What makes the Bangalore knowledge firms stick to just bread and butter business? Why is it that India’s best minds working for fat pay cheques are unable to throw up a Bill Gates or even a Sabeer Bhatia? Why is it that India does not have a recognisable IT brandname in the league of Sun, Oracle or Microsoft? Shubhrangshu Roy delves into these questions in the second of his three-part series and agitates some of India’s best software minds to come up with the answers
There are a little over half a million software professionals in India. Of them, 140,000 work out of Bangalore. And of these, some 1,700 work at MindTree. For most, what the guys do at MindTree, they do the same elsewhere in Bangalore. And what they do in Bangalore, they mostly do in the rest of India. The average age of the techies at MindTree is 27.7 years. Take plus/minus two years, and that should be the average age of the techies in the rest of Bangalore. That should also be the average age of the techies in the whole of India. For most of these techies, work revolves around coding. That's because most of the software work that's done out of Bangalore, as with the rest of India, is coding. Coding is a set of instructions for a computer to deliver a particular function. This is also called applications development. Most code writers say that their work is monotonous and repetitive. Their employers say, so what, there's money to be made in this business.
But possibly more money can be made out of creative work. In commercialising R&D efforts as they do in the West. For India's army of IT professionals R&D could be exciting. And a surefire way of killing monotony. After all, 32% of Microsoft's workforce is Indian. Some of the great software innovations in the West have come from Indians too.
But as the Bangalore techies say, R&D initiatives entail risks. And the Indian mindset is risk averse. That's possibly because most Indians find comfort in the salaried profession, not in entrepreneurial ventures. As a techie at MindTree likes to say, "We work on something that somebody else has built. We are not scientists, we follow science."
Another MindTree code writer questions: "Can't Infy afford R&D? Can't Wipro afford R&D? They can, but they won't. If Microsoft gives Infosys and Wipro a contract to develop Windows, they'll go ahead and do it. And deliver it to Microsoft on time. But they won't go out and do it on their own." Nobody wants to move out of the comfort zone. Not the Bangalore techies. Not the companies they work for.
As Prashant Mehra 31, a metallurgist from IIT Kharagpur says: "At MindTree, I conceptualised a product for a year and a half, but the funds were not there to support the programme. I was told the same manpower could be utilised to earn dollars."
That's enough reason why we don't see branded products out of the city, why we don't invent great software. That's also reason why we don't produce recognisable global names. And that's a good enough reason why, as Indroneel Das, 30, an electrical engineer from IIT Kharagpur says, quoting Pink Floyd, "You are nothing but another brick in the wall."
ET spent two hours discussing with a group of MindTree techies across age-groups and professional trainings why we don't see product success and associate people success out of India. And how best we could go about grabbing global headlines. For answers, the participants used Edward de Bono's six thinking hats technique. The answers were revealing. The solutions were radical.
Said Dhanasharan R, 34, a computer science and engineering graduate from Coimbatore: "The Indian eco system does not breed successful innovators. So people in the IT sector are mostly followers. As a community, we lack discipline and the capability to sell." Naveen K, 32, a telecom engineer by training adds Indians don't invest in research. There are no angel investors, no sponsors. What's worse, we try to pull down people when they achieve something. "We suffer from crab mentality." Anshuman Singh, 30, an architect and product designer from IIT Roorkee says, "Our education system does not allow creativity." Adds Prashant Mehra: "We might be open to change, but we are not a group of people who will suffocate to death if that change does not happen."
There's yet another explanation to the problem as Vishwanath Ranganath, 32, a mechanical engineer from IIT Madras and the University of Arizona, says: "Culturally, we have been brought up to believe that that's not your job. Somebody else is paid to do it for you. What happens to it is not my problem." In other words, there is no sense of inclusion with the surroundings.
It's not as though there's nothing happening out of India, however. July Systems of Bangalore, is entirely involved in product design and conceptualisation without any back up support from the West, says Vishwanath. But such successes are few and far between. Unfortunately, there's no tom-tomming our little success stories.
Also, banks don't fund research or finance start-ups, but eagerly advance housing loans. And red tape pervades the business landscape. You need around 600 licences to set up a company; you can't hire and fire people. That makes it difficult for innovators to move out on their own, says Dhanasharan.
"Innovations in India are happening by draining the exchequer," adds Naveen K. "Yet, nobody quite knows what happened to the innovations at state-owned companies such as BHEL, HAL, BEL and HMT before the reforms process set off in the '90s." Even in the critical defence sector, where the DRDO was set up to be the fountainhead of advanced technological innovations, public money has been wasted chasing mirages.
Crucially, unlike in the technologically advanced countries, there's hardly enough bonding between the academies of higher learning and business. While IIT Mumbai has a few incubators, these have been mostly funded from the West. This makes lab to land technology transfers very difficult. Small wonder then, Anshuman says that India's last big invention was the Zero. "Ever since, it has remained the same."
Can India ever add to that zero? Can Bangalore create a successful brand?
Nobody doubts that the skill sets are present. Nobody questions that Bangalore has emerged as the knowledge power house to the world. The questions that remain are how and when will that happen. MindTree's best minds have the best answers, one of them outrageous enough to put the scare of death in ordinary mortals: Nuke the system. Start afresh!
Ctrl, Alt, Del, if you please. And then, Start!
Thirty years ago, when the Naxalite movement started in Kolkata, and before it degenerated into random extortionist killings, the boys of Presidency College who spearheaded the agitation believed that the existing order had to be demolished, so that a new society could be built from scratch. "Unfortunately, that movement got crushed," says Indroneel Das.
Vishwanath Ranganath who has been to the US and back after higher learning feels we need to demolish our pseudo-secular mindset that belittles our heritage. As a nation we need to stop aping the West. And feel proud about ourselves.
At a more fundamental level, we need to design products that will connect with the local market. "Like the sas bhi kabhi bahu serials and Tandoori Pizza. Right now, these ideas are being promoted by the multinationals, not Indians," says Anshuman. Time we did them ourselves.
To make it work, we Indians need to first learn to ask questions. We need to ask why. We need to ask why not. That can only happen when we teach creative thinking in our schools. Or else, we will continue to remain followers.
ET asked MindTree founder and the company's chief operating officer Subroto Bagchi, why was it that simple software like the 'smileys' that you get on your sms or e-mail were not created in India? "It will happen here the day our engineering courses make theatre appreciation compulsory, because that will teach us to emote. It will happen once we have a compulsory semester on biology at the B Tech level because that will teach us how our body functions. It will happen when we have a compulsory semester on consumer behaviour as part of our advanced IT curriculum because that will teach us how to tap the market," Bagchi said.
It's time then, to reboot the system.
Disclaimer: While this series draws heavily on the reporter’s interactions at MindTree to understand the world of Indian software, in no manner does it attempt to be a report on MindTree, where many good things are happening beyond the context and scope of this series.
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