?
18:25 Brings it up.
18:26 Similarly, on the recruitment side,
18:28 we are analyzing the data for the last five years.
18:31 The resumes that we had, the people that we took,
18:34 didn't take, didn't join.
18:35 For our current requirements, can we quickly
18:37 look at that, where are they, link it up,
18:39 and see if we can use that to accelerate our recruitment
18:43 process and so on.
18:44 And what are the learnings also from people that we
18:46 hired and didn't work out?
18:48 And so there are things that we are doing on that side
18:50 as a part of HR.
18:51 Similarly, on the IT support side,
18:53 application support, DevOps, DevSecOps,
18:55 cybersecurity infused with AI, all of that
18:58 we are experimenting in-house, because these are things
19:00 that we can also take to market.
19:02 There are many use cases like that, so I'll stop there.
19:05 Now on the culture side, look, Persistent
19:07 has always been a forward-looking technology
19:10 company.
19:10 What that has also meant is we have
19:12 had to have a culture of learning and making sure
19:15 that we invest in a training side of it.
19:17 So we have something called Persistent University.
19:20 It's called-- if I say Persistent is one
19:23 of the best performing companies, that is the best
19:25 kind of learning and development infrastructure we may have
19:28 in the Indian IT.
19:29 Whether it's physical classrooms, whether it's
19:31 training staff, which are professionals,
19:33 to some of our delivery leaders who go there and train
19:35 our staff.
19:36 And these are in partnership with hyperscalers
19:38 and other niche companies that are coming in.
19:41 To give you an example, even on traditional things
19:44 like Salesforce, we are the 10th largest.
19:46 And in the Indian IT, 11 and 1/2% of our staff
19:49 is trained on Salesforce, which is the highest in Indian IT.
19:52 Like that on GCP and so on and so forth.
19:54 So there's a learning culture and backed up
19:56 by investments, physical, digital, and money.
19:59 So there's that culture definitely that has helped us,
20:02 and that's one of our employee value propositions as well.
20:04 So I'll stop.
20:05 Hopefully, Sanjay, I've answered your questions.
20:07 Sandeep, you spoke about culture in reference
20:09 to Sanjay's question.
20:10 I would love to understand from you if it requires--
20:14 I mean, I was talking to somebody who's supposedly,
20:17 to my mind, an informed person on AI before this show.
20:20 And his view was that in something like this, which,
20:25 according to him, leads to a platform shift,
20:28 old ways going away, new ways coming in,
20:31 and companies which are existing business houses
20:33 and are earning their daily bread and butter
20:35 might find it very difficult to completely disrupt themselves
20:38 from inside out at a loss of what happens over a year or two
20:43 in order to prepare for the future.
20:45 Is that something that the current AI wave would, again,
20:49 entail?
20:50 Or you don't think it will be as dramatic?
20:53 I think that's a fair point of view.
20:55 Now, obviously, not every company is made equal.
20:58 There are bigger peers of ours.
21:00 Anywhere between 150,000 employees to 650,000 employees
21:04 and more.
21:04 All kinds of work, infrastructure support
21:07 to application support to contact centers, many of which
21:09 are repeatable, automatable tasks,
21:11 and people will need to be upskilled.
21:13 There may be reduction in workforce in some areas
21:15 when you, as Sanjay said, go to a customer
21:18 and provide productivity gain and so on.
21:20 So there is definitely that shift that's going to happen.
21:23 How do you manage that with investments?
21:25 And how do you manage that, especially
21:26 in a macroeconomic environment where the growth is not
21:28 that big?
21:30 So when the growth happens and people get freed,
21:32 you can deploy them.
21:33 When growth is not there, now you
21:35 are faced with the challenge of going to your customer
21:38 and saying, I can do more for less or same for less.
21:42 That's where the culture part and the courage part comes in.
21:46 Thankfully, for Persistent, we are a little less prone
21:50 to all this because most of the work that we do
21:52 is on the digital side.
21:54 And that is, from our perspective,
21:57 the choice in very practical terms in this year
22:00 was in a FY25 environment where the going is tough,
22:04 do you continue to invest?
22:06 Because this needs investment.
22:08 We talked about platform investments.
