 Good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning wherever you are joining us from my name is Abhijit Bhaduri And I'm the author of this new book called dreamers and unicorns Which actually talks about how leadership talent and culture are the new growth drivers I also work as a leadership coach and I have worked with organizations as well as individuals on helping them craft their social media strategy and how to find themselves In different kinds of settings where they can handle situations that arise for their careers or for their organizations enough said today's guest with me is Pankaj Mishra Pankaj has been a veteran journalist, you know, who's covered in their state landscape for almost three decades and also that You know, I should add that Pankaj has been with the economic times But currently runs this fascinating website called factor daily. I'm sure you've read some of his Articles followed a lot of his stories Pankaj is a super interesting guy to talk to and I always look forward to my Conversations with him. So let's get started and with that Hey Pankaj, you're welcome. Welcome So This is amazing Abhijit. I mean, I love the feel of of this this conversation and the format very engaging Thank you for having me My god, and Pankaj, where does Where are you joining us from today? Oh Now I'm in Delhi. All right. So is this a scoop that you can talk about or Okay, I'm going to hold on that but Pankaj I wanted to you know, sort of really look at structuring today's conversation in three kinds of Chunks, you know, which I shared with my listeners and I said that we are going to talk about, you know, first the ITITS phase Some of the second phase elements would be around e-commerce and the third current phase would be around SAS companies And you've sort of really looked at all of this Talk to me a little about your Fourier into journalism. And then how did you get an interested in tech? Are you Techie by training or how did you cover all this? Talk to me a little about that Yeah, so I'm absolutely a non-techie in that sense. I come from a small town called Alabad, which is Pryagraj now and I have I started Tracking technology as an industry in 2000 in Chennai I'm not a techie, but you know, it has always fascinated me Technology and what it does And I was all I have always been a student of technology and and what it does to people what it does to businesses what it does to society and It has been very fascinating for me It has introduced me to the dark side of technology. It had introduced me to the illuminating side of technology So I I'm just been you know, I've been fascinated and studying it throughout And and if you think about the dark side, what does being at the dark side of technology really mean, you know What are we talking about? Well, you know like with a lot of things around us in live There are two sides to everything and the dark side of technology is what we call the underbelly of technology So it is the side of technology where it weakens the week Where it creates all kinds of trouble, you know, even if you look at social media, you know on one hand It democratizes information on the other hand It creates the problems of everything from bullying to you name it. So by dark side I mean the underbelly of technology and that expresses itself through different societal Intersections and in which is something we do very passionately at factor daily and What is the vision of factor daily? Why does factor daily exist? What do you intend to do with it? Factor daily exists because of this whole Narrative of technology that I just talked about it exists to make sense of intersection of technology with society and it exists to kind of bring a balance to Narratives by looking at both the aspects of technology and and and which is something in my career. I found missing And we this is why of why we exist We want to increase the public consciousness about these topics and how we do it is through very deep Journalistic projects not daily or weekly stories. So that's how we do it But yeah, in a nutshell, this is what we are. What is you know, one of the most The story which is dearest to you. It may or may not have been dearest to the listener or viewers But something that you put your heart and soul and it gave you meaning. So what would such a story be? It's difficult to pick one Abhijeet because one The first one that comes here man I think few years ago. I did a series of investigative stories about a very powerful VC and and how He sexually harassed dozens of women over the decade that Actually changed me as a person at least a lot of time. We talk of diversity a lot of time. We talk of empathy For me it transformed me from just being a reporter seeking scoop to someone you know who who had no choice but to patiently listen to those conversations and Feel what they felt and then translate all of that into series of stories and is standing by them all these years As a reporter it was the most touching. There's so many other examples, but they are mostly about the stories It is not about me. I'm more like a postman in that sense, right? I take stories and help them travel the stories that matter beautifully put. Yeah, I think so and What is the point of journalism if it doesn't drive change who's going to do that? Yeah, and so and I'm always very fascinated with The skills that journalists have you know to as you said you are not a techie But you know learn about it enough to be able to make sense of it connect the dots simplify it and put it across to people So that tech remains accessible to a lot of us because otherwise It tends to get very jargonized and out of reach for most people So I think that's a fabulous piece of work that you know I really respect the journalists who are able to do something like that let's dive straight into the Indian landscape and You know from when did you start covering the Indian tech landscape? What time period are we talking about? It was 2000 if I actually 99 late 99 and Brigitte you've been a veteran