Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Amit Ranjan on The Source Code for Building World-Class Products (#022)

Transcript

Amit Ranjan on The Source Code for Building World-Class Products (#022) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

0:03
SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, this is Vignish.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: And before we dive into today's episode, on behalf of everyone at ContraMinds, I'd like to wish you and your loved ones a very happy new year.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for supporting us all the way through 2021.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: We look forward to an abundance of courage, well-being, and a relentless passion for lifelong learning all through 2022.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for all your support and your good wishes.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: It means the world to us.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: If you kind of, you know, if you are forcing yourself, I need to be creative, I need to do something differently, I need to kind of differentiate myself from others, then you know it might be a false metric to actually track.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you first got to solve that user's problem.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Look at it this way is that you know the user has a certain problem, or there's something about this, why this is working.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: So, unless and until you kind of hit the right notes on those counts, what is the point in kind of just coming up with something new for the sake of it?
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to a brand new episode of ContraMinks.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, we are in conversation with Amit Ranjan.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Amit is best known as the co-founder of Slideshare, the world's largest community for sharing professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: In 2012, Slideshare was acquired by LinkedIn and as of 2020, it has been acquired by Scribd.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Amit is also an ancient investor and advisor to several early state startups in India, Singapore and the United States, such as Open, Traction and Qatar Book, among many others.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: He is currently the architect of two projects under the Digital India Mission at National League of Division Ministry of Information Technology.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: These projects are Digital Locker, which is a national ecosystem for paperless governance by digitizing citizen records and enabling digital usage of these records.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: And OpenForge, an open source initiative aimed at building a national source code sharing platform for collaborative development of e-governations.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Amit speaks to us about crossing the startup government chasm, what it takes to build a digital nation project at scale, and why technology alone isn't enough to build a great product company.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: As always, we have shared selected links in show notes from this episode on the ContraMinds website.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: You can check it out at www.contraminds.com forward slash blog.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: And now here is our conversation with Amit Ranja.
2:54
SPEAKER_02: So Amit, I wanted to start off with uh a point which you had written about in Forbes recently, where you are talking about how does India give birth to a global you know software product company and what does it take to make a global software product company out of India?
3:17
SPEAKER_02: And uh I wanted to and I found that article really interesting, so I thought we'll start our conversation right from there.
3:25
SPEAKER_02: And uh one of the key points that I wanted to understand from you is how does a project thinking and a product thinking really different?
3:37
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, yes, that article I wrote recently, and uh it's actually uh, you know, I've I've written that essay essentially about three years back, and every time I have kind of you know rewritten a slightly newer version of it, and every time I do that, you know, there's something I add, something I take away.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: It's a topic which is very dear to my heart.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: It kind of, in many ways, if you look at my resume, you'll see that, you know, um the the key trends that you will notice in my professional journey, I think a lot of it tends to, some of the ethos behind it tends to get captured in that article.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh that article can also be seen by you know ranting by some people.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: And I have uh faced that pushback as well.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: But coming to the point, uh so I think uh, you know, uh so India is doing great uh in the technology world overall.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we are blessed and fortunate to have such a large uh technology sector.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: We have the lion's share in services, we are doing so well in terms of you know new age startups.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: The Indian market is exploding, there's like 60, 70 uh unicorns.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: And uh so overall, I think the country has done a fantabulous job.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: One area which uh where we are still lacking is is software products.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: And and even within software products, I would single out global uh software products.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: We really haven't had a lot of big name successes coming out of India.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: And I think part of it has to do with uh, you know, maybe just the the environment or the culture in which uh the Indian technology ecosystem is existing, and we are brought up in that culture.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: So um you you asked the difference between project mindset and the product mindset.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: I think the reference, just to be clear, the reference to the project mindset was largely coming from a government point of view, simply because I've been working in the government.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: I I wouldn't necessarily ascribe the project viewpoint to what you see in the startup world or in the private sector.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: So that specific reference was from a governmental point of view.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: But nevertheless, I think the bigger point is what is it that is lacking in in Indian companies, Indian startups, wherein whereby we are not able to kind of you know birth these big global companies, right?
5:55
SPEAKER_01: I think that is a key point here.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: And I feel that you know at the very uh uh at the very broad level, at the biggest level, I think you have to kind of look at at the mindset, some of the mindsets that we are we kind of harbor in ourselves and we are brought up with since we grew up.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: And uh and that is something I've talked about in that article, and I can and I can talk about a couple of them which I feel are important uh for this discussion.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: So I think the first and foremost thing is that see a lot of the the metrics, a lot of the successes, a lot of the things that abound in India, unfortunately tend to be more concentrated on uh, you know, quantity parameters, right?
6:37
SPEAKER_01: We are the biggest, we are the largest, we have the highest FDI, we are the biggest uh, you know, in terms of markets, GDP.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: Come what may, I mean, you know, we we time and again refer to these metrics.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: And uh truth be told, the reality is that when you talk quantity, it kind of it's some way or the other, it's a proxy for the fact that we are 1.3 billion people, right?
7:02
SPEAKER_01: It's a proxy for the fact that we are one of the, you know, the second most populated country in the world.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: So to me, honestly, I I always don't take these these quantity parameters and metrics as something that we should always be celebrating about.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: I think there is certain aspects to it that need to be you know celebrated and they need to uh we need to kind of talk about it.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: But we need to focus on quality parameters, and especially coming from the product world.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: If you look at the the most innovative companies, if you look at the companies that have made a name for themselves as as product innovators, the hallmark of their existence is is quality.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: They they did something which was better than anybody else in the world.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: They did something which was not possible before.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: They don't necessarily say uh right at the onset that, you know, we build something that is used by the most number of people.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: They kind of focus on the core problem, they focus on the qualitative aspects.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: And that is something I feel that in India we we got to kind of definitely kind of change our mindset and start thinking in terms of these quality parameters as well.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: Because this kind of goes into our DNA, it goes into the way we we think, and the way you think kind of is kind of gets reflected in the way you act and the way you kind of go about uh running your own business, right?
8:16
SPEAKER_01: So so that is that is one of the um uh uh points of view.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: The second point that I think you see very often, and this is something given my personal experience, what we did with SlideShare and later on in the government, is that uh I think you know, when you're thinking product innovation, when you're thinking in a creative way, you know, I think the market factors and the competitive factors are important, but you should not preload them.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: Right?
8:44
SPEAKER_01: If you start, if you preload them, and what I mean by preloading them is that you right at the onset, you start asking, okay, show me the business model, show me the money.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: And I think there is it is a legitimate question to ask.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, you can obviously have that point of view saying that unless and until this thing makes money, this is all sham.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't this doesn't work.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a legitimate point of view.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: But my submission is that, you know, I think it works in certain cases, it does, that way of thinking does not necessarily work in other cases, or it puts you at a relative disadvantage.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: So when you're thinking products, I think you've got to think, you've got to focus on the user, focus on the problem the user has, and kind of you know solve for that, right?
