In this fireside chat with Andreas Kluth, S. Ramadorai discusses India's rise in the IT world and compares it to China's emerging role. India has gone from being perceived as a non-participant in the high-tech industry, to a major resource, to an innovation engine and a market. Ramadorai also discusses the shift in IT from a products focus to an industry that he argues is based on knowledge and services.
India is poised to continue its rise in the IT sector, as the nation has a strong focus on education. However, Ramadorai shares the concern that the number of young Indians pursuing higher education is dwindling, and education must remain a core value. He does predict that India's economic growth will continue and that areas like Bangalore and Mumbai will soon be spoken of in the same terms as places like Silicon Valley.
Ramadorai advocates that young people and industry insiders should travel to other parts of the world, such as India,or South America, to fully appreciate the impact of globalization on the IT industry. He also argues that data privacy and the protection of intellectual property are two of the most pressing issues facing the industry in the coming years.
S. Ramadorai, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services Limited, has been associated with the Company for the past thirty years. Joining as a trainee engineer, Ramadorai took over as CEO in 1996 and has been instrumental in building TCS to a $1.6 billion global software and services company with a talent base of over 30,000 associates, a geographical reach of 32 countries and an enviable client list which includes six of the Top Ten Fortune companies. Ramadorai has now set his sights on ensuring that TCS is among the global Top Ten software companies. His key initiatives include his relentless pursuit of excellence in quality. In August 2004, TCS became the world's first organization to achieve an integrated enterprise-wide Maturity Level 5 on both the Capability Maturity model and the People Capability Maturity model.
Ramadorai firmly believes that learning is a continual process, which does not end with formal education. With this in mind, he has striven to make TCS a learning organization, conducive to developing one's full potential. TCS spends 6% of its annual turnover on training and development and has invested in a world class Training Center. Additionally, each year, every TCSer has the opportunity to undergo 20 days training. His academic credentials include a Bachelors degree in Physics from Delhi University, India, a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Telecommunications from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, and a Masters degree in Computer Science from UCLA.
Andreas Kluth has been writing for The Economist since 1997 and is currently the technology correspondent, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 2000 to 2003, he was based in Hong Kong, covering business and finance throughout China and South-East Asia. From 1997 to 2000, he was based in the head office in London as a global finance correspondent. Mr Kluth is also a teaching fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, and a regular commentator on NPR's Marketplace. He is German and American, and has a Bachelors degree from Williams College in Massachusetts and a Masters degree from the London School of Economics.
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