You know a student yourself of the industry having worked across so many companies it was a great time to start because dot-com bust was about to happen and Why 2k? You know was was already there and then the myths and realities had started sinking in So it was an inflection point for the Indian IT industry, which is now close to 200 billion dollars and It I I started my career in 99 2000. I started by looking at Some of these companies such as you know TCS infosys with pro HCL all of them So that's how I started and What did you begin to notice and you know talk to me about that landscape over the last? 30 years what are some of the things that you found who were some of the characters who you think? You know, we don't give enough credit to and who were some of the movers and shakers In your calculation, you know who had the most amount of impact a lot of them abhijit And I'm saying a lot of them because I think there was too much of talk about liberalization that happened before that and how Indian economy was opening up and so on and what I found particularly inspiring in in in that generation of companies that that were getting built is the the tenacity of entrepreneurs and founders which is so underrated because It is like creating building blocks the foundational structure of an industry which is today 200 billion dollar There were a lot of mistakes that people made By the way, they were not too much of a government support if you take away the whole stpi movement that happened which Enables the communication infrastructure and so on but then you were on your own You had to first sell India Where these things could be done. It was almost like science fiction. I remember talking to A person at general electric and gen general electric was one of the early customers of India in that sense and The person told me that it sounded science fiction when he first heard that this could be done out of India so I think on one hand you had these amazing entrepreneurs everyone from You know your your patni computers or or you know your nara and murthy the infosys founders Nandan nele kini or shiv nadar you had these very strong characters Personas and their personas shaped their companies in in so many ways That you would love or hate them them as people And the companies that they ran so and then you saw A generation of customers who took bet on India as a destination Some of them included executives at city bank general electric proctor and gamble So many of them this story of Texas instrument and how it shaped the indian it industry by putting it on the global map There was so much happening abhijeet to be honest and then you had people like debaang mehta later who Brought the missing element the chutzpah or you know the whole He he took positioning and lobbying and you know creating an association very very seriously and A lot of time you think of community building today As you know being good for business or society debaang was you know was this driven guy and he was He didn't know he's shaping an industry and not just Creating a lobbying organization or or or an apex body like we know of your your classic your fikki or or ciis of the world NASCOM was very different because of the building blocks that was there All this was going on abhijeet. I I think They were amazing times and there was so much happening Of course, there was septem computer services as well with rambling the raju. So It was fascinating the way each of these companies were defined By the people who are leading them the personas You talk of founders mentality now But the seeds were very much being sown back then Yeah, so if you think about the uh, you know early gen Brands that were built You know, whether it was uh, but me or mastec or Hcl or you know, many of them and some of them became bigger than the others. So whether it was the tcs You know cognizant we pro kind of around What made some of them grow? Faster than others. What was it? Was it, uh, you know, the y2k? model or was it, you know, just something else It's a great question to be answered in hindsight You know today looking back at all of them I think there were a bunch of reasons abhijeet Y2k could only take all of them so far very clearly Uh, it it wasn't what it what it was made out to be in terms of opportunity But it brought the attention to indian companies that was rightfully earned The things that shaped them Were, you know, a bunch of reasons I said because one was of course, uh, the founders or the people who were leading those organizations uh Why they stayed being a mid tier it company and how some of them uh shifted the orbits and and bro You know broke away from the pack to become how they are today Uh, the second reason was also the positioning they chose if you look at it HCL for example was always known for salesmanship They were not just shiva nadar, but even veneet nair later. They were known for to be aggressive Sales people they will sell the deals and then come back and figure out. Okay. How do we execute it? uh massive competition on pricing and and and so on You had infosys, uh, where narayan murthy Nandan and all the founders decided to build A great institution based on some foundational values and principles. They sent no to general electric contract they They took some very tough calls around the time. Uh, they were allegations against fanish murthy You come to vipro Amazing company, uh, you know people talk of vanaspati oil to software kind of a conglomerate You had ashok suta people didn't even know azeem premji when ashok suta was running the company And you will know this much better abhiji because i've only heard from people who worked with him. He was like this Regimental, uh, you know person and people would be scared of him uh, you had Let's not forget for kishant kohli Uh An architect who was long forgotten and i i have seen a lot of lip service being paid to him Over the years because somewhere he became this museum people would like to pay their tributes to I have not seen anyone who asked more