9:25
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a more extreme version of that product thinking, which is what uh you know we've seen with the likes of Steve Jobs and Henry Ford's, where they say they used to say that you don't need to even ask the customer.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you ask Henry Ford's famous saying that if you asked, if I asked customers, we would have faster horses, right?
9:42
SPEAKER_01: But I'd keep that that line of thinking aside.
9:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Henry Ford and Steve Jobs and Elon Musk's are you know very rare uh product visionaries.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: You know, most people wouldn't uh kind of you know measure up to their levels.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: But for most people, you know, you'd you'd have to ask the customer or you were to focus on the customer and kind of you know, at that moment, I don't think you should preload these monetization and these business variables.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: The business variables and the monetization variables in some of these cases can come in a little later.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: No, that's a that's a fantastic response, Amit.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's an encapsulation of the entire article uh to a certain sense.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I think the quantity quality point that you had raised had actually noted that down as a specific talking point, and you're already covered it up.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for that.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but there's another aspect of the article that really stood out to me, which is you know, India has got a lot of success stories recently in the SaaS and consumer product space.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to core platforms and infrastructure, we're not hearing so much about it.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: So, would it have something to do with the RD culture or how research institutions operate in our country?
10:54
SPEAKER_00: So, what are your thoughts on how we can also become a core platform and infrastructure powerhouse in the coming future?
11:01
SPEAKER_01: Right, correct, correct.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: So that is definitely another of the, I would say, the gaping holes in our capability and our skill set is that uh, you know, there is um there is obviously you know applied technologies and applied things, but there's also pure things that you've got to kind of build, these platforms.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: Because what you realize, and especially in technology, is that uh the companies which build these platforms, they kind of get into the foundational DNAs, DNA of the entire ecosystem.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: And once you are kind of, you know, you have a platform that has been used to build things on top, then you know it's very hard for a later entrant or a later participant to come and dislodge you, right?
11:40
SPEAKER_01: So that is the case with it, could be you know with many software platforms.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, think like Windows and Linux and Android, and uh, I think um so so that is an area of uh where we again kind of you know the Indian industry is a little bit lacking.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think you're rightly uh pointing out that I think that has to do with uh you know lower level of investments uh in RD.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: Um and uh also I think uh you probably need a very strong uh you know and a cohesive partnership between between you know academia and industry to kind of kickstart that.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: I think that's starting to happen now in India.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: And what we are seeing, especially around uh, you know, the Bangalore region, where I think Bangalore uh traditionally came up uh you know 20, 25, 30 years ago.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: Uh part of the reason was that you know because of the presence of academic institutions and you know they initially kind of uh set up some of these uh capabilities that uh the manufacturing industry needed.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: I think it kind of in a in a smaller way it mirrors what happened in Silicon Valley in 60, 70, 80, 80 years ago.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: So so yes, I mean for to have the capabilities to burge these core foundational platforms, the country would need much larger levels of you know RD and uh investment in patenting and kind of you know closer interaction between the between industry and uh and academia.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: And I think the government as well.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: I think the government can think of it as a as a triumvirate at the Troika where you know government, academia, and industry need to kind of come together to to make that happen.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: Um just to just to take it one step further, if I can ask.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: So I think I think many years back, I think Mark Andreessen had written an essay called Create One, Two, Three Many Silicon Valleys or something like that, where his founding hypothesis was that look, Silicon Valley is great at software, right?
13:37
SPEAKER_00: So other other places should not do software.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh he says that instead you should focus on other technologies, like you know, you should have a drone valley, you should have a biotech valley, you should have a nuclear energy valley, or something like that.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: So I think one question that I would have is what are some challenges in implementing such a vision and strategy in India?
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Because ultimately, even these fundamental technologies would have research, and these research would lead to applications, and these applications can then be you know brought about by private sector companies or public sector companies.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: So, what are some challenges in to implement this?
14:16
SPEAKER_01: I think the the enabling ecosystem would be required.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: For example, I think uh the pandemic obviously has thrown up the importance uh that uh the importance of healthcare and biotechnology, and you know, it's kind of a become like an existential question for mankind.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: And to ask this question, I mean, just to take on your question, I would say that uh so on one hand, let's say we have software and you know IT, and then that that's where you find the government, the Indian ecosystem at a certain level.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: And then let's say take the case of pharma and health, and you know, the in while India is again the manufacturing backend for the entire world, but you know, do are we are we there in terms of uh you know RD?
14:56
SPEAKER_01: Are we there?
14:56
SPEAKER_01: So we are not there.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: So I would say that you know, you would uh to answer your question, you would need uh you know those enabling conditions in that specific uh in that specific domain to kind of you know kick in.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh maybe you know it's been a little easier for just the core IT and the software stack to happen simply because you know a lot of uh this thing got kickstarted maybe 20, 30 years ago when many of the, you know, uh we had a reverse brain drain people from the US who are highly skilled.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh these are Indians who had gone to study and to work in the US, and many of them, you know, have kind of you know decided to come back, and their role is is is of paramount importance in kind of you know, either kickstarting or has helping scale that effort.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: So big big part of what you see in software and in technology is actually the contribution of these kind of people.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: So you can ask the same question is that do you have those kind of enabling factors in that specific domain?
15:55
SPEAKER_01: So let's say it is drone technology or it is healthcare or it is some other aspect.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh so the that might be a challenge, and it'll take you know um a lot of effort and a lot of things will need to fall in place for that to happen.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: So, Amit, uh another important thing that I saw as a thread in anything that you do uh was an interesting fact that you say technology alone is not enough to build a great product company.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: I thought it was a very interesting point that you made because all of all of us think, oh, technology is the first thing that we should get right, but you actually have had a contra view on that saying, hey, technology alone is not enough.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: So can you elaborate a bit on that?
16:41
SPEAKER_02: And uh, can you tell us what the thinking behind that is?
16:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: I and I can actually, uh this is again something which is dear to my heart, and it kind of goes back to our own experience.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: And and we got a little lucky as well, and I'll explain what I mean by this.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: And so let me let me spend a couple of minutes on the Slideshare story, how it came about, and then I will use that example to kind of you know answer the question you have.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: So Slideshare was, you know, there were three founders, I was one of them, and um, I was based in India, and two of the other people, which is my sister, Rashmi, and uh she was uh she lived in the Silicon Valley, and she is she happens to be married to an American who's a software engineer.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: So it was the three of us who started the company.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, the interesting thing about the three of us was that I was probably the most in the sense that I was coming from a previous background into FMCG, sales, marketing.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: I was an engineer, but I never coded, I had zero inclination towards tech.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: If I'm talking of around, you know, 99-2000, around that time.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: So I was clearly the most technically challenged of all three.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: However, if you ask me, um, you know, uh so we started uh Slideshare in 2005.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: So if you ask me one and a half decade hence that what were one or two of the enabling factors that made Slideshare happen?
