YouSaid · the spoken record

Nandan Nilekani

lines on the record: 36
first: 2023-02-08
most recent: 2023-02-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Know, this was a book which came out of the pandemic, Nikolai, because what I saw in the pandemic was that all of us are digital intensity had gone up because we did a work on our devices, we did our entertainment on our devices, we ordered food on our devices, we ordered goods on our devices, we had relationships on our devices, whatever. And also I saw that a lot of people were being affected by this excessive use of digital technology. They were doom-scrolling about the pandemic and vaccines and whatnot. And I realized that while we have great value for technology, we run the risk of becoming sort of controlled by it also in some sense because nature of these social media apps and all that is to encourage you to spend more time on the apps. And the way they do that is by making appealing to your emotions and making you angry about something. So the book is about.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, for me, technology is an instrument of bringing social change for enabling better equality, making it an open access society where people can use technology. All the work I've done, I've totally done the ADHA project. I'm also the advisor to India's payment system called UPI, built by the National Payment Corporation of India, and that's a very successful payment system which has enabled more than 250 million Indians to make digital payments on their phone very, very quickly in real time.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Made obsolete by technology, you know, just like there was a time when we calculated by ourselves and now we use a calculator or a computer, tomorrow's AI will make a lot of things happen through the computer. And therefore you have to think, how do I remain relevant and useful and adding value in an era where everything is AI driven? And finally, it boils down to human skills and human values, the value of empathy, the value of ideation and connecting the dots, the value of collaboration, the value of thinking about the future in a non-linear way. So I think we have to finally say what is it that we can do in a world where many of the things we do today will become automated.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think they are actually in the world today at a very exciting time. I understand there are many challenges that we face today in the world, be it inflation or rising interest rates or the Ukraine crisis or COVID and so on. But at the same time, the world is on the brink of enormous positive change. I think we're going to see a huge energy transition in the next 20 years. We're going to see a huge digital transformation. So there's ample opportunity for us in the world. And I think it's for them. They have to be, I think they have to always make sure they're relevant. If you're relevant, you will do fine. And relevance may vary from context to context. But if you're relevant in what you do and if you are made sure that you are able to deliver value, the other part I would say is that a lot of things that we do today may be”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leadership by example because people are very get very disturbed if there's a gap between what you say and what you do. So maintaining the sort of the integrity of what you do and what you say being consistent is very important. And that's some of the things that at least I have tried to practice and also have a collegial and collaborative work style because today the best ideas may be the junior most person in the company working in some remote customer location. And I need to make sure that that idea surfaces to the top.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the best leadership advice, I guess an amalgamation of what I've got from many people, but I think one clearly is look at the future. It's very easy to mire ourselves in the past and get Moros and depressed about what happened in the past. But when we are an action-oriented organization, there are bound to be some mistakes we make. So we need to stand up our knees and move on. I think being thinking about the future is very important. I think, as I said earlier, curiosity is very important. I think in today's world, you know, being on top of things requires you to be curious on a multidisciplinary way. It's not just about technologies, about what's happening with people, with societies, with energy, whatever. So being curious across the board is very important. And it's also about”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, I would check on what you know. Second, I would try out a few scenarios and I would check on how you respond to those scenarios. I would look at your background and see how well you have coped with change, how well you have coped with diversity, how well you have tackled new situations. And I think knowing what I know of you, Nicola, I think you would make the cut.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It could be anything, you know, for example, if somebody is doing something financially inappropriate, then that person would not be in the company if it was established that he or she had done something wrong. If there's a sexual harassment charge, and if that is upheld, then that person also has no role in the company. So these are all, we take these kind of transgressions very seriously and it does not matter whether high the person is in the system. So nobody is exempt from the enforcement of our values. That's very important because I think if employees feel that some senior people are getting a pass, then it all becomes just stock. And we have a clear sense of purpose. Purpose is to amplify. Human potential for the betterment of society, businesses, and communities. So that purpose is also pervasive in the company.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Australia, so we have to strike the right balance between local and global. And then, of course, I think the values, not only the practice of values, it's also the enforcement of values. So no matter how senior a person is or how important he or she is to the company, if there is a violation of values, then we would come.