tough questions than for kishant kohli He would always ask those questions. He would sit in a nascom annual conference on the front seats and say Why are you not building the hardware industry? so So then he was he was an amazing character and i and i remember a lot of His foundational Understanding of how a business should be run got translated into how you saw a tcs become a smooth operator So tcs was this smooth operator like you give something to them They will break it down make an assembly line of it and you know, you can rely on them Year after year days after days and they they built this engine of pushing freshers into The projects and so so so that worked very well for tcs for example Vipro had a very deep rnd kind of a position deep technology positioning uh They took they they they chose to live with that for a long time before they realized that A lucrative part of the business was from other sectors like, you know, banking and financial services healthcare and and so on so all this was happening and It was fascinating because There was wealth that was created with infosys Which was a quite a trailblazer in that sense There were there were a generation of people who got trained into doing projects Global projects complex projects from a remote location It was an amazing decade because I didn't know back then that that is like Uh the building blocks of what we are seeing today Being put in place back then so all of this was happening Brilliant, um, if I were to sort of uh, you know in the interests of many things I want to cover I'm going to just ask you what are two or three takeaways that uh, you know that come to your mind when you look at the it is Journey that india has had it's still continuing. So it is not like it's uh It's over or something but when you look at that, what are two or three quick takeaways that come to your mind when you Didn't talk about that I think we didn't touch up on it. Yes, but you saw a generation of captive organizations that became Genpact or WNS and so on and and people like promote basin and raman Roy They shaped that generation of companies very well To answer your question, there were definitely a lot of takeaways, but if I have to pick two three of them I think These guys perfected the art of building factories Around the software projects a lot was being talked about in how software was written how it was sold but I think india played a very important role in shaping this factory model of delivering software projects from anywhere So that was one key takeaway because I think that led to The birth of lot of new products Uh, we are talking of sass today sass entire model is in in many ways, you know A piece of software that sits in the cloud and can be accessed To anyone from anywhere kind of a thing So that was one key takeaway the factory model shaped during that decade the second thing was A lot of time, uh, it is underrated Uh, you know, you you you talk about the wave and and they all hit the Lehman crisis later on around 2008 It it defined A lot of these companies in terms of where they could go that was the second existential crisis and the key takeaway from that decade was that you know What doesn't kill you makes you like they say, you know only tougher, you know, uh, so so it the survival instincts because A lot of them because the business was easy We were almost wishing them a crisis feel like these people have become so comfortable Doing this low-cost You know almost labor arbitrage kind of a model that they need They need a rude Wake up call and we all hope that Lehman would trigger kind of a shake out and and things like that Satyam crisis happened again. So the second key takeaway was The whole uh, how did they cross the so-called startup value of death? And each one of them found their own pole positioning while crossing that startup value of death Some of them survived A lot of them did not survive some of The reputational risks were there and some of them survive and satyam was was was was one such example And there were so many But that was the second key takeaway the the whole Crossing the startup value of death and the third thing I would say is The founders themselves in terms of grooming and and Building the second line of next generation of leaders. There were a lot of bets made You saw changes at vipro. You kept seeing them, you know, where Premji would keep bringing co's and at different points in time Uh, you would realize that Why Is he as executive chairman not taking blame blame for a lot of performance issues? And and and only showing co's the door You saw shiv nadar who put his disproportionate trust in veneet naya to shape the company and that defined the culture of the company You saw tcs smooth operators Uh That was the company which was least disrupted and that tells again a lot. How did they become India's biggest And you know world's one of the biggest by just focusing on doing things Not overthinking anything leadership was never a question there They just trivialized a lot of these questions. We We overthink at times So all of that happened and then the birth of mind tree That was fascinating So, yeah, all of these Fabulous So this is really great if I were to Do my own just quick summary of what we are talking about So viewers today we are talking with pankaj. Mishra One of the journalists who's covered the tech landscape in india over Decades now and we just sort of divided the entire thing into three chunks We looked at the it it s kind of thing a little more focused on it than it es but to me one of the pieces that Stood out for me in this whole conversation was The days of devang meta where you actually needed to build a brand You know brand of indian it as an industry as A potential contender Without that, I think it would have been hard for the organizations that later stepped in and so grew on that So that was one. I also think that you know pankaj You brought about a great example of Leadership talent and culture sort of really, you know, the three growth drivers, which