18:04
SPEAKER_01: So I would by far pick out the fact that so we had three founders, all three came from diverse backgrounds.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, my sister was actually she's done a PhD in psychology, and then she kind of you know went into uh to specialize in this area called um you know HCI, which is human-computer interaction.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: It's a specialized, so think of HCI as a specialized field of design.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: It's a very specialized field in design, but you know, yeah, if you go to these big fang companies, you have like hundreds of hundreds of HCI professionals, and some of them come from a product background, some from a design background, some from a technology background.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: So she was a specialist in HCI.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh Jonathan was a software engineer, so he was the CTO.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: And I came from, and I'm MBA, and I was I learned product management.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: I taught myself product management.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: So I think the fact that you know we had multiple skill sets, we had different people, left and right brain thinking combined.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: I think that was one of the things that really clicked in for us.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: And it actually, you know, we were able to uh and and you know, while I don't always say that Slicher was an Indian company, but I've been asked this question.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: So how did you, I mean, India is so deficient in design resources, how did you manage design?
19:17
SPEAKER_01: And this is like one and a half decades ago.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: So that's the way I answer that is that we were lucky as well that we had, you know, we had a fair amount of diversity in the skill sets of the founders themselves, and we were able to kind of you know manage, uh manage to pull this off.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: Now, how do how is that important?
19:36
SPEAKER_01: What you see in technology is that, you know, the technical people, the people who write code, they're very good at at their work, right?
19:42
SPEAKER_01: But and they actually uh sometimes uh you know, I would say they are found wanting and they are not very good at translating that technology into how humans would use them.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: So there is kind of a layer between the technology and the humans, right?
19:59
SPEAKER_01: If you if you go to normal human beings and you know you just kind of you know uh use jargons and you kind of talk in very high-handed technical terms, they would not be able to understand.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: So there is a very critical need and a role for somebody in the team or somebody who has to kind of do the job of translating that technology into the human layer and doing it in a way that they can understand.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: And I think there are simpler, there there are the the cliched term to use that is that something that your grandmother could use, right?
20:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so obviously somebody did the job of translating what a software engineer built to what you know our grandmothers can use.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: So I think that is very important.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: And that is what you see in in um in Silicon Valley, is that they realize and they recognize the importance of uh the role in this middle translation layer.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: And that is where I mean, you know, somebody like Steve Jobs was an iconic uh professional NF figure because he was an absolute master at kind of that translation.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: Is that how does technology at the end of the day need to be translated into a language, into some kind of a form factor, into functionality that you and I, you know, uh human beings that are not versed in technology at all, should be able to relate to.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that so that is something you see again in Silicon Valley, is that they not only do the technical layer very good, but they have such levels of specialization.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: Is that so there is technical layer, then there is a middle translation layer where it is being translated into these products and these experiences, and then you have specialized, you know, marketing and sales to be able to kind of take it to people in a way that you know it is not it is cost effective and it is you know, virality, the whole notion of virality is kind of where you are able to infuse uh, you know, marketing and think marketing and sales, and if that is infused into your product itself so that it self spreads.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: So it there's a lot of specialization in each of these layers.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: So you know, and that is what I meant by that.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: point is that if you really want to kind of create a product ecosystem, you'll need these specializations.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: And these specializations need to kind of work together in a cohort to kind of build the overall you know stack.
22:13
SPEAKER_02: So interesting that you say that so many layers are needed.
22:18
SPEAKER_02: So what does it take to build this kind of a layer?
22:21
SPEAKER_02: Because these skill sets don't come so easily.
22:25
SPEAKER_02: These are uh you know uh these have to be built over time.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: And uh very interesting point that uh you know uh that needs to be made is therefore how do you get this going especially in a say a decade or a uh you know two decades kind of a window if you have to build this uh what are the skill sets that are critical and how does one build them because that's going to be fundamental to how uh you know probably the story of a birth of a great software product from India is going to happen.
22:59
SPEAKER_02: So what is needed and how do you build the skill set and ecosystem for this?
23:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah so I would say the starting point one of the things is obviously you have to be first of all very good at technology layer itself.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: You have to be like really strong and you are creating really powerful um and um and uh you know uh ways of building technology so that is that goes without saying uh the second thing is that and you know this is I I remember reading this many many uh years ago maybe a couple of decades ago is that the the most creativity and the most innovation actually happens at the boundary layers of two different disciplines or two different streams which kind of is again a pointer to diversity itself if you at a at a broad level you're what you're pointing towards is the fact that you know if you create conditions where you bring diversity into the mix, right?
23:54
SPEAKER_01: So you get, and this diversity you know spawns it kind of cuts across various dimensions.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: It could be diversity in terms of gender, it could be diversity in terms of not only it could be age it could be diversity in terms of skill sets you know there's left brain people and the right brain people and there's you know the the pure sciences and there's the applied sciences and then there's the philosophical sciences.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: So think of kind of uh using diversity as a prime you know prime uh you know factor that uh that you know characterizes this ecosystem itself right now how would what this would translate into again in terms in real uh in terms is that you know you would and you're just starting to see that happen for example so look at um a lot of these tech entrepreneurs and all they are going and starting to create these universities which are specializing in these social sciences right you would have heard of Ashoka University and Kriya University and Praksha University and and all of these these the the the people who are creating there are all techies they're all engineers actually you might actually ask them that why are these people going and creating these uh these universities which tend to kind of become specialists in in the social sciences because I think they've realized the value of these things that you know key too much of tech won't get you very far.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean yeah you need to be really solid strong in tech but tech has to be kind of you know combined it has to be amalgamated with some of the other skills and and I think that's a very positive development the uh the the fact that these private universities are starting to come about and uh you know this is clearly so you know this is not coming from the government so government may not have the time or the inclination but you know this is coming from private entrepreneurs because they have they've lived through that you know that that experience and they kind of they've seen it happen in other countries and now they're saying okay why can't we do this in India and they see an obvious kind of a vacuum there is that you know we have the tech skills but we don't have these other skills that we that needs to be combined with tech to kind of create an overall uh you know product experience no I think I mean I just want to go back because I think something that you said really fascinating me which is that you come from a pure tech background and then you taught yourself product management.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah right so can you talk to me a little bit about what those days were like you know how did you train yourself what were you reading and what were your habits like because I think that's very interesting for a lot of people to know because the ability to self-learn and to initiate that transition yourself is the first uh step to going ahead and building something great.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: So can you talk a little bit about that?
