 "Aruna Jayanthi")
Capgemini, the French information technology (IT) services and consulting giant that has around 47,000 people in India, says it is bringing global best practices here when the chorus around new technology areas like cloud, mobility, social and big data is rising. India Chief Executive Aruna Jayanthi, in an interview with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra and Aditi Divekar, talks about skills needed for these technologies. Edited excerpts:
Do you see an increase in Indian companies' interest in adopting social media, mobility, analytics and cloud services?
It's quite positive. In fact, it's not just today but during the past two years, we saw that some Indian companies have adopted technologies that were almost in a pilot stage and become first-time adopter. So in a way, there are examples how Indian companies are equal or even ahead of their global counterparts in the adoption of new technologies. However, those numbers are small. One of the best implementation we did in the business intelligence and analytics space is for an Indian company.
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How equipped is the Indian information technology (IT) workforce to manage delivery of some of these technologies?
First of all, technical skills are of course in demand but the nature of technical skill is changing. Now, you need specialists, say, in areas like mobile technologies, big data and analytics and cloud services. But for me, business skill is more important than technology skills. Technology is the enabler but we also require people with deep understanding of the businesses of customers and that is becoming quite critical.
Why is it becoming critical?
I believe you can't do digital transformation in isolation because it's not a technology problem. Because eventually, the core objective is to change the client's business using technology. So, you can't just go and implement digital technology or a solution; there has to be an underline change in the business process. Therefore, that understanding, added with technical skills, is a killer combination.
Will it also reflect in hiring? What is Capgemini doing to equip employees with new skills?
At one level, we are recruiting from another category of people - those with industry background and coming from business schools. It's because they have quite a strong understanding of how organisations function. Everybody does that but now that's becoming an increasing need. But that will always be a small percentage of your total staff. We are also looking at imparting four levels of industry training programme to every technical person, including software programmers. The base level training would be what are the different terms and understanding the basic model of the business and so on. We have already done that for a few sectors but that is an area where we are going to focus on increasingly.
Will it hit large-scale hiring?
Mass hiring will still happen but all I am saying is you need to equip them not with just technology but a certain skills. I think every technical guy also needs to understand the business side of it. In our business, the mass will still come from technical schools and that hiring will continue to happen.
What is your view of Nasscom's exports growth forecast of 13-15 per cent for next financial year?
I think it is a good and practical guidance. There is natural momentum in demand, which is already there in the market. Some of the new areas like digital transformations are also driving new project investments.
How equipped are Indian IT services companies to deliver the new technologies?
People tend to view the sector most from cost arbitrage point of view but I don't think that is true even for Indian players. I think a lot of them (Indian players) do high-value work. The capabilities certainly exist in the sector to do these kinds of works.