I have always believed You know, whether it is the you know, if you look at the leaders from each of these businesses You know, whether it was springy or naranmurthy or another neelkani or Ashok Suda go back over different You know generations of leaders One of the things that I thought they did really well was to create a model where You could actually start to demystify this whole business of You know doing the it work and that it could be done Of course, you know, like all things when you start With one particular skill level Over a span of times skill levels also become more commoditized And so, you know, you had the y2k kind of a big chunk Which to me was the angel that defined a certain kind of a growth pattern and then it moves it to a different phase altogether so all that and I liked what you said was that fundamentally This phase of Indian it it as provided the rails, you know on which a lot of other work has happened later And we'll talk about that also which So that was phase one for me phase two was The e-commerce growth, you know, so is that a reasonable way to categorize it or you know, what would you say? It is I mean if if I just forget everything else and just look at my own career I scooped a lot of those it services and and although the stories I used to be on front page of economic times every other day I I used to write a lot of those big deal stories of you know, hundred million dollar contracts of five hundred million dollar contracts and so e-commerce has started shaping up and You know reporters are like mongrails we sniff things and I started smelling that and and it it all And it's not that the building block blocks weren't there a visit, right? I mean, you know about the Uh, who had built make my trip. You there was a book my show But as ashish, I'm rajani put it in one of the conversations I had that he called himself a cockroach and not a unicorn because he said yes survivor We've been around for such a long time. So they were around But we were consumed in this it Industry because we we did not see that and a bunch of things brought together the e-commerce wave Clearly one of them was internet the availability of internet more people having devices and a generation of people like Your flipkart's bunsells, you know such in bunsell and bini bunsell and a bunch of others Who did not see a career in it industry and I remember talking to some of them It it is definitely worth revisiting as a case study at what point in time the India's poster boys or you know poster child companies in the it sector Stopped being sought after by the best engineering talent So the question then was are they really doing engineering work? Because engineering is about building things solving problems. It looks like What was happening in these campuses was coding and Not necessarily the engineering as as we know So some of and the reason I'm bringing this because I remember talking to some of them back then We're graduating from ii t's and all and they were like It was no more aspirational for them to go and work with a general electric or an infosys tcs or any one of them they didn't care if They offered them esops and so on And that was also a societal change in in in many ways because it was easy for them to say, okay I'm joining infosys and People parents would stop asking them questions So you had this wave the e-commerce wave one of the biggest building blocks for that was this restlessness of this generation of engineers who wanted to solve a different problem and this problem In flipkart's case was they had worked at amazon. So they are like, okay let's start a bookstore and I once wrote a column in times of india about a tiny You know an independent house in in in koramangala in in in bangalore Opposite a bs n l tower where it all started And I met the security guy a few months ago and I asked him and the sense of pride I I smell, you know, I picked from him. I didn't pick that even in the founders They have moved on But to come back to e-commerce Flipkart happened flipkart Uh Did it solved a lot of foundational problems in the e-commerce sector something as simple as everybody doesn't have a credit card So cash on delivery Indian innovation and a bunch of other things they did and then they suddenly realized that hey We could do more why just books so kept they kept expanding They had amazing bunch of talented people who joined them, you know, and then they don't get To talk, you know talked about as much and one of my former colleagues Amir dalal has written a wonderful book on on flipkart and it's a must read if anyone wants to make sense of that Because the story of flipkart is the story of india's e-commerce both, uh, you know everything from the good the bad and the ugly The venture capital happened because People didn't know what is venture capital this generation of I remember talking to again some of these entrepreneurs are like, uh, Look, that's a good idea. Why is someone giving me money and what's What's uh the takeaway? What am I missing here? Why is someone writing a billion dollar check? That million dollar check became a hundred million dollars with inmobi and housing.com Uh, which saw different kind of reactions and repercussions, right? Because a lot of people couldn't handle that amount of money the feeling of getting that sms from a bank that Such and such crore rupee has been transferred to your bank account It is quite a feeling. I mean I am a failed entrepreneur. I I have burnt a couple of million dollars. It is quite a feeling and it's like a steroid and with e-commerce the second factor that came in is steroid because growth became an important pillar for the future of fundraising organization building everything and that also kind of shaped what they could become or what they could not because There are debates about should flip right have school to walmart. Why did it not scale on its own? Why did it not became or stayed a homegrown? success So all of that and and you now see tata spending so much of money on building