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah again this was like you're you're taking me back to 2004 and five and let me kind of uh let me paint that picture and then you will understand my predicament.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: So I did my MBA in 1999 and back then you know when I graduated out of MBA I was all thinking you know some uh you know all MBAs used to think in terms of FMCG companies and banks and this this is before the IT revolution right so so I joined Asian pain spent four years at uh in a sales and marketing role from there I went on to PepsiCo and I was doing key accounts at Pepsi in the snacks food free to lays so this was 2004 when I decided to kind of you know move on and then we started this company and the way the company was structured was again my sister and her husband they were based in the Bay Area and I was here in Delhi and obviously India it was much cheaper to run and start a company here.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: So the initial set of engineers were all here in Delhi and it was my job to kind of you know now set up an office advertise go and hire engineers and uh while you know the other founders were traveling back and forth but uh still the the mainstay in this office was me and um and I I needed to hire them and I needed to get you know get basically get them to be productive and build these products and you can imagine that a lot of um uh you know people who come from very strong technical backgrounds I mean they they I mean and let me put it this way I mean a lot of tech people hate the marketing gang you know they think of them as fluff and especially coming from a Pepsi kind of a background you can imagine a lot of you know the guys who were Linux hackers and you know backend engineers and system administrators they they would never in their lives imagine that you know I'm going to work and listen to a guy who's just come from a company like Pepsi no way so now I recognize that challenge I kind of when I as as soon as I kind of set up the office and I started trying to hire him I said oh come on I mean what am I doing here?
28:40
SPEAKER_01: There's a real problem here that you know while I am an engineer so the good thing is that I can think I can engineer but I don't have the the I don't speak the engineering language.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: I I I've just spent my last half a decade in a very different career.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: So uh and how do I need to kind of manage these people and I recognize that these people may not be very well disposed to somebody like me and it's not being personal it's just that you know this this is the way this entire discipline is set up is that they would uh they would respect other engineers and uh they would respect other technical people not people who come from you know a Pepsi kind of a background and uh but I the way I tackle that predicament was I said okay you know what I think you got to be real and you got to be honest and you got to be humble.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: So the first thing is you got to admit that mujin aata.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: If you I mean in while there are young engineers only but if you try to kind of you know put put up a show and kind of you know act in in a in a supercilious way and then I think you're never going to make it.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: So the first thing I did was I said no let me kind of be upfront in accepting wholeheartedly in front of the team that boss I don't know this.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: I am learning as much as you know you are and I'm willing to kind of you know learn and and you know do things and fail and experiment and so that was the first thing that I did.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: The second thing that I did was I obviously started furiously and uh you know um self-learning and quick learning and in fact the whole thing about startups is that you know the kind of people who thrive at startups are essentially quick learners and self-learners right and I would say that the thing that actually came to my rescue the thing that actually helped me out was the internet because I don't know whether you realize it or not but to me the one of the biggest things about the internet is that it lets you discover yourself right it's a tool that you have at your disposal and I'm obviously talking of you know 2005 so it was you know everything around the internet whether it was bandwidth whether it was content whether it was anything that was available was was not at the level that you have right now.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: But in general for anybody who's coming from a slightly deprived background or from a different background if you really want to use the internet uh to kind of discover your interests discover your skill sets discover you know how to kind of you know how do you kind of pull yourself up the ladder one step at a time I think the internet is an absolutely great tool.
31:09
SPEAKER_01: So I I I I shamelessly learned to kind of you know use the internet and um I I used to follow a lot of other people my co-founders who are based in the Bay Area they they understood that I was kind of you know going through this phase where I had to kind of suddenly kind of you know reinvent myself in terms of professional skills and they they were very helpful as well.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: And it took me quite some years almost I would say that I I I I took me at least six seven years to get to a stage where I could confidently and the way I kind of finally said that yeah I think I'm in control over this is that so I can you should be able to walk into a room full of engineers stand on a whiteboard and talk to them in technical terms.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: And when I say talk to them in technical terms you don't need to write code but you should definitely be able to understand how algorithms work.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: You should be able to kind of you know maybe draw an algorithm diagram on the board and explain that to engineers and once you're able to do that the engineers realize that you know this guy I think he understands technology and he understands the way technology works.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: He may not be able to write code but you you can't kind of you know mess around with him.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: So it took me many years to to get to that stage.
32:20
SPEAKER_02: So uh it's interesting that you say that and uh as you also talk about this whole fact that uh you know uh imitation is the first step to innovation right uh I found that to be uh you know counterintuitive in my view because you know you at one point in time we keep saying that you know build something very different okay uh but uh when you actually use this term saying you know build an imitation to build innovation uh I found it very very interesting that's the and I would I would want to know why did you say that at the other end I also think that we are also building a lot of imitation companies right so you have an equivalent of an Amazon you have an equivalent of an Uber you have an equivalent of something in India and venture funds are going into these kinds of uh you know uh imitations so therefore where is the balance and how do you really get this right because finally you've got to build something original but how do you really do that uh is the real question that I had yeah yeah you're right I think there's a fair bit of uh backlash that the Indian uh I mean in general we we would um say that you know if you're copying something from the West then uh you know that's imitation and uh and I think there's there's some truth to it so I would not deny it that uh you know that obviously you in an in an ideal world you would want to be original you want to be creative but I'll kind of you know flip the the problem statement around and try to answer it in a slightly different way so the question is think of the user right I mean the user has a certain problem and you as a company are trying to build a solution that solves that problem right now if that problem has been solved by somebody else in a in a in a in a in a very convincing way in a very fulfilling way then you know then I don't think there is anything wrong in actually copying that idea.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: In fact you are actually saving the user's time by unnecessarily forcing yourself to come up with a new creative solution that may or may not work, you are actually putting the the user to some kind of level of discomfort because now they have to discover a new way and then they got to figure out whether it works or it doesn't work.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: So if something is working it's actually a vote of confidence that you know this was already done and tried and you should just double click on that.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: And I feel that that is not that you we we should not get into the you know the this this this debate from that point of view.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: I think it is fine.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: If something works just copy it in fact I remember this this was a statement that Jonathan who was our CTO and who was who was actually born and brought up in the US and very much imbued in the Silicon Valley culture.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: So he used to say this on our shop floor on our in our office he used to say um one marks one point for creating or one point for innovating and two marks for stealing so he used to say one point for for creating and two points for stealing one point for and when I heard it the first time I said yeah I mean you know so everybody used to laugh whenever you used to say that that and we we've heard that point of view that you know great artists steal right good artists create and great artists steal so it's kind of an embodiment of that same idea.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: But coming back to the point is that I feel that the problem is that if you are stuck with the imitation and you don't build on top of it, that is really something which kind of you know lets you down and and that is not a situation that you want to be in.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: You know it is perfectly fine to take ideas that are already working and build on top of it.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: Right?
