One CEO Club

Envisioning a future that orbits around digital

Disruption, Reorientation and Reinvention supported by Digital

Leveraging technology while living in the new normal

Democratisation of technology in the new normal

Introspecting on the Role of Technology in the New Normal

Business disruption and opportunities that emerge

Evolution of technology, mindsets and more in the time of crisis

Management lessons reinvented by the Covid-19 crisis and technology trends that emerged

Transition Reimagining and recalibrating for the new world

Enterprises rebooting: The new normal in a new world

We thrive on technology disruptions: Tata Elxsi's Manoj Raghavan

We solved ML for vernacular Indian languages early on: DailyHunt

We are building a postal service for Indian cities: Dunzo's Kabeer Biswas

Migrating to Cloud - In a 'Hybrid' way

Productivity boost with cloud computing

Making Digital Transformation a Success

Getting Digital Transformation Right

How AI is helping IndiaMart fulfil its vision of buyer-supplier matchmaking

Forbes India One CEO Club evaluates digital business in the 2020s

The first human genome project took 12 years, technology can now do it in 3 days

5 technologies for the next 10 years

Tata Motors is prepared to play in the electric market: Guenter Butschek

Peering into the Future

Our focus is to create talent even before the market need arises: Sandeep Kishore, CEO, Zensar

The next billion customers are digital but not always savvy

India innovates but structural challenges throw a wrench in the wheel

Digital helps democratise price points across urban and rural India: Vivek Gambhir

The business case for digital transformation

What does the future of work look like?

"We can engage our customers very deeply in the product-design process-before we bring the products to them"

Differentiation&mdash;The one-word recipe for success in a digital world

Personalisation - the key to customer loyalty

The future of customer engagement

"People who can draw insights from real-time data will influence decision-making in the future"

All innovations are not smart; all failures are not futile

Emerging technology and its impact on business

"The new wave of productivity will come out of data and new age technologies"

The new wave of productivity will come out of data and new age technologies

Artificial Intelligence: From idea to reality

"Byju's app self-learns patterns as students spend more time on it"

Byju's app self-learns patterns as students spend more time on it

Devising a cloud strategy

Digital transformation: The 5 most common challenges

AI: Where does India stand?

