 "We want to drive more value creation out of India: Nivruti Rai")
Chipmaker Intel is going through a huge transformation globally reorienting focus on emerging areas like Cloud, Internet of Things (IoT) and smart and connected devices. This, in April this year, the California-headquartered company had announced, would result in reduction of 12,000 positions globally, almost 11% of its overall workforce.
In an interaction with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra, her first one with media in the new role, Nivruti Rai, general manager of Intel India talks about how her focus would be on steering Intel India through its third phase of journey, by deriving at least 30% more value through multitude of ways. Edited experts
What would be your key focus areas in this role?
I have been with Intel for 22+ years and half of my career here was in technology development, when I was in the US. The second half of my career has been in India as a technical manager. Intel India has gone through an organizational maturity phase. At the early stage, about 10-15 years ago, we were focusing on building credibility. It involved hiring strong talent and set up the organization with people and infrastructure. Then came the execution phase, which was essentially about building predictability by executing on key programmes flawlessly and consistently. From the organization maturity perspective we have now come to a stage of excellence where we are driving both innovations and inventions. The expectation from me is to drive excellence and create much higher value for the organization. One example of this is how to use the 7,500 people we have in India in a manner so that we create value equivalent to 10,000 or 12,000 people.
What are the innovations you are driving out of India?
Within Intel India, there are different business groups which are driving innovations such as data centre development, graphics development, platform integration and IP development, all in hardware & software. When you look at the portfolio that Intel India is working on, we have an opportunity to invent and innovate in every single domain. For example, how we can make data centres better, smarter and more efficient; what can we do to graphics to make it better, work on brand new IPs that create new use cases. And, the world is moving towards making our machines more smarter while the smartest and most evolved living being is human. So how we can make our machines think like humans or enable machines to act like human brain. Those are the kind of areas I am looking at Intel India to work. Intel is very interested to make automobiles smart and connected, so that is another area of opportunity for us.
You have taken up the mantle of heading Intel India engineering centre at a time when globally the company is undergoing a restructuring and had announced around 12,000 job reductions. How is it going to impact India?
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It’s not really a reduction. It’s a shift in focus in line with our new strategy of virtuous cycle of growth.
What is the number of people in India who will get impacted by this?
We are still working towards our transformation journey. So it’s not one shot. But like I said, I don’t look at it as a reduction. I look at it as a shift. This is about being proactive – looking at what are the needs and market requirements, and the kind of capabilities and products we need to build in alignment with our vision of touching the lives of everybody in the earth.
Critics say that one of the strong causes behind the massive restructuring by Intel is it lost the plot to play a major role in mobility segment. So how the focus is shifting?
We are not getting out of mobile. We have a mobile roadmap though some projects may not happen. So what will it mean to India? Any change that we are making is to drive new strategies. Because of the changes globally, our focus has shifted – to things like machine learning to automobile. That’s exactly the focus we are shifting to Intel India also. We have created a slogan which says 'maximize Intel with maximum India’.
As you said, since the focus is on creating more value out of the existing employee base, how is it going to happen?
There are many ways for doing this, not obviously by just making people go through the grinds and getting more hours. Making people work for long hours is not a sustainable strategy. So, we have to create strategies that keep our employees happy and motivated and this is something I am trying to figure out.
How can that be done?
This can be done by making a person working in one technology area to learn another related technology. For example, let’s say there is one guy who does fantastic work in logic design and another, circuit design. The circuit design guy is cross-trained in logic design, which is an allied field, he can be roped in whenever there is a need for logic design and there is shortage of people. There are many different ways that we have thought which will help in creating 30% more value out of the existing people, without increasing the work hour. It’s about creating higher value.
So, does it mean that you are not going to hire for the next two-three years (in India)?
We will hire to do new things as per Intel's current strategy. It does not mean that I am reducing the staff (here).
Of late, Intel is gearing up to work with the fledgling start-up ecosystem in India. What is your observation about the start-ups in the country?
The startup ecosystem in India has a lot of room to grow. The reason why I say that is we have 8 million people in Bangalore which is equivalent to the entire population of Israel. Now, Israel does five startups a day and India does five startups a day with 1.2 billion population. So, there is a big gap. We have a huge opportunity to nurture and grow the product startup ecosystem here.
What is the status of the 'Maker Lab’ initiative you launched last year?
In August last year, we started Intel India Maker Lab with an incubation facility. We set up a facility with Maker Lab where we provide start-ups with platforms, hardware, software development kits and mentoring from senior technologists from Intel India. We have now 18 start-ups here, and we are aligning the start-ups to our focus areas. One of these areas is automobiles. Our intent is to collaborate with them and enable them to the next level with think tank, equipment and ability because they contribute to our vision. We have set a review board with corporate experts and we will leverage them to identify and take them into the next level of engagement.