36:12
SPEAKER_01: And as long as you are doing that I think you know copying others is not a problem.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: And and you you will see this that you know a lot of and I even in that example uh even in that article I do cite the examples of you know at a at a uh geopolitical level look at what uh what Korea has done look at what Japan has done I mean Japan today is the hallmark of quality but Japan post-World War II was you know very much a copycat nation it was believed that you know they are they are ripping all Western concepts and designs off and but look at how they have kind of you know used that as a stepping board and then kind of graduated up that that uh that ladder and now they are actually you know they they are known as the hallmark for for quality and fidelity.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: So I think that is what needs to be done.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: If you are kind of just copying and kind of stagnating there not building on top of it then I think there is a problem.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise think of the user if you know if you're if you're copying that idea again go back to that thing one point for creating and two points for stealing nothing wrong in it.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: No I think I think we're going to make that a post and that's what we're gonna release it with because I think uh I think that's a very very true fact I mean I I mean like you said I think the the origins of great ideas come at the edges you were saying right so there was a very I I was many many years back I was listening to an interview of this writer Hunter S.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: Thompson and uh he said that you know when he got into the craft of writing one of the first exercises he did was rewrite uh the stories of Hemingway and F.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Scott Fitzgerald because he wanted to know what is the structure of a great sentence.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: So he didn't go about immediately and start writing his books.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: He went and he imitated the masters first.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Correct and even in painting you first learn how to paint like I mean Picasso had that saying it took me uh five years to learn to paint like Raphael but it took me 20 years to learn to paint like a child.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: So and and I can tell you psychologically I've noticed this that if you kind of you know if you're forcing yourself I need to be creative I need to do something differently I need to kind of differentiate myself from others then you know it might be a false metric to actually track.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean you first got to solve that user's problem.
38:30
SPEAKER_01: Look at it this way is that you know the user has a certain problem or there's something about this why this is working.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: So unless and until you kind of hit the right notes on those counts what is the point in kind of just coming up with something new for the sake of it exactly and I mean just going back to that entire thing about the craft of product product management it almost sounds like it's a stack of skills.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah absolutely absolutely and and each stack uh is superimposed on a different skill so to a certain extent they're all it's it's almost this wonderful uh concoction of different colors and skills and spells it's almost like a little festival if you really think about it where you got to know how design is how the technology is working what the user is doing how we're growing so when you have so many different threads what are some systems and frameworks as a product manager that you were using to track these different problems anticipate problems and then ensure that the customer's job is being fulfilled yeah that's right and you know the you're you're talking of product management and product managers in in incidentally are you know demigods in Silicon Valley.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: If you if you look at the hierarchy then they are the people who I mean the the cliched way to think of them is that they are the CEOs of products a lot of people don't like that definition.
39:49
SPEAKER_01: But I think they definitely are very influential because you know so think of some of these big tech companies and they'll have like lots and lots of product managers.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: And these product managers uh you know they they kind of need to kind of be the the internal champions for what the company is building and but also be the external face to be able to kind of communicate to uh to your sales teams and marketing teams and your PR so they kind of they have a very you know important role.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: And in fact I remember I'm let me recall if I can remember that saying so this was something that my boss at LinkedIn used to say that the ideal product manager is somebody who has the the brain of an engineer the heart of a designer and I think the speech of a diplomat if I if I'm remembering this I can send you that quote later the exact words so the brain of an engineer the heart of a designer and the speech of a diplomat it kind of mirrors this this diverse you know skill sets that a product manager needs to have to be kind of you know to be in charge of what they are building.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: So you are right in saying that I think product management A, you need to kind of typically have very highly skilled very highly qualified people who've uh learned experientially and they need to be kind of you know supplemented with now obviously because data is becoming such a big thing and data skills are something that not everybody most a lot of these product managers unless and until they came from a very strong data background that's not a skill set that they they would have but typically you know what happens in some of these companies is that A you look for multidimensional people themselves they should have kind of you know gone through um ideally multiple uh experiences multiple professional experiences in their life and um once they are in those positions and you kind of supplement them with you know either design teams data team so it's kind of almost like a four, five, six member hierarchy or a think tank for at which is uh which is kind of you know um at the helm of each product.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: And essentially they are trying to kind of you know act as mini CEOs for what that product needs.
42:07
SPEAKER_02: So which brings me to the next biggest transformation I mean that you made which is moving from a private sector job to a public sector job and you are the the architect of the digital locker project the open forge project and these are projects of immense scale diversity different departments coming together what were and maybe you know these are projects which clearly you had to deal with ambiguity you really did not know where to start and where to you know kick it off.
42:46
SPEAKER_02: How was the early days how did you maneuver through this you know what I call as the twists and turns of such immense scale that you know you were coming into the culture differences talk to us about it.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah so definitely I think you know the transition from the startup uh world to the government world was uh was in my case honestly not a planned one so it was very serendipitous and it kind of you know came as a little bit of a bolt from the blue and um and let me just uh you know um dial back so basically you know the context was that I was exiting from uh LinkedIn and SlideShare in 2015 and my plans were to kind of you know take a couple of years off uh do do a sabbatical and then come back into the startup ecosystem and uh but um you know I was I had always been um given my background with products and all I had always been a volunteer with uh with iSpirit with NASCOM with these you know industry bodies which uh so and the government connect actually happened through one of these uh the work that I was doing with iSpirit in particular and uh through them I, you know, happened to go to the government, uh, Ministry of Electronics and IT.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh, there, you know, the bureaucrats, they they happened to, you know, we talked to them and they got to know about my background.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: And then they kind of you know um offered this role to me.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: And my initial reaction was that, no, of course not, sir.
44:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, this uh this is not what I am thinking at all.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just helping out uh, you know, iSpirate in terms of some policy work.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but you know, they kind of were persistent, they asked me to reconsider.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: Then people at iSpirit also did that.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: I talked to Nanda Nealkani, he was uh he also gave his perspective, and then finally I kind of said, okay, you know what?
44:37
SPEAKER_01: I think it turns out that um while I was not planning for this, but this is a very unique opportunity to kind of um to work in the government.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: I would correct you though a little bit.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: I I didn't take up a job per se.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: This was more like I was taking out three, four years out of my professional schedule and saying that uh I'm going to kind of you know devote this completely to the government.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a job in that sense, but it was full-time uh an operational role that I took up in the government, but it was time boxed.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: So when I was getting in, it was clear that you know I was doing it for a certain number of years and then I would uh I would exit out of that or maybe take a decision at a later stage.
45:17
SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, the government um setup is such that uh when I kind of uh went there and spent a few initial days, I kind of realized that obviously I'm uh you know I am kind of an absolute alien here, right?
45:35
SPEAKER_01: And uh I actually used the same um, you know, the the example that I gave you earlier where you know I made the transition from a marketing sales career to a technology career, and the way I handled that, I kind of actually started putting on that same hat.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: I said, you know, I while I know a lot about my domain, and that is something I've been fortunate enough to learn during the startup stint, but as I'm entering the government, I got to kind of leave behind a few things at the at the doorsteps.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: If I kind of, you know, if I carry those along into the government system, I mean the government obviously is kind of you know getting me on board because I have certain skills, that goes without saying.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: But the way you handle uh, you know, relationships, the way you kind of, you know, work with a very diverse set of team, it's a completely different environment.
46:25
SPEAKER_01: I got to kind of, you know, in many ways zeroise myself.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: I got to kind of reduce myself to the level of a zero at a least common denominator and say, hey, you know what, I am willing to start from zero base here, as far as the government is concerned.
46:39
SPEAKER_01: I do come with certain skill sets that I that is something I'm bringing to the table.