their digital empire reliance raising billions of dollar to do the same So that begs another question like why? So so e-commerce There were a lot of pioneers The mortality rates were very big Food tech there was blood bath they were there were tough times and finally flip card Couldn't compete with amazon and they had to give in and they had to pass on they found a very good buyer in walmart They were lucky When you when I think about You know this phase that you just described me a couple of things crossed my mind one. I think it certainly talks about if you look at us You know the track of talent as it happens, you know, so you are looking at a certain kind of a talent that build the it it sector And then I think it sort of moves up a notch and which For me is a great indication of when a sector is ready to Give place the pride of place to another one, you know something which has been very aspirational Becomes a number two employer, you know, so you see this really invisible forces but I think talent is really the one that can sniff out When this change is happening. It's absolutely incredible. I'm always fascinated and humbled by that Um, even though I've worked with talent from all my life where I think it's just amazing how the average You know kid out of college with zero experience can smell where the opportunities are and they will sort of move there and suddenly one fine day The erstwhile aspirational employers become also ranks and then, you know, you see The second shift which is the the brand becomes less attractive and unfortunately, this is the time when many of the companies do not build their brand because They are They are now complicit that, you know, we are going to be attracting talent any which way And that's the big bits that you have to be, you know, as they say always be recruiting as a friend of mine always says This is also the time always be building the brand because there is no time if you are not You're at top of the mind. You're not there And talent can be very unforgiving and we'll sort of of course come to that in a bit so to me it was a movement from The landscape in India the entrepreneurial landscape moving Overall regardless of whether it was it or e-commerce moving from the dreamer face to the unicorn face And you really see that today that you know, you've got more than you know, almost close to a 30 Unicorns that have come up in India today. Now, whether some of them will remain there or not You know, we can always have a debate on that but what do you see were Some of the big takeaways Errors mistakes Hits and misses, what would those be if you talk about a couple of them? What would you talk about? That too many and I think that too many because Anecdotally if you look at the number of experiments that happened during this phase that you can call e-commerce or venture funded companies Number of experiments were very high So so so which basically meant that there were more learnings than the last phase that we talked about because If you contrast this with it services and ites times We didn't see too many experiments. So the first key takeaway is this whole engineering mindset of Going after a problem trying to solve it Failing with it and then trying it again either through a new venture or through a new product Or just giving up on it all those outcomes were possible and the good thing was Slowly but steadily all those outcomes were being celebrated Uh, you had One of the And that's the first point right the number of experiments and learnings hit an all-time high during the second phase. The second thing is Often one of the most forgotten and underrated stories of this phase is the story of red bus And it's founder, uh, panindris sama The reason I bring him up as an example is because it was the first company that so-called got acquired It opened floodgates in terms of venture capital interest in India in hindsight It they sell they sold it cheap Because they couldn't see what is coming but the learnings that red bus had They helped shape a lot of other companies And when you when I used to speak to panindris samaan used to asking about his inspiration It is fascinating. He would always talk about preng and talk about Integrity and ethics being one of the foundational building blocks of red bus and things like that. So the second key takeaway for me was that While there were a lot of companies that were on steroids There were some there were a rare few Who started showing you sparks of institutional building the built to last kind of a thing? So that was the second most important key takeaway. The third thing was Money became real commodity in many ways Venture caps they were too much of money chasing too few ideas So that's whole concept of venture funding became explained And that was important because there was wealth creation And a lot of people who sold their companies if you look at Bloom Ventures, which is one of the most prolific early stage It is thanks to You know one of the founders of a large iq services company who got an exit By selling it to a global mnc and there was so much of wealth that came on the table and The matchmaking started happening. So the third biggest thing was The schooling that happened when it comes to venture funding The fourth thing was very fascinating because and we will come to it in the third phase is because You had a generation of companies that were being bootstrapped and Waiting patiently as underdogs Living in the shadow of all these fancy stories Their time has come now So you feel that the SaaS companies are really they were In some sense, they were sort of thriving sprouting and the wings And now is the time that they are going to go center stage. Is that how you would see it? It is happening because One of the most prolific Investors in India is a guy called Lee Ficksel who ran tiger global tiger global Was known to write those big checks. You're an entrepreneur. You walk up. They like your idea He will just give you 50 million dollar 100 million dollar something like