‘There is no workforce like the Indians, there is an amazing desire to learn’

• People keep complaining. Some senior foreign journalists were pointing out this contrast saying Wipro and Infosys, and then you go out and spend 40 minutes just waiting at the next traffic intersection.

We communicate to everyone that everything that we create ourselves, we do well with. But what we create collectively as a society, we struggle with.

• Things like this become an enclave?

That’s right and as a result it becomes secluded in some sense. They begin to feel like they are cut off. But the interesting thing is that you would assume, if you have so much in an enclave, that people would be jealous and say that’s not right. But the actual reaction is, if its do-able, why can’t we do it on a bigger scale.

• Are these things setting a new benchmark?

Expectations are rising. As you create through IT and through the growth you can see both economic empowerment as well as the ability to get exposure to all the different systems around the world.

• Also, through a kind of discipline and competitiveness which we never thought existed in India.

If you work hard, you demonstrate, use your brains and you can create lasting value.

• Also shows Indians have punctuality, discipline and creativity, there was no doubt about that.

Yes, I’ve seen that. I’ve run workforces in Japan, workforces in France, workforces in the US, but there is no workforce like the Indians. They are really dedicated. People here want to achieve something, the second thing is the amazing desire to learn. They desire that intellectual expansion, which is very tough to get outside.

• And if they don’t know the copybook way of doing it, they find another way—the jugad as they would call it.

Yes, the jugad exists. The process in the system is unpredictable. And so as a result, you have to have some back-up. No doubt about that.

• There is a little story. The US airforce came for a joint exercise with the Indian airforce in Gwalior. They came with their big aircraft. We had our bunch of Mirages. The station commander said I may have a gap in terms of technology, but I have the good old Indian jugad and as things happened, the Americans were outscored.

India has an amazing power and that power has to be harnessed. Our population is an enormous asset and not a massive drag. But if we don’t do all the right things, the situation will be back.

• But you are not just the poster boy for India’s IT industry, but the poster boy for modern, resurgent India. What do you see when you go overseas in terms of the position of India compared to 10 years ago. What opportunities do you see now?

It’s a mixed bag. We were in a meeting in Switzerland which had a whole bunch of IT CEOs and we were talking about China’s and India’s success. The topic wasn’t on how to make India succeed but on how to make all the other countries the same. How do you use the same forumula? So when you come around to India, you look at the problems, you are scared. There is so much to do.

On the flip side, when people talk about China, there is an edge of fear but there is none of that feeling about India. People think yeh mera chota bhai hai, but that one, I’d better watch out for.

• So you say there is awe for China but a kind of patronising attitude towards India?

I won’t call it patronising… (The attitude is) We don’t need to worry about these guys.

• But it’s not a nice thing.

No, it’s not. At the end of the day, if you think of India as a confluence of civilisations, we are there. We have our own culture, literature, music, but we still don’t get that respect. With the amount of workforce we have, we haven’t been fully utilised. It’s a shame, a lost opportunity.

• So we are a country of under-achievers?

We haven’t grown economically as the rest of the world. In today’s world, the scorecard is economics. The reality is, yes. The question is about the future, an anticipation of the future.

• So are we losing time?

I think we are losing time. In some sense, we are declaring victory too fast because the service industry is taking off on the export plane. The reality is, the service industry is 2 per cent of the total workforce of the country. India has to inflate its domestic economy. Because out there, there is a sense of optimism… optimism is important. In fact, optimism is the better currency, because it fuels both spending and investment.

• Are Indian kids better or different from others?

Smarter and better and ambitious. They say, give me a chance and I would show that I can add a lot of value. I know economic growth for me would follow. I’m willing to work hard and I’m willing to spend. So now you’ve got this consumption engine going on and if you now remove the hurdles to the production engine, you have the ability to create a massive domestic economy. Now you have domestic consumption, domestic production overlay on that global advantage that we have in multiple areas. Wow!

• But you do keep saying that India is losing opportunities everyday.

The reality is by inching forward. It’s a race, ultimately all the top spots will be taken. Today everybody says China, two or three hundred years ago, was 33 per cent of global trade. It’s only 6-7 per cent now, it will soon get to 33 per cent. Why aren’t people saying India was 25 per cent of that trade and we will get to that per cent now?

• Do we set the bar too low?

Absolutely. I’ll draw a parallel from Wipro. When I joined Wipro, we were timed to keep our execution going. Once we had readiness, we launched the vision that we could be global players. That was a shattering vision for a lot of people. India is in a similar position. If you have the readiness, things will be different.

• There’s something in the Indian psychology that sets the bar too low.

I think it is because of repeated disappointments. I love that song Choti si asha… every time I hear that song, I love it. Somebody explained that it described India. Humari ashayen choti hoti hain.

• Well you think that describes our psychology, that we are happy to have little ambition and we are satisfied?

No. If you talk to individuals, absolutely not. If you talk collectively, then yes.

• If you talk collectively, you find the Government of India saying 7-8 per cent growth. Why a limit to growth, why not somebody saying more growth?

I think, they should say what it takes to be 25 per cent of the global economy by 10 years or pick another goal. In my speech at Wharton, I said our goals should be that within 50 years, our per capita income should be as high as anybody else in the world, and in 25 years, it should be as high as anybody today. These are not unachievable. When you set that goal, you would be forced to reshape every institution and everything in the country.

