Opportunity comes knocking on Sri Lanka’s IT industry
COLOMBO – Rishad Premji has a fixation with the word ‘opportunity’. It crops up 22 times during our half-an-hour conversation underlining the importance the scion of one of India’s wealthiest families’ places on seizing the moment.
NASSCOM board of directors meeting the PM with Mr. Premji on far left.
And he believes the time is ripe for Sri Lanka’s small but vibrant software industry to take the next step towards becoming an oasis for new age tech skills, focusing on specialised areas. Ditch the idea of being a jack-of-all-trades and instead be the master of some.
“There is a huge shortage of new age skills, whether it be the cyber security space, the data science space, or the artificial intelligence space for instance, and if new economies can build those skills there will be a huge opportunity (for the world) to come to where those skills are and that could be a huge game changer,” says Rishad.
Note the word opportunity.
I, too, have grabbed the opportunity to have a one-on-one with the man who one day will rule like a Mogul king over the digital world in India. Rishad, 40, is the chief strategy officer at Wipro, India’s technology giant, and also the eldest son of Azim Premji, the second richest man in India and founder of the company.
He was in town last week in his role as vice-chairman of NASSCOM (the National Association of Software and Services Companies, an Indian IT and business process outsourcing industry with a global membership). The executive council of this body had chosen Sri Lanka to have a private three-day talk-a-thon.
We ask Rishad if Sri Lanka is just a convenient place for a private retreat or was it because of its growing allure, being courted like a beautiful woman by many foreign powers these days.
He admits the visit – as far as he can tell it is the first time in five years – by NASSCOM’s brain trust is also a test-the-water exercise. Compared to India’s IT hub of Bangalore, with a US$150 billion economy, Sri Lanka’s tech industry is still a mere babe with just $1 billion turnover. But the potential for growth is enormous and Rishad is excited about the future.
“Our objective (of coming here) is to evaluate the opportunities in Sri Lanka and understand the marketplace,” he points out. “There is a huge thriving start-up community which can become an eco-system partner for some of our member companies.
“We met a few members of SLASSCOM (the local equivalent of NASSCOM) which is a thriving and growing group. Its early days but the opportunity is there to see how we can better understand the context and take it further.”
The czars of India’s IT industry – apart from Wipro, others like Infosys and Google India were also represented – also met with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who is keen to see Sri Lanka have its own high-tech version of Silicon Valley or Bangalore.
“I found the Prime Minister to be very engaging and very open to ideas. He was focused on how we can take the technology industry (in Sri Lanka) from where it is at a billion dollars to a substantial bigger size, and open to the idea of focusing on new skills,” Rishad remarked.
Rishad Premji in conversation with the Business Times.
Among the topics discussed were how to make Sri Lanka friendly and accessible to companies from outside by easing regulatory obstacles.
Officials from the Board of Investment had also made a pitch following on the Prime Minister’s keenness to partner with NASSCOM (some companies already have a presence). In February, a local delegation will participate at the India Leadership Forum, NASSCOM’s annual flagship conference, in Hyderabad.
A big fan of Roger Federer – he forsook a family vacation this summer to entertain Wipro’s corporate clients and watch the legend win a record 8th Wimbledon crown – Rishad is also a master tactician.
His words of advice for Sri Lanka – don’t follow India’s path to success, instead leapfrog it with all the verve of a Federer serve-and-volley style.
“The model that worked for India was cost-quality-scale. Companies came to reduce costs, they did that and then stayed for quality and we all made money because we were able to scale. There are opportunities for Sri Lanka to leapfrog that phase and go into building very new age skills because there is a huge opportunity with all the digital disruption that is happening,” commented Rishad.
Sri Lanka’s billion-dollar IT industry is at a stage where India’s was in 1998 and Rishad is absolutely convinced that it would be a waste of time trying to copycat a similar growth path.
“Trying to play catchup doesn’t make sense. What makes sense is to move into these new age skills where there is a huge dearth across the globe. If Sri Lanka can build some of those skills there will be a huge opportunity for companies to participate.
And how do you do it? Rishad answers: “By being very focused. Identify three or four areas where you want to build a certain amount of special skills and capacity over the next three to five years. One must work with universities across the globe and partners like NASSCOM which today hugely focuses on re-skilling and uplifting the workforce in India.”
Already Sri Lanka has proven to be a fertile ground for tech talent. Every year Google India runs a code competition to unearth the best coders and for the last five years running, graduates from Moratuwa University have come top of the class.
“You must leverage these skills and I cannot see why it won’t happen on a bigger scale. It certainly won’t be as the same scale as India but Sri Lanka can find its own niche to participate in the global opportunity.”
There, that word again.