that unheard of uh They were investors in flipkart and when when leafyxel invested in a sass company called freshworks He just did it because he didn't know if it will become anything, but he did it so Freshworks and many other companies had waited for really long because Venture funding talent all of that was sucked By the more fancy e-commerce companies So they waited and that's why I said their time is seems to have come now So, um, what really triggers growth, you know, what have you noticed? Is it uh, the You know inflow of capital. Is it the inflow of talent? Is it the brand which has to be built? Is it, uh, you know, the opportunities? Or just your timing or all of the above There's no playbook. It's like saying How to build successful startup exits? You you try a bunch of things 12 things Three of them become unicorns like so for example, if you look at number of unicorns today and you look at the kabristan Which is there of startup debts? Uh, you can do the math. So for everything that works, especially in the experimentive, uh startups stage They are at least anywhere between 30 to 40 that don't work out and which happened. So It is all of the above for different reasons But just to pick a bunch of things abhiji Some of them didn't work out because of founder troubles co-founders couldn't cope with each other Which is a very foundational thing because it's a very human thing, right? I mean, it's like How long can your friendship survive and and so so number one reason of startups failing is not lack of money But the team and the founders and this has it's it's not just anecdotal. It's also scientific They've been researched. You talk to a bunch of VC firms. They will all tell you the same thing So that is number one thing that that work make or break kind of a thing The second thing was the idea itself Uh and the target addressable market in India because the internet is early. So You are looking ahead and saying, okay, I'll get to 500 million users or who knows a billion. I mean, so So so that is massive But it again, it takes a great team to survive all of this and Be in a shape where you can leverage all the market opportunities It's fascinating how everything comes down to team. It it's very little to do with money except when Your rival raises too much of money And sucks all the money from the market that is available for a particular idea And you are so if you look at ola versus taxi for sure If you go around and ask many people Taxi for sure were a bunch of good people. They would say Uh people talk about bhavish as a very aggressive rival, uh, you know, very ruthless in in that sense, which works for him and and there's There's nothing wrong in that Taxi for sure couldn't survive And it was a mercy killing ola acquired and killed it basically So so there uh your ability to sell your story to investors and your ability to execute it aggressively Uh, it it mattered a lot and we saw it not just in tfs and ola we saw in so many other unheard stories where The same idea was pitched Uh, but another one of the teams won and another one failed So so that that played a big role and and I would say the the other thing that was a make or break was Uh You you know, you say abhijit. You also talk about it. Uh, you know the culture eats a strategy For for breakfast and so on you started seeing some of that as well. And then, uh The fourth thing is the global Power centers in all these sectors So if it's amazon or the alibaba angle all of that, uh, they picked their winners and losers and That shaped this ecosystem And I think, you know, um, I sort of uh underlined two of the pieces that you raised um, actually three, um One you talked about founder challenges, which uh, when they don't don't get along It sort of has a real it splinters the organization and it doesn't the organization usually doesn't survive So that's your leadership element, which is there the second pieces You know, the idea needs to very often pivot. They need to sort of change a track. They need to Keep the people together. They need to make the team believe that the goal is within reach, etc so talent becomes your second driver and You know culture which you mentioned last Uh, the ability to Stick on, you know, when you are flush with funds Most people kind of think that that is the time to invest in culture. Actually, it's not true at all you you put the sort of markers of culture on day one and uh, you know, very recently I was working with a financial startup And they had just about seven people in the organization and they sort of worked with me to Set the vision and the cultural norms and all of that and I was quite intrigued But that I think is what really creates a differentiation Uh, this is not to say that if you put that in place, that is success assured because you know, it's as you said, it's a dynamic Uh, uh, sort of equation of multiple factors. But yes, that certainly makes a difference also No, I think one of the important points is also your ability to let it go And and that is again something common. I have seen in that generation of entrepreneurs In id services from brain g murthy and shiva nada to to this as well. So We talk about entrepreneurship As something which becomes a muscle memory, you know, you you're learning with every generation I haven't seen that happen yet. I still see that sense of protection When it comes to protecting your own role and your relevance Uh in in your startup is still very much there and that There are zombie startups. You talk about the capital raised They are they are startups who have millions of dollars in the bank But they are irrelevant now and there is a list I wouldn't be surprised if that list is anything less than 50 or 100 And that's there. You go and ask those founders. Why do they continue to be at it? Uh, it's become a lifestyle For them So this as much as entrepreneurship is about accepting failures moving on And failure not being a social stigma It is baffling how It is still continues to be In terms of them not accepting