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's two parts to it. There's one of maybe three parts. I mean, the one part is, of course, the systems to manage. For example, Infosis, though it has 65 subsidiaries, we are able to close our books within 10, 12 days of the quarter ending across the world and get them audited, which is quite remarkable. And therefore, we are very strong systems on running the company and very strong checks and balances, audit and those kind of things. It's very strong. Our audit committee is very, very professional, independent board members and so on. So there's sort of the management through technology process audit. Then there is the whole propagation of a culture, you know, how do we at the same time we can't be totally one style in culture. Culture has to have a set of cultural elements that are common, but at the same time, the way our employees are in Norway may be different to where they are.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We didn't buy the Capex. We encouraged private entrepreneurs to buy the Capex. And the government reimbursed them on an OPEX basis. So the government would give them half a euro or half a dollar per day per enrollment. And therefore, they had an incentive to enroll more and more people. But we also, because the deduplication, we could make sure they didn't game the system and they enrolled only new people into the system. So a lot of incentive design, incentive compatible design. to make this work at scale. And that was a big learning for me. And of course, I had to manage the environment, I had to deal with politicians, bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, activists, journalists, and take this idea through its logical conclusion. So that was actually more difficult than the technology, which was managing people and getting different people aligned behind one goal.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, we had to build a very sophisticated back end because we had to deduplicate a billion people using biometrics. Nobody had done that before. We were in uncharted territories and we had to basically push the envelope on biometric duplication at scale. At the front end, we had to enroll one and a half million people a day. So we'd cover Norway in three days in our model. And for that, we had 35,000 enrollment stations around the country. and people would enroll about 50 people per day per station and then all the data would be sent back we would deduplicate it and assign unique numbers to people making sure there are no duplicates and that deduplication would lead to you know maybe a 500 billion very very sophisticated system but we were able to do this because we were able to do one and a half million and we did it using interesting model”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Authentications a day. It provides an electronic know your customer. So you can open a bank account in two minutes using your digital ID called Aadhar. You can digitally sign your documents on your phone using Adhaar. You can store your documents on your phone using digital locker. So these are all digital public goods at population scale, which have led to transformation of the way Indians live their lives.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What happened in 2009 was in 2008 I had written a book called Imagining India where I talked about big ideas for the future. And one of those ideas was to have a digital ID for every Indian to streamline governance. And in 2009, the then Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, invited me to actually implement this idea. So sort of walk the talk, so to speak. And I joined the government of India, the rank of a cabinet minister with a specific mandate to give every Indian a digital ID. And we did that project successfully. By the time I stepped down in 2014, we had 600 million people on the platform. And subsequently, the new government took it with even more fervor. And today, 1.3 billion Indians have a unique digital ID, which they can authenticate online. And the system does about 80 million.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think definitely AI is a very significant game changer. We have been using AI, but I think recent developments in AI with the consumerization of AI in some sense, I think is a very significant thing. Obviously, we do follow other new ideas like blockchain and metaverse and all that. But I don't personally find them as gripping and coupling as what AI can do.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so you know, I think maybe we are a bit more traditional in our thinking. And even when the role is the same person, obviously, then you need a very strong lead independent director. In my case, technically, though I am non-executive chairman, I'm not an independent chairman because I'm a founder. So I'm not executive. There's a clear delineation of responsibility between the CEO and the chairman. And so I just believe that checks and balances are important in running a company.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I believe so. I believe the role of a CEO is very different from the role of a chairman. And I think it's important to separate that. I believe it's important to have a nominations and remuneration committee, which is fully completely independent board members who reviews the compensation and incentives for the management. Yeah, I think all these things, all these create checks and balances that are very required for a large global corporation.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's a very good question, Nicolae, because in my previous avatar, from 1981 to 2009, I was an executive, I was a CEO, I was involved with running the business. And then, as you know, I took a break from Infosys and joined the government to do the Adhaar ID project. We can talk about that later. And then it so happened in 2017, eight years after I had left, there was a management crisis and I had to come back to set things right. And I realized that the role of governance is very different from the role of management. Management actually does the business, sells, delivers, collects. Governance is about enabling the right leadership, aligning everybody else, succession planning, ensuring that bad behavior is punished, making sure that governance standards are very high.