The C-suite's guide to the cloud spectrum

7 cloud computing myths, debunked

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<div id="image123387"><img src="http://www.forbesindia.com/media/images/2019/Nov/img_123387_bangalorertcoverageimage_bg.jpg" alt="g_123387_bangalorertcoverageimage_bg_280x210.jpg" title="g_123387_bangalorertcoverageimage_bg_280x210.jpg" />(L to R standing) Adhil Shetty, CEO, Bankbazaar; Sashank Rishyasringa, co-founder and managing director, Capital Float; (L to R seated)&nbsp; Sujit Janardanan, head of marketing, Google Cloud India; Amisha Jain, CEO, Zivame; Sanjiv Kathuria, CEO, DotZot</div>
Four chief executives from different new-age ventures sat down on September 24, 2019, to discuss &lsquo;Innovating in India for the world&rsquo;, at the Bengaluru leg of the Forbes India One CEO Club&rsquo;s Digital Leadership series roundtable, conducted in partnership with Google Cloud India. The round table saw Adhil Shetty, CEO, BankBazaar; Amisha Jain, CEO, Zivame; Sashank Rishyasringa, co-founder, Capital Float; and Sanjiv Kathuria, founder and CEO, DotZot &ndash; an arm of DTDC, discussed the structural challenges that keep India from becoming an innovation hub for the world, and the way forward.
Kicking off the discussion, Sashank Rishyasringa, co-founder of online lender Capital Float pointed out that in Silicon Valley the focus has been on inventing something that didn&rsquo;t exist, before people even imagined a need for it&mdash;say social media. But in India, the focus remains on how to deliver products and services which are desperately needed by the wider population. India&rsquo;s vast population spread and the urban and rural divide has created a need gap of accessibility and providing that easy access at low costs and with better customer experience. It is, he said, the perfect opportunity for startups to come in and fill the gap while at the same time create sustainable and scalable businesses.
This focus of making products and services available to the bottom or middle of the pyramid at lightning speed and at the lowest possible operational expenses is a combination that hasn&rsquo;t been cracked perfectly by anyone, he said. &ldquo;When it is, it&rsquo;s something that can easily be taken to markets like Africa or South East Asia,&rdquo; Rishyasringa added. Indian fintech companies are also well-poised to go to the US or European shores and significantly disrupt counterparts there, he added.
Rishyasringa hit the nail on the head when he said, &ldquo;Innovation is at two levels. One, is India a good country for innovation for its own citizens? Yes, thanks to demand and now venture capital supporting it. Second, is it a good country to innovate for anyone? Singapore and Israel have done a good job here, but we fall quite short,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;In India, architecture of public sector is closed, access to public sector institutions is tough, and the tender process is opaque. Opening up the architecture of the government and making it porous to make it easier for regular people to interact with it, would help,&rdquo; he shared.
The other challenge&mdash;which has plagued India for as long as one could care to remember&mdash;is of cumbersome processes. Programs like Digital India, Startup India and Make in India have started oiling the engine, but significant problems remain. Rishyasringa said entrepreneurs will figure out a way to work with the government if there are opportunities, but process simplification by the government will help entrepreneurship in India in the long run.
Zivame&rsquo;s Amisha Jain shared three intrinsic challenges of the lingerie industry. One, the very broken shopping experience; second, lack of the right fit for Indian women&rsquo;s body types and a lack of innovation in the area; third, before companies like Zivame began to experiment &mdash; women had accepted that &lsquo;this is all we get&rsquo;.&nbsp;Zivame has used technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), and data analytics to develop several proprietary tools like the &lsquo;fit code&rsquo;, which helps women calculate the right bra sizes. &ldquo;Personalisation is the key here, and Zivame applies a lot of data analytics to achieve it.&rdquo;&nbsp;These are innovations that can be easily adapted in other markets, she said, adding that &ldquo;I think we have a rocking product that can go to global markets, and this is not technology, but technology-backed product innovation.&rdquo;
While she also highlighted the problem of structural silos in Indian organisations and a cultural gap which keeps employees and companies from being on their feet, innovating. &ldquo;The whole awareness and sensibility about effective utilisation of resources and structures are so matrixed [in India], there isn't enough space for somebody to innovate. Unless those structures are shifted, you won&rsquo;t see any massive innovations coming out of India,&rdquo; she added. For Bankbazaar, a consumer finance marketplace, its vision is that in the future, consumers will want to access financial products which give them a paperless experience and are instant&mdash;where six-months bank statements or three-year income tax documents and other physical documents are not necessary, CEO, Adhil Shetty shared. &ldquo;People are willing to authenticate themselves on their mobile phones and upload electronic files and so on. We thought, &lsquo;can we be a platform player that works with the big banks and NBFCs; can we be the platform that helps them manage this transition from the old to the new?&rsquo;&rdquo;. He adds, while India will go through phases of innovation over the years, organisations should keep the end goal in mind while taking stock of the changes in the ecosystem. &ldquo;We need to prove that business models are scalable and profitable. We have proven that demand exists; when we display scalability and profit, it is a template that can be taken global.&rdquo;
Sanjiv Kathuria, co-founder and CEO, DotZot, an arm of DTDC says, &ldquo;In logistics, you have to find innovative solutions. For instance, nobody knows how many pin codes are there in India. There isn&rsquo;t one big bang innovation to solve this.&rdquo; DotZot created an India-specific innovation to overcome the lack of bank branches in rural areas, where its partners deliver packages and collect money. While it is India-specific and wouldn&rsquo;t have much purpose globally, say in the West, Kathuria says &ldquo;it is not always about big bang innovation, but about doing it brick by brick&rdquo;. He added, &ldquo;While the government certainly has a role to play by creating policies to support the ecosystem, there is a larger role to be played by the corporates and other stakeholders in the economy,&rdquo; which can encourage Indian startups to innovate for the world.
Sujit Janardanan, who leads marketing for Google Cloud India, pointed to some innovations that were born in India and taken to the world.&nbsp;India is home to the largest two-wheeler market in the world, and the millions of motorcycle and scooter riders have different navigation needs than drivers of automobiles. "We created Maps for two-wheelers as an India-first Google feature to aid motorists nationwide. It provides customised traffic estimations and shortcuts, which are available only to riders," he said. &nbsp;Janardanan added,&nbsp;"We also announced an initiative to help the&nbsp;hundreds of millions of Indians who use 2G phones get the information they need, without requiring data or an internet connection. The Vodafone-Idea Phone Line&mdash;supported by the Google Assistant&mdash;enables Vodafone-Idea users to call a single number, free of charge at any time, and ask for everything from sports scores, traffic conditions and weather forecasts to help with homework."
It&rsquo;s simple, as DotZot&rsquo;s Kathuria puts it, &ldquo;Innovation has to come out of an ecosystem. You can&rsquo;t lock someone up in a room and ask them to innovate&rdquo;.

At the recent Bengaluru leg of the Forbes India One CEO Club roundtable, India&#039;s top chief executives spoke about what&#039;s holding India back from being a global innovation hub, and bringing digital technologies to bear

One CEO Club India innovates but structural challenges 

India innovates but structural challenges throw a wrench in the wheel

At the recent Bengaluru leg of the Forbes India One CEO Club roundtable, India&#039;s top chief executives spoke about what&#039;s holding India back from being a global innovation hub, and bringing digital technologies to bear

At the recent Bengaluru leg of the Forbes India One CEO Club roundtable, India's top chief executives spoke about what's holding India back from being a global innovation hub, and bringing digital technologies to bear