that it's not working out And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that You know, many entrepreneurs for know how to build the business They don't know how to build the organization one without the other doesn't survive So you need brains and you need brawn both You know, and this is in fact one of my upcoming guests is going to be Robert Siegel who's written this fantastic book called brain and brawn company Which talks about you need both when you click on the Web and you book your product and you say this is what I want delivered There's a beyond that it is entirely the unglamorous You know supply chain and all of that and if you don't handle That element of it, um, I think it's hard to survive So you need both in the same way every entrepreneur doesn't necessarily So really look at bringing that capability of what it means to run Let's say when there were five people or 50 people versus 5,000 people and 50,000 people The skills are completely different and very often one individual doesn't have that so the sooner they are able to Make way so succession planning becomes a really powerful element to which, um, you know drive success So Where are we today with the SAS movement? What is your take on that? Pankaj, where do you see that? Talk to me about who are some of the players and you've written recently about Zoho I know So talk to me about where do you see that going? Yeah, it's fascinating to be living through this third decade And and watching what's happening abhijeet You know the one thing that I would say to start the third phase is is is that end of the day the Large factories that we talked about from infosys tcs to vipro They created wealth but more important. They created institutions that could survive different cycles of disruption Now you may we may argue about Why have they not pivoted to newer things or how much of their business is coming from the new areas and so on But the point is they have seen multiple slowdowns. They have had existential Threats to their existence, you know from all kinds of factors that you can imagine including management disruptions business disruptions and so on But they have outlived all of that and that's quite a credit. So A lot of time when in the startup ecosystem, I hear founders talk about The large it powerhouses as boring Godzilla's I tell them that they are built to last Everything from the number of jobs. They have created to the wealth. They have created to these factories They have built is all relevant it What do you I mean it is perhaps in for for some it is more important than valuations We're in a company with a 10 million dollar Revenue can be valued Anything north of a few hundred million dollars so So that is one thing Let's talk about the third phase and it is fascinating because Mackenzie Which did the famous it services report? You know a couple of decades ago has now done a very interesting report about the sass wave And working with sass boomy, which is an organization Uh a so-called nascom equivalent But it's fascinating again how the building blocks are far better in in in terms of community and all that Mackenzie says That over the next decade the sass companies could create a trillion dollar in value and Get very close to where it industry is That is one headline the second thing is revenue productivity the revenue per employee Which basically means Abhijeet all of us have heard so many questions about why india doesn't have a google why india doesn't have a microsoft or accl and so on You finally have a generation of companies Who are building products software products? They are Selling it to the global customers from tesla to general electric to you name it. They are all consumers of this sass product being made out of india That is happening The the third thing is what fascinates me a lot of project managers a lot of VP product development or services from these large it companies I so I see those familiar faces in sass companies Some of them are also founders if you look at icertis, uh, which is a unicorn and Has a product for contract management and it counts microsoft and apple among its stock customers The founders come from your conventional it services industry so Then you look at zoho and then you go back and look at tally solutions which built a product only for indian smb's Zoho has not taken a penny from any investor and they have built A 600 million dollar revenue company With a very different take on employment product development and and so on You look at fresh works already a unicorn Founder comes he is actually a non iit and non i am So all the underdogs Are now building amazing companies. He's taking fresh works to an ipo on nasdaq Later this year You can smell an amazing wave Of these next generation sass companies that are building global products You know the most used software product among saloons in in the us and elsewhere is a company called zeno tea It it makes the product sitting out of head robot head robot. Yes, right now I remember And and the reason i'm bringing this example is because if you go back abhijeet around satyam computer services Fraud that happened for a long time investors Were biased against companies operating out of head robot and i know of so many instances so So this wave of entrepreneurs and product companies Is kind of trivializing all of that None of that matters and they are building great products. They're taking on some of the biggest companies in the world Which is why in fact i'm working on a column where and i'm looking at this as indian it's lost decade how This generation of companies that was built in their backyard is now Doing things that they aspired to do but they did not do it on their own And is that a failure of leadership of the it companies or Is this something which we should credit the younger guys for is it failure or success? It's a textbook argument right and also it's it's the classic innovators dilemma. Why does the apple Why is apple known for disrupting industries that it had nothing to do