22:10 We talked about business model changes.
22:11 We talked about going back to the customer.
22:13 So we have taken the difficult path
22:15 of saying we will continue to invest because the markets will
22:17 change.
22:18 When the markets change, all this investment
22:20 will pay off handsomely.
22:21 And at the same time, we are upskilling our employees.
22:23 The investment is not just in building a platform.
22:25 Sanjay also alluded to it.
22:27 In our company, we have trained 16,000 of our employees
22:30 on the modern product or application development tool
22:33 set.
22:33 People think of AWS Code Whisperer and Microsoft GitHub
22:36 Copilot.
22:37 That's just a small piece.
22:38 There are many other things that we
22:39 need to bring them up to speed on.
22:41 So as far as we are concerned and any good company
22:44 is concerned, I think good times or bad times,
22:47 we need to invest, especially when the technology is changing
22:49 in a bad macro environment.
22:50 So this is the time to have the heart, stay the course,
22:54 invest, things will change.
22:57 OK.
22:57 I started off the conversation with Sandeep.
22:59 I'll end the conversation with Sanjay.
23:01 Sanjay, what is it that you think that the Indian IT
23:04 space-- I'll restrict it to Indian IT, be it services,
23:07 products, or what have you.
23:08 But what do you think that the Indian IT space is not doing,
23:11 that they ought to be doing at this point of time,
23:15 as Sandeep said, when it's a bad macro and technology is making
23:19 a really rapid shift?
23:22 Look, I think there are two things
23:23 that I want to leave behind.
23:26 Obviously, Sandeep referred to the burden
23:28 that the larger companies have, which
23:30 have contact centers, operations, infrastructure
23:34 management.
23:34 And I think the disruption with Gen AI will be far higher.
23:39 And companies which are more digital in nature,
23:42 smaller companies, they have less of a burden
23:45 compared to the larger companies.
23:48 So one suggestion would be that don't
23:51 worry about what happens.
23:52 What's going to go down is going to go down.
23:54 What you've got to focus on is to build for the future.
23:57 And diluting investments for short-term games
24:00 is never a good idea.
24:01 I've never believed in it.
24:03 It's an important part that companies
24:05 need to keep investing.
24:07 Don't worry about cannibalization.
24:08 It is going to happen.
24:09 Whether you do it or somebody else
24:11 will come and do it where you have no chance
24:13 is absolutely an easy choice in my mind.
24:15 But you've got to have that courage to do it first.
24:18 And one other suggestion that I would give to the youngsters
24:22 who are coming into the workforce, the young people who
24:26 are there in the industry, look, when we were growing up,
24:30 when I started coding and started my career,
24:33 if you knew one of the technologies,
24:36 be it mainframe, be it Java, .NET,
24:38 you could survive your entire 40 years of work
24:41 just knowing one thing.
24:43 Today, the way things are evolving,
24:45 curiosity, what we used to call "sotion" in my earlier life,
24:50 which is ability, a beginner's mindset,
24:52 ability to learn new things, fall flat on the ground,
24:55 rise up again, and learn something new,
24:57 becomes even more important.
24:59 And companies need to provide that platform of learning,
25:03 have the courage to let it simmer at times.
25:06 But individuals need to have that onus and responsibility
25:10 to learn themselves the newer technologies so they
25:13 are workforce-ready and efficient in times
25:16 to come as well.
25:16 So the onus works both ways.
25:20 VIKAS KHANNA: Very good.
25:21 OK.
25:21 Well, on that note, I mean, I can really go on.
25:23 But understand, it's a busy day for you guys out there
25:27 in the US, so we'll leave it at this.
25:29 But thank you so much for taking the time out.
25:31 And maybe one year out, we'll try and do a conversation again
25:34 to see how much water has gone beneath the bridge
25:36 and where is it that Indian IT is at that point of time.
25:39 But both of you, thank you so much.
25:41 Thank you, Vikas.
25:42 Good seeing you, Sandeep.
25:43 All the best for continuing the performance.
25:46 Good luck, man.
25:46 Cheers.
25:47 Thank you.
25:47 Thank you, guys.
25:48 And viewers, thanks for tuning in.
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