46:43
SPEAKER_01: But apart from that, I am willing to kind of you know just zeroise myself and start from zero base and just work my way up the ladder.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: And I think that rather really um it was something just intuitive that came to me, is that, you know, uh, and I've always been like that, that you've got to be real, you've got to try to be humble, you've got to not throw your your weight around and think too much of yourself.
47:07
SPEAKER_01: That's the way to kind of, you know, I I try to run, you know, in general, that's my that's the way I am.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: I think that turned out to be uh, you know, a really uh good thing in hindsight, because um while it is true that um, you know, um so a lot of people inside the government, when they looked at me, I mean I was threatening to many people as well, by the way, right?
47:29
SPEAKER_01: In terms of so here's a here's an outsider who's been brought in by uh by the top brass.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: And you can imagine that, you know, uh the kind of uh politics this would kick start inside the organization, the kind of a threat that they would see of me.
47:45
SPEAKER_01: But to me, you know, because I had kind of started from zero-based, I had kind of put myself in that uh frame of mind, I think I was able to get a lot of people to believe in me.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: They said, okay, no, you know what?
47:56
SPEAKER_01: This guy has to be, you know, has to be have be having the right intentions, right?
48:01
SPEAKER_01: And they kind of in turn, I I would say they kind of extended their support.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: So I was able to get a support from a lot of the government people who actually came forward because I think they kind of felt that no, I think this is this person is genuine and he's trying to kind of make a difference and he's leaving behind his c his earlier, uh, earlier, you know, uh world and coming to a very different world.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: So that I think was very, I would say, impactful.
48:26
SPEAKER_01: It kind of helped me kind of win over the confidence of the people who who are working in the ministry.
48:33
SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, and also it it is to do with the fact that we were kind of handling a data project, right?
48:40
SPEAKER_01: While I was inside the government, but many of these departments, you know, they look at these databases as their fiefdom.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: This is their real power over call it citizens or even the bureaucracy, or so for Ministry of IT to go and say that, you know, I am we are building a project or we are building this product, and it is all about sharing of data, and you got to kind of participate in these products, it is kind of threatening to many of these departments in that sense as well, because they kind of, you know, this is a database that they have uh they have nourished and they have kind of you know kept uh you know within their own departments.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: And now, you know, I come in and kind of you know, and I'm trying to convince them that you know you got to participate.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: So overall, I would say I was lucky as well.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: My counterpart in the government, so what the government did was they uh they kind of paired me up with uh with a technology director.
49:33
SPEAKER_01: He was a senior uh you know uh person from the National Informatics Center NIC, and he was a big believer in open source technology.
49:42
SPEAKER_01: So he used to be posted at uh at Rachi in Charkand.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: But uh when I joined the government, so he was put on deputation, he was brought to the center, and he and I were kind of you know uh made uh put together in the same team, and the project was kind of assigned to them.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: And I was lucky to have him because I think he had the while he was coming from a typical government background, but his thinking and his intentions and his motivations were absolutely right.
50:08
SPEAKER_01: I think so I was very I consider myself very lucky that if I had not had him to kind of you know backstop me, it would have been very difficult for me.
50:17
SPEAKER_00: Great.
50:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh Amit, uh all the uh the India Stack and uh you know the OpenForge, they're all under the umbrella of uh the digital India program, if I'm not mistaken.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh so I think a question that I have is uh yeah, I wanted to know uh what is the difference between a digitized nation and a digital nation?
50:42
SPEAKER_00: Because when you think about a digitized nation and you're talking about you know the digilocker project, you're talking about you know UPI and stuff like that.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: And then when you're talking about a digital nation, you're talking about you know technologies like DAOs and cryptocurrencies, etc.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: So can you talk a little bit about the difference between being a digitized nation versus a digital nation?
51:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I would honestly keep uh the DAOs and the cryptocurrencies just at are at a different level of maturity.
51:11
SPEAKER_01: So maybe you know, I think they are not at a level where you can really extrapolate the government systems and see how they are going to kind of interact with that.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: So I would keep that out of that debate.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: But to answer your question, I kind of uh maybe you know you can think of them as a continuum.
51:26
SPEAKER_01: And if you go back to uh you know to uh the to the history of computerization in in a country like India, so to the best of my understanding, you know, computers started coming around uh about in in industry and in maybe in government, sometime in the mid-80s or so, right?
51:42
SPEAKER_01: That is when I think you know the governments of that time, they they kind of um that is the first flush of advent of, I mean, uh, I think Infosys got created in 81 or 82, and um right.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: And initially, if you look at the a lot of what was happening was what I would describe more as digitization, is that you know there are offline processes, there are offline records, there are offline databases, and all those things were happening uh, you know, in the offline world.
52:14
SPEAKER_01: What started happening was that there was a digital equivalent of it that was created.
52:20
SPEAKER_01: And to give you a practical example, imagine like you know, 30 years ago when we used to travel in um in uh via um uh uh these trains, right?
52:31
SPEAKER_01: We used to go to these uh train stations and stand in a line.
52:35
SPEAKER_01: We used to be giving these small tickets, and those were all manual processes.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: And you know, sometime maybe around the mid 80s or uh you know early 90s is when the the computerization happened, and all of a sudden, you know, you need you started getting these computerized tickets.
52:47
SPEAKER_01: So I would say that that is the era of digitization where the focus was on kind of essentially bringing you know offline manual process onto the digital space via essentially computerization.
53:01
SPEAKER_01: And even the internet kind of came in a little later, right?
53:05
SPEAKER_01: But uh now to your question about you're talking about digital India and the digital economy.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: I think you're talking of the next evolutionary step in that continuum.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: That uh, if you kind of believe uh like so, so now you know, so internet is believed to be the fourth industrial revolution, right?
53:24
SPEAKER_01: So it's a change of that magnitude, it's a change of that level of you know uh quantum.
53:30
SPEAKER_01: And and now you are kind of in a situation that pick up anything.
53:33
SPEAKER_01: It's not just a few sporadic things here and there.
53:37
SPEAKER_01: Pretty much everything that we are, so look at the way you know we are conducting our professional lives, look at the way we are having you know office meetings, look at the way we are kind of you know talking to our colleagues, look at the way in our personal lives we are kind of you know buying stuff from e-commerce, look at the way we are entertaining ourselves, look at the way our children are getting educated.
53:56
SPEAKER_01: So, what do you see is that pretty much any any any use case that you can think of, you know, there is now a new way of completely reimagining that compared to what we had 30 years ago.
54:08
SPEAKER_01: So it goes way beyond just, you know, the the the use of computers.
54:13
SPEAKER_01: It's a re it's a fundamental re-imagination of how those processes or those things are going to be uh kind of run.
54:21
SPEAKER_01: So to my mind, I think that is what you mean by a digital economy.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: That is what you mean by digital India, is that and you know, this, and these you were let me kind of spend a minute on that.
54:32
SPEAKER_01: This was again a key insight that I kind of uh picked up in the government, and it was very counterintuitive.
54:39
SPEAKER_01: I never thought of this.
54:41
SPEAKER_01: So, how do you describe government systems?