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Philosophy that we should do it to ourselves before we talk to our clients. So a sustainability journey has given us enormous credentials and credibility with our clients. We were talking from real world experience. Similarly, when we talk about digital transformation, we have done our own digital transformation over the last five years. So we can talk from real experience to our clients. So we use our own company as the place to try out all the things we talk about because that's the learning that we can then take to our clients.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a smart grid grid where thousands of car batteries are feeding in tires at night or windmills are sometimes giving power, sometimes not. How do you manage such a complex grid which has both feed-in and feed out tariffs where production of energy is very variable? All that requires very sophisticated networks and technology. So I do believe that digital transformation is also critical for the energy transition that the world is facing.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe that digital technology is very, very critical to sustainability goals. InfoSis actually has been a world leader on sustainability, and we achieved carbon neutrality in 2020, 30 years ahead of the Paris goal. And we have over the last 15 years, we have built something like 57 million square feet of office space. We have extremely efficient buildings, very low use of energy, recycling of water, using natural lightning, biodiversity in all our campuses. And we manage all this through our networks. We actually have a central network management for all our buildings where we get real-time sensors and data on what's happening. So I think sustainability will require huge amounts of data to manage, monitor, transform. And all that requires technology. So there's, or if tomorrow...”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think definitely ChatGPT has brought in a new paradigm. I mean, I think a lot of the AI was already there, but I think their leapfrog was to put a very consumer user-oriented UI on top of all the transformer technology that was already there. And we are seeing huge opportunities because now anybody can use this tool to extend there and amplify their capabilities. In fact, right now, one of the things we are looking at is how to make AI usage more pervasive in our company and in our clients' companies”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To me, my biggest thing is curiosity is a skill in the sense. I believe that we have to keep learning and keep. So I don't look at a specific skill. I make sure that I'm always curious. And that enables me to remain on top of all the stuff that's happening around me. And then if that leads to learning a particular skill, for example, if I need to learn something about chat GPT and how to do prompt engineering, then I will try that out to learn that skill.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have literally hundreds of scales. Some of it, of course, are technical scales, whether it's coding, designing, project management, AI, big data analytics, all the cloud system and so on. A lot of them are technical skills which are required, but we're also training them on business knowledge. We have different groups that address different domains, whether it's energy or banking or insurance or utilities or whatever. And we have deep domain knowledge because we work with the world's best companies and therefore we also train people in domain skills. And then we also train people in how to work in a consultative and collaborative manner because today's complex world needs everyone to come together to solve a problem.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. We have a massive campus in the city of Mysore, which is not far, maybe two, three hours from Bangalore. And we have a huge campus where we can train 40,000 people at one time. It's probably the world's largest corporate university. But increasingly today's training, especially in the era of COVID, has gone virtual. So we have a very good hybrid blend of virtual training through the app on your phone. physical training, combination thereof. And that makes our learning systems very, very flexible. We also build a new education center in the city of Indianapolis in Indiana, US. And that's going to be our headquarters for the training of our employees in the US. We are a big recruiter in the US. We are hiring thousands of people there and we are investing in their training.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think always has been we are in an industry which is changing rapidly and the new paradigms emerging every few years. And we realize that if we have to be relevant to our customers, we must be on top of what's happening because we have to guide and navigate our customers to their future. And I think everybody has internalized that. We set up our education team more than 20 years back. So it's a long story, long history of investing in education. We also realized that the rapidly changing business we had, students coming out of the colleges would not have the latest background because universities move slower than companies. And therefore, we had to invest additionally in their basic education to make them ready for the complex challenges of the world.