with or And so many other examples in that sense, right? So the outsiders coming in and doing it Signals were all there IT services companies and their leaders were spending disproportionate time with customers. They had the face time They had their legs and everything eyes into their customer organizations They did not see They couldn't convert those signals into products because it was easy for them to keep doing project after project, which is why even today A lot of those IT services companies Are looking at sass companies as partners the same way they looked at sap and oracle as partners They Rather partner and do projects which give them Revenue Predictability so so you become a victim of something that you are known to build which is predictability You have a quarterly circus going on quarter after quarter You have investors who are staying in you because of your predictive performance Why break something that ain't broken is what they would say and the second thing is because a lot of wealth has been created by the founders They are in wealth protection mode So all of that is is is kind of a laggard But I would actually credit the people who are building sass companies more than I would look at the failure of IT services companies because these people And and and go back to the e-commerce big where we were talking about That was a time we we started seeing a real engineering approach to problem solving You combine that with IT services understanding domain understanding And then you get sass So so the third thing that played a role here is cloud computing the adoption of cloud globally has triggered this wave of sass companies And and India has the talent A lot of people who were stuck in the middle. So, you know, the final point I will make here abhijeet and we have had those closed room conversations about this topic about how IT services Started looking down upon the middle managers the middle layer They almost offended that generation of managers Guess who are who are the people running these sass companies? a lot of those Middle layer or middle managers from these large IT services companies They're finding a fresh breath to their careers in these sass companies because they understand domain They understand technology Perfect fit It's it's it's a great achievement So, you know when you look ahead and and by that I sort of look at The next three to five years whatever time horizon you wish to choose What would be if somebody were to make choices about their career? What advice would you give them based on what you know of today from these three landscapes? What is it that you would say they should do or should not do what choices would they make? I hate preaching abhijeet But you ask so I'll I'll share what I hear from people everything is borrowed here. None of this is my own I think the first thing is there's a lot of focus on entrepreneurship and there's a lot of focus on becoming an entrepreneur In my tracking I have realized that There are lots of functions in a startup That are as important perhaps more important than being a founder A lot of these founders are looking for talent to run their companies Everything from becoming a chief of staff to a vice president of product. You name it, right? They're all organization building blocks. So so I would say that It it would be good to also look at roles Beyond just becoming a founder, you know, because it's cool launching a startup or building, you know assembling a bunch of your friends and and saying, okay, hey, let's go. Let's build a startup startups are looking for great talent to to build Products organizations everything. So I think it would be one thing. I would definitely ask people to look at that Follow it very closely. What kind of talent is required across different stacks? The second thing is is something we have discussed before abhijeet again is this massive shift towards humanities and amazing how Now if you look at it the whole low code no code movement or you look at so many things that are happening It is all underscoring things that we were discussing a decade ago abhijeet, right? in you know Humanities or your sense of design Is um is creating some amazing opportunities in in India and outside I have had conversations with founders of Basecam Atlassian some of the world's biggest and most celebrated sass founders You you talk to them and you get a feeling that they are not looking for techies They're looking for designers. They're looking not for techies and and they're looking for product builders That is a very important talent and I think I Going forward if you ask me three to five years We are going to see some amazing non-engineering talent Build great products Just the way we are talking about girish being a non iit non iam Building fresh works. You will see a generation of Companies being built by people who had nothing to do with technology So if you ask me personally, I mean in three to five years or ten years It won't matter If we have this conversation again, we won't be discussing technology We'll be talking about Organizations and products because it doesn't matter and and with artificial intelligence And all of that singularity all of that It is It won't be talked about Thank you. Thank you so much Pankaj. I definitely agree with you and I would believe that the next decade My own prediction is that it would be the decade of the humanities And and I'm including design and that whole process. So The ability to write coherently the ability to understand human beings At a deeper very very deep Peace which is one of the five shifts I talk about in my book greeners in unicorns The ability to understand emotions Would be the basis of all the products that we design So thank you very much and you know punkages Twitter handle is right there and he's very easy to Find out on twitter and social media, but punkage. Thank you very much for being here and spending time with us It's been invaluable and I'm sure the viewers will really appreciate the advice you had. Thanks a lot