Q: What we saw through the course of the pandemic over the last 15 months has been this accelerated move towards digitisation, the accelerated adoption across the board of technology. What have you seen play out differently during second wave?
Natarajan: Each wave is likely to throw distinct challenges to us. In retrospect, first wave of the pandemic tested the business continuity of the enterprises and all the organisations pivoted around the covid-proofing of their business models.
The second wave is different in terms of the impact it had on the human lives. Each one of us had somebody that we know of or loved ones that were impacted by the virus and it is far from over.
For organisations this essentially means nothing is business as usual and it may not be for some time now. However if you were to look at when we will return to normalcy, the question will not be whether we survive this pandemic but more importantly how we manage the crisis, what we learnt from it and how well we are prepared for the next unknown.
From my conversations with clients, we are clearly seeing the optimism about the future and the promise that science and technology provides. There are also numerous stories of human kindness that we see and that stands out among all the preparations that we do with the ongoing uncertainty and the disruptions.
Q: Given the impact that we have seen across the board and different sectors have been impacted differently on account of the second wave, is there any indication that you get on deferring of budgets at this point in time or any slowdown in the off take of digitisation or does that continue as is because that is the way of fortifying the future?
Natarajan: Actually there is acceleration. We see clear signs of acceleration of digital transformation all around whether it is in the hybrid cloud area or AI area, this is increasingly becoming the fundamental fabric of how the companies are shifting more and more towards the next-gen technologies.
The journey that every company is taking in the digital transformation area is across all sizes, all industries. What we would see happening in the next 5 or 6 years is happening in a matter of year or less.
The question for enterprises is not if, it is about when and how fast can you do it. So there are shifts that are happening in the areas of digital ecosystems, development of new business model and opportunities thereof. We also saw the emergence of new network economy. So all of these are kind of precipitating and accelerating the digital transformation. In other words, pandemic has actually become sort of an accelerant to that.
Q: What does that mean now as far as business is concerned for CISCO in India specifically? Globally we have seen you rebalancing your investment spends, focusing on areas that you want to bet on for the future. Take me through what the experience and the learning has been and what we can expect from hereon?
Garde: I personally believe that all life has the capacity to recover from challenges that are as inevitable as they are unpredictable. I think all businesses, all humans have shown tremendous resilience in the face of this particular challenge over the last 15 months and I don’t think it is still over.
One of the things that we have seen is tremendous growth outside of India simply because India has been going through a second wave. We had seen the beginnings of a rebound somewhere in January-February period which put paid because of the second wave.
However globally as you saw the results of our most recent quarter, our bookings growth was around 10 percent, our revenue growth was around 7 percent but more importantly the business model has changed drastically for CISCO. If you look at it we are actually now the sixth largest software player in the world at around $4 billion of software revenue on a quarterly basis and with 81 percent of it being subscription based software. So that is massive, and it is not just CISCO, it is across the board.
You were asking about how businesses have invested in digitisation? I think what I have seen is that organisations which traditionally were a little hesitant to invest in technology have divested from areas which they didn’t feel would be strategic in the next 3-4 years and have used that money to invest in technology and digitisation in a way which is unbelievable.
I have seen business models change so drastically in these last 15 months, we were talking to a large pharma company about the use of digitisation where their productivity for jus drug promotion has doubled because the medical representatives who could do around 5 calls with doctors in a day are able to now do 10-12 calls through digital methods. So that kind of productivity growth is unprecedented in all kinds of circumstances that you can think of.
So I think there are changes that have happened which are here to stay for a while. In my personal opinion, India always presents itself with 3-4 years of phenomenal growth and then some unprecedented event will happen which will bring that growth down, we have seen that over the last year or so. However I do believe that next 3-4 years are going to be massive in terms of the rebound. All of us need to be prepared to catch that rebound, not just as a technology company but also as a non-technology company.
Q: What are driving things at Intel? We were talking about how work from home has actually been a boon for companies like yours. How is that now playing itself out and what kind of investments are we talking about as far as Intel is concerned?
Mallya: The purpose of the company across the board has been tested because short term I do believe that we have been witnessing a difficult time. Our communities, the employees working for us and in general our customers have been challenged. So the learnings from here have been phenomenal from a personal as well as leadership point of view.
When you look at the key technology trends shaping the country – number one, acceleration of cloud. Most things will become as a service if it can be made as a service. We have started that journey sometime back and it is accelerating. Work from anywhere is accelerating as well. I was speaking to a startup today, they were into gaming and they were talking about how even gaming is reaching tier II, tier III towns. Third is the, diversification of the ecosystem. When you look at startups as well as deep tech companies innovating for India, it is very significant and different from what we have seen before. Last point would be localisation of infrastructure because of the resilience of the supply chain that is required moving forward. So when you combine all these trends, you could see an opportunity to collaborate and really make a difference for the country.
For example, work from anywhere, more than anything else in my opinion is a giant inclusion experiment. So work moving to small towns, no matter where you are, no matter your seniority in the organisation, you are an icon on MS Teams or a Zoom screen, so that is powerful. So it can make an impact if we collectively work towards it.
Second education, the quality of education outcomes through technology no matter where you are based, based on high quality content being delivered to you is powerful. The last one is the ability for healthcare to deliver equal access to any part of the country using technology could be very powerful. All of this requires collaboration and that is why I believe the industry can come together to solve for the country because technology is means to an end, innovation is means to an end. However all of these segments and opportunities are really towards creating a new India based on technology and driven to a very different space from where we started COVID.
