As the country looks to become a USD five trillion economy in the next few years, the technology industry needs to upgrade the skills of its employees, CII start-up council chairman S Gopalakrishnan said on Thursday.
There is also the need for farmers to adapt new technologies to improve productivity, inclusive growth of cities and improvement in internet connectivity, he said.
Addressing a special plenary session for Startups organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) as a part of the CII HR Conclave here, Gopalakrishnan said that in the past 25 years India has moved from being a 600 billion USD economy to a 2.5 trillion USD economy.
The per capita income has also seen growth of five times. The country will soon become a middle-income level country with average income of 5000 dollars per household
"The technology industry needs to upgrade the skills of its people, entrepreneurs need to update themselves with latest technology and farmers need to adapt new technologies to improve productivity," Gopalakrishnan who is the co-founder of Infosys and chairman of Axilor Ventures said.
Stating that the present growth in agriculture in the country is "very low", he said if productivity increases, prices will go down and farmers will eventually have surplus produce which they can export to other countries.
"This is possible when the farmers come together and form a cooperative society where they can leverage the resources and market the produce under a good brand. Food processing organisations can play a big role in marketing the products," Gopalakrishnan said.
He gave the example of Araku Coffee plantations on Ananthgiri Hills, in which the farmers formed a cooperative and earned revenue from its exports to the European country.
The former CII president said that for proper development of cities the growth should be inclusive as people move out from tier III cities to Tier I cities for jobs.
He said unemployment is still an area of concern for the country. Bulk of the jobs is created at the lower spectrum of the industry such as workers in manufacturing industry, workforce in retails and services. It is imperative to improve the situation and engage people in more medium, high and skilled work and leverage technology for growth of the business.
Financial technology is an emerging area in business and India has the best companies in the sector in the world. The banking sector has improved in the past decade by leveraging the technology, Gopalakrishnan said.
Improvement in internet connectivity is required in the north east states to leverage technology, he said adding people, government and industries should come together to help each other.
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