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Infosys was a company created with the intention to create an institution. So there's always long-term thinking, great values, alignment of leadership, the ability to postpone gratifications, willing to work hard today for a better tomorrow, a very employee-focused approach, very strong standards of corporate governance so that we wanted to be a company that people from around the world will respect and invest in. So very strong corporate governance, very strong focus on quality, and also philosophy of continuous learning. We have massive investments in learning and we make sure that every one of our over 330,000 employees have access to the best, most current learning so they can keep on top of technology and business trends and deliver value to customers. So training continues.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Employing 330,000 people in 40 countries and a market cap of between 75 to 80 billion. So it's really become a flagship company from India and well recognized around the world. And our clients essentially 1,700 of the world's largest companies for whom we do various kinds of digital transformation.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Infosys is a company which was founded in 1981. That's almost 42 years back. It was founded under the leadership of Mr. Narayan Murthy, who was the first founder chairman. I was one of the co-founders. Today, I am the chairman, co-founder and chairman. I've been in that role for the last five years. And Infosys was built on the dream of creating a professionally run Indian company that was globally respected in the software space. And essentially, we have been able to write the different waves of technology in the world. When we started the mainframes and minicomputers and PCs and the internet, and then you had all the smartphones today we have AI. So Infosys has been very agile at riding this. And today its revenue is in excess of $17 billion.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is by far the biggest of any country in the world because lots of Indians are working all over the world and sending money back. So foreign exchange condition is very, very strong. And domestically also reforms in taxation and all that, taxes are growing faster than the GDP growth. So both the domestic financial situation and the foreign exchange situation is very strong. We have this huge talent base. We have 90,000 startups in India today. And we of course have India's digital infrastructure, some of which I was involved with like Adhaar. So all these things are coming together and the geopolitics is also favoring India because countries who are doing manufacturing are looking at a China plus one strategy. So it's a combination of things happening. Nikolai which is all putting India in the sweet spot.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe that India is at a cusp of momentous change. The first thing is that India has a very strong moment in its reserves and foreign exchange, basically because of its people. The software industry in India is currently at $227 billion of annual revenue, and it took 30 years to go from zero to $100 billion. It took 10 years to go from 100 billion to 200 billion. And it's going to go to 300 billion in three to four years. So there's a scale change of growth happening. And that generates a lot of dollars for the country. So just like you get money from oil, in India, we get money from software. And then India is also a huge recipient of money sent back by immigrants from abroad. This year, the total inward remittance of India is about $100 billion.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I've been working. This is more in my philanthropic capacity. I've been working with the Norwegian government and NORAD and they have set up something called the Digital Public Goods Alliance. And basically the idea is how do we use digital transformation to help nations around the world. So I'm working closely with Norway and therefore they invited me to come there and speak and they said that is the best forum in Norway to come. And I said, I'll come and I believe you will be there too. So I'm really looking forward to that week.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I believe that there are many reasons. One is, of course, India is a strong tradition in maths and STEM skills, the kind of skills you need for programming and so on. And essentially the last 30, 40 years, there's been a huge demand for software professionals. When Infosys began, for example, in 1981, we sensed this opportunity that there would be a huge demand for software skills. And I think then the whole education system has been geared towards that. It's become the first profession of choice for young people. So it's created a virtual cycle, which has led to, you know, today in India alone, we have close to half a million people working in the software business. And then, of course, many others who have gone abroad. So it's really become the sort of dominant choice of profession for many young people.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this seems to me a school for CEOs. It's a public Hyderabad public school. Hyderabad is, as you know, the city of the capital of Telangana. And clearly there's something special. But I think we have CEOs from many backgrounds. But you see, I think there was a huge, I mean, there are a lot of Indians in the tech sector. And obviously some of them are sharp enough to rise to the top.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. And what's interesting, Nikolai, is that many of the Indian CEOs in the West actually are from one school called Hyderabad Public School in Hyderabad. And people like Satya Nadella and Ajay Banga, who was the chairman and CEO of Mastercard, Prem Watsa, who is a big investor in Toronto, then Shantaru Narayan, who's the CEO of Adobe, are actually all from one school.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that's a great question. And I feel that it's possibly because Indians have grown up forever dealing with ambiguity and being able to be agile and quick when things change. And in a world which is becoming far more ambiguous, where there are so many choices, where there's no hard and fast, there's no black and white. I think Indian CEOs do very well in this world of ambiguity.”
2023-02-08 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source