The world is different. You talk to kids in the Wipro campus and you get a sense of unending optimism. They tell themselves that I am as good as they are, I can go toe-to-toe with them and if that’s the case, then why is my road not as good as theirs, why is my house not good as theirs, why aren’t my buildings as good. So at an individual level, there is enormous expectation.

• And you are talking about 40,000 people.

Yes and those 40,000 are reflective of many others. Now you talk about young kids with B. Com degrees making it big in the BPO industry, upstaging engineers. They are saying, I know what I can do. In some sense, the management of India is generationally divided from the people. The management gets older and older. In Wipro, we talk about this a lot that maybe our value system is not reflective of the fact that the average age of our employee is 27.

• The young people you hire do not come from privileged backgrounds?

If you look at the population you are hiring, there are a lot of people who need training in English.These are engineers who get good grades but they are not comfortable with the language. We teach them the basics. But the fact is, they are still coming here. In the first couple of years, they used to be surprised at what they could do. Today, it is their entitlement the day they walk in. That is what they expect from the very beginning.

• Do they come with a fire in their belly?

Absolutely. We were talking about the view of the Indian workforce way back when I used to run the Wipro-GE joint venture. We set up a unit to export medical equipment. We did everything by ourselves. People assumed for a long time that Indian manufacturing work process was incapable. We can make good quality products. This workforce is fabulous.

• But there were restrictions. Describe the scene when you first came to India.

Then, there was darkness before liberalisation. At that time we formed Wipro, we wanted to sell and make ultrasound equipment and CT scanners and we needed export components but we didn’t have the kind of foreign exchange to do that, so we almost changed the name to Wipro ghee, kuch to bechne ko milega. So we started with that darkness. Then liberalisation came and we were able to get all the technology and components we could get and we took off.

It is not the exports that are the only thing. We improved the healthcare situation in India. We domestically manufactured medical goods at a price that others would not have been able to offer.

• Tell me about the circumstances in joining Wipro. You were a hotshot in GE, had you stayed on, you would have made it to the top, but you made the decision to move. How did that happen?

I had done pretty well in GE. I was running one of GE’s successful product units in GE medical systems. Jack Welch was my boss. It was a great environment. But when Azim called me,, he said that I think we are in the cusp of an opportunity. What he said was that you had the opportunity to either build another skyscraper in Manhattan or do something great in India. Having lived here, you always have heartstrings which get pulled. So I took the challenge and it’s been a great ride.

• You never regretted it?

Never. I feel blessed. How many have the opportunity to create value for your employees, your shareholders, your nation. You know, I’m blessed.

• You’ve seen Jack Welch, you are working with Azim Premji. Compare the two.

On the personality front, Jack is a very spontaneous person. With Jack, it was unpredictable. He was brilliantly incisive in the way he looked at things. Azim is equally focussed with what he wants to do with business. But his whole thing is relentlessness. He will prepare a plan step-by-step. Both achieve success through different means.

• Like Tendulkar and Dravid.

Yes (laughs) great batsmen, different styles. And yes, they hate to lose.

• So now, how do you look at the future?

Well, I think that we’re right now only one-eighth of the way through this journey. This is not the time to make big strategic moves. Our view is that we have to continue to better ourselves. We have to keep investing in quality process, keep investing in consumer focus and make some changes.

• I’ve heard you saying that the Wipro workforce should be a lot more international which is different from the script you read elsewhere.

It’s a purely business need. So you never want to do something on an idealistic basis. Business is business. If you look at the next stage of our evolution, customers initially told us here what they wanted to do, then they said what do you think should be done now. They say, this is my business problem, I should prepare my technology solution. Now, I need more people who understand local business and not just technology.

• You were talking about Jeff Immelt who was in the country for a while, and he said no other country in the world has such a wide gap between the quality of its manpower and the quality of its infrastructure—this gap is going to damage India badly.

There is a clear limit. I was talking to these bankers who had come to India with high expectations and they said that they were forced to take a cow path from the airport at 3 a.m. It hurts the cost structure. So if I say we are going to be worldwide manufacturers and we factor-in higher costs of transportation, higher costs of raw materials and electricity, we put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Unlike China, where the government drove whatever it did, India’s competitive advantage came from wherever the government receded.

• Tell me about yourself. Where do you see yourself in the future?

Again, I’ve been a very fortunate person. I was here through the liberalisation phase. I brought the first wave of investment into India through GE medical equipment. I brought about a change in the global business mindset towards the country. Those are wins. To me the question is, is there another big hit waiting for me out there? The key to my life is to continue doing better and better, improve and improve. Sometimes, somewhere there will be roads you will have to take.

• Do you believe in philanthropy like others in the industry?

At this stage, I have to focus more on the building than dissipation. Giving money is always easy. What is important is focus.You should know when to move the needle. Handing out money is plenty but the issue really is to pick a topic and make a change.

• What is the No. 1 priority for Wipro and for India?

The No. 1 priority for Wipro is to manage its growth, continue to scale without any problems. You don’t need to be brilliant. And the No. 1 priority for India is to inflate the domestic economy and once you do it, expectations will change, the mindset will change, and the economy will grow.