54:44
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, in in the government, a lot of the work, the way it happens, is that these are pre-ordained rules, these are preset, predefined rules.
54:55
SPEAKER_01: And you know, what is going to happen is kind of essentially kind of you, you know, somebody is going to follow these rules, and then you know that's how work will happen.
55:03
SPEAKER_01: And if you see essentially one of the attempts in that kind of a system is that you are trying to take away individual discretion.
55:11
SPEAKER_01: You're saying individual discretion can actually lead to maybe corruption or some kind of a you know um hazard.
55:18
SPEAKER_01: So you try to remove the individual discretion and in turn have you know a set of preordained and predefined rules and let that run the system.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: That's how most government processes and systems tend to work.
55:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh and we know that actually.
55:32
SPEAKER_01: We this is this is well understood.
55:34
SPEAKER_01: Now, the funny thing is that if you look at computer software and you go back to the definition of what in a what is an algorithm, you realize that an algorithm also has pretty much a similar definition.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: That algorithms are nothing but a set of predefined, preordained rules.
55:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's maths, it's mathematics at work, right?
55:53
SPEAKER_01: But if the rules are defined, then you kind of essentially uh are taking away individual discretion and you can automate and you can digitize all that.
56:01
SPEAKER_01: So essentially, if you put these two phenomena together, what you're saying is that if you can actually successfully embed software systems inside government processes, right, you'll be able to kind of achieve or replicate a lot of what the government was anyway trying to do.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: Because the core idea behind how the earlier system works and how the new system works is that if they are trying to kind of you know automate and digitize and take away individual discretion and replace that individual discretion with a set of you know pre-ordained rules.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: So this was this was counterintuitive to me.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize this.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: And and you know, talking about digital India, I think it's kind of taking that same paradigm is that imagine a system wherein you know you have the you know different areas, different uh segments of our economy digitize, you have these processes which are kind of being run via digital systems.
56:58
SPEAKER_01: So that's probably what what we understand of digital India.
57:03
SPEAKER_02: So, Amit, uh as you see, digital the DigiLocker project is one of the components in the digital India project, right?
57:10
SPEAKER_02: So uh and when you really architect and think about uh a platform like this, you obviously have no past data on what's going to be the adoption, how many transactions are going to happen in a minute, okay?
57:25
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, who's going to be uh you know building uh you know and using it?
57:30
SPEAKER_02: So, how do you really build the fundamental infrastructure for something like this when you don't have past data?
57:38
SPEAKER_02: And how do you go about scaling it when uh you know adoption also starts moving up?
57:45
SPEAKER_02: How do you really think through this pro uh think through this a project where you don't have any past data at all?
57:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
57:53
SPEAKER_01: I'll try to answer that, but before that, let me kind of double-click on one of the other phenomena that you see, and there's a fair bit of criticism about this as well.
58:01
SPEAKER_01: Is that so a lot of people who kind of you know spoke against uh or they had reservations about Aadhaar, they were kind of bringing uh bringing to the fore the fact that you know the technology creation was preceding the legal part.
58:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you didn't have the laws, you didn't have the rules, and you went ahead and built the technology.
58:23
SPEAKER_01: Right now, and so that was one of the primary criticisms is that you know, key, you first have built something and now you are kind of you know backfitting the legal process and the legislative process with it, and so uh this doesn't work.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe I think there is a the there is some truth to that argument, but this is the the this is the way the technology world has evolved all around.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you go back to the 19th, the end of the 20th century when internet came about, I mean, this is what the what happened in Silicon Valley in the US as well, is that the governments took a very expansive and a very accommodative view.
58:58
SPEAKER_01: They said, you know, uh, we really don't understand this medium so much.
59:03
SPEAKER_01: So if we kind of come in and put in a lot of restrictions, uh, you know, this section 230 and DMCA that people keep talking about, it was a very it was a very liberal and a very expansive kind of a way of looking at it.
59:16
SPEAKER_01: And that was the thinking is that you know, early on you really don't have a lot of background information, you don't have a lot of data.
59:25
SPEAKER_01: So, how can you kind of come in and kind of you know um try to kind of uh front load that?
59:31
SPEAKER_01: So, now to your specific question is that I mean, um I I guess that is one of the big challenges with uh many of these platforms and uh definitely with DigiLocker.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: In fact, DigiLocker, I think was uh even worse example of this because um because this platform or uh so the when so it I I think the context was this that around 2015 or 2014, the government started uh you know thinking so they said that you know we have about 60, 70 Aadhar uh numbers which had been given out by them.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_01: So the government was reasonably confident that you know the Aadha platform is up and running and it has had early successes.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_01: So now the fact that you have Aadhar and the Aadhar was always built as an API.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_01: So, what are the other products and services that you can build on top of Aadhar, which leverage and utilize these APIs, the API capabilities of Aadhar.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: And that is where the thinking was that, you know, can we have a payment system which kind of you know uses uh you know, borrows from Aadhaar?
1:00:35
SPEAKER_01: Can we have a document management and a data system which kind of you know leverages Aadhaar, which is where which is where uh DigiLocker kind of came in?
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: But there was no other system like this.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_01: So when the government looked around for comparable examples and benchmarks across the world, it turned out that you know nobody else had kind of built something like that.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_01: So uh so which was kind of you know uh disappointing and as well as challenging.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: At the same time, the government said that, okay, you know, let's kind of take it one step at a time and think of it like uh, you know, a pilot or an experiment and and and see, you know, uh let's put together a team.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_01: And that's when I kind of came in and uh they kind of gave us the mandate.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_01: They said that, you know, you have to go and build something.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_01: And I they didn't, I mean, this wasn't officially told to me, but I think it was very obvious that, you know, okay, this was um they they weren't sure whether the platform could be built or could it exist or not.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_01: So they were giving us the resources and the time, and they were saying that uh you go and uh try to build this and let's maybe talk in a couple of years and see how far this this has reached.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_01: So it was very much, you know, kind of an experimental thing.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh unlike some of the other platforms, unlike let's say an UPI or unlike let's say Aadhar, where I think the you know they started with a different um, you know, I I and I think the reason for that is because the in let's say take the case of UPI, the payment rails all always existed, right?
1:02:00
SPEAKER_01: Physical payment systems already existed.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: I, you know, your RTGS and all these systems already existed.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, um UPI was a new way of kind of utilizing the digital rails to kind of you know have the payment system.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_01: Even for Aadhaar, I think they they kind of you know had the Aadhaar, uh some of the Aadhaar uh uh rules laid down, and then they said, okay, let us kind of now issue these IDs to uh to all the citizens of the country.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_01: So I think there was more more depth and more method in those examples than initially there was in Digital.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_01: Digiloka was definitely more experimental.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_01: Let's see how this goes.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, that was challenging, but I think uh we had uh we had uh you know good very good support from the ministry.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_01: And uh we were we were lucky as well.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_01: I think in a few cases I said that you know, I uh you know, my co my counterpart in the government, I think he was he was the the right partner, and uh we went about it step by step, uh one by one.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_01: I think um you know, broadly in terms of the platform itself, I think we made one of the key decisions was uh so if you look at the platform, the way it works is that you first got to undertake digitization of these databases, right?
1:03:15
SPEAKER_01: So it's like what we call the issuing part is that you've got to first get government departments and ministries to issue their records into the platform.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_01: Once you have the baseline digitization, that's when you know this data starts getting consumed for processes and things like that.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_01: But the consumption will kind of you know come in a little later.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_01: You've got to first start with digitization.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_01: So initially, one of the decisions was that let's focus on digitization, let's kind of just solve the try to solve the starting problem.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_01: And the starting problem here is the fact that you know government systems are traditionally built in siloed, uh siloed methods.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, they don't talk to each other.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_01: Many of them have very legacy architectures.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, now if you go and tell them that we have we are building this this application in the Ministry of IT and your databases need to talk to our uh to our uh platform, then it is possible that you will have to actually go back and re-architect some of the government systems, right?
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: Some systems might be readily kind of, you know, you'll be able to kind of um use the APIs, but in many of the cases you'll have to go and fundamentally uh re-architect the system.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_01: So we went about in a slow way, step by step, one by one, we started uh you know going to the ministries, convincing them.
1:04:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, as you might imagine, there was a fair bit of you know um concern, they had questions.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh some people said, okay, you know, nobody wanted to be the early adopter, right?
1:04:40
SPEAKER_01: And I and I would say that, you know, I think that I've what I've seen in the government that there's some ministries which have been very um, you know, they've they they've really uh helped uh um or or their the basic, let me put it this way, is that uh they've been far more forthcoming and far more experimental themselves uh in the initial phases because at that stage the platform wasn't really kind of you know uh very mature, but I've seen many government departments actually being very supportive.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_01: And uh so then we started, so it's taken us almost four or five years now, but I think the first part of the problem of uh you know the digitization piece itself.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_01: So that is something that the team has done a very good job.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_01: I think we still need to uh you know work more on how this data needs to be consumed, how you kind of you know actually um ensure that uh the platform, now that it has the uh the right level of uh digitized documents and data in it, how do you actually utilize these data?
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: And that's actually quite challenging in the sense that now you will have to go and embed all these in digital via digital processes in in each use case.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of slightly more long drawn um uh effort.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: But uh but yes, I think um I think we have uh we we have the way I kind of always tell the team is that I think we have version one of the platform.
1:06:09
SPEAKER_01: We've done a good job now.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_01: Let's kind of work towards the second version and and take it up from there.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh just to just to sort of follow up on that, uh you you initially touched upon uh you know you built the technology, but there was no legal uh sort of basis for it, and that led to a conversation about the politicization of technology to some extent and stuff stuff like that.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_00: And uh when so the question that I have is uh you know nowadays when you're working, uh so for example, you have uh iSpirate and the entire Intel Stomach uh conversations going on about different technologies and stuff like that in terms of legislation and policy thinking.
1:06:51
SPEAKER_00: So my question is uh if a if if you want to bring forth a technology uh that's uh futuristic to some extent, or a technology that will say like nuclear that'll be a great answer to climate concerns or something like that, how must a technologist work with a policy expert or a legal scholar?
1:07:13
SPEAKER_00: And what should be the outcome of that conversation, in your opinion?
1:07:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_01: So I I would say, in you know, to answer your question, one of the great things that has happened is that the internet has just kind of you know bridged these gaps, right?
1:07:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you find that you know people from the private sector, people like me, have come and worked in the government.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_01: You also see just just this thing happening uh every day on social media, is that there is so much more connect now between the governments and private enterprise and the startup world and with academia.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_01: Is that, and why is this happening?
1:07:51
SPEAKER_01: It's happening because that's what the internet enables.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_01: It kind of shortens these distances, it turns the world into a global village, to use a cliche terms, right?
1:07:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh the other day I was uh there was this incident that happened where you might have followed this.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_01: Um I think the government announced something, uh, the railways ministry announced something about IRCTC, about how they are going to kind of take um, you know, keep a part of the commission structure.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there was the stock markets reacted very negatively.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_01: IRCTC stock just kind of you know crashed.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_01: And within the next uh I think 12 hours or 18 hours, the government actually came back and said they reversed the earlier decision.
1:08:32
SPEAKER_01: Now, why did that happen?
1:08:33
SPEAKER_01: I think if you ask me, it happened because of the internet.
1:08:36
SPEAKER_01: It's because the internet is this great thing where it kind of you know magnifies all these reactions.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_01: If you if you've done something right, it magnifies that.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_01: There'll be millions of people clapping.
1:08:45
SPEAKER_01: If you've done something which is not right, it'll again magnify that.
1:08:48
SPEAKER_01: And immediately you'll know.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh and now if you go back 30 years, imagine a situation.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_01: Do you think that you know it maybe the government after 15 days, after 30 days, would have even realized a problem?
1:08:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but in real time, you know, if you do something and people don't like, you know, the powers that be in the government within hours or within minutes, if they are active on social media, they'll know that you know what the reaction is.
1:09:09
SPEAKER_01: So to answer your question, I think this is the great thing about the internet.
1:09:14
SPEAKER_01: This is the great thing about the medium, is that the medium itself is bringing uh things together.
1:09:19
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, I think there is obviously the realization in the government is that, see, the internet is not just uh, you know, not just to go back to my earlier point is that it's not just about digitization.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_01: This is a fundamental reimagination of how you know people in this world are going to go about conducting their personal lives, their you know, educational lives, their professional lives, their how they are going to take entertainment.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_01: So pick up anything, and you know, now there is going to be a new way to do that.
1:09:50
SPEAKER_01: So they themselves are very forthcoming.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_01: They themselves are going to reach out and say that, you know, okay, what are the newer trends?
1:09:57
SPEAKER_01: What are the who are the people who are maybe the domain experts in this area?
1:10:01
SPEAKER_01: And you know, the fact that I actually ended up working in the government is a prime example for that.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_01: You might actually say, okay, how did this even happen?
1:10:06
SPEAKER_01: It's because the government had realized and that A, they needed expertise, and they were honest enough and humble enough to say that, you know, that expertise did not exist within the government.
1:10:16
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's that's happening.
1:10:17
SPEAKER_01: It's aided by the internet.
1:10:19
SPEAKER_01: And the fact that the internet, you know, for good or for bad, it tends to, you know, it's kind of made it real time, on demand, magnifies all these reactions.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_01: So I think uh, you know, uh you you will see uh different uh stakeholders, you know, being brought together by the internet uh towards some of these goals.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_02: Uh a project like this, which is almost, I would call it transformational to a citizen's life, to a nation's way of doing business, uh, never attracts venture capital, right?
1:10:54
SPEAKER_02: It attracts government capital, you know.
1:10:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh so the real challenge of uh you know getting the innovation that you talked about early in our conversation, which is building the great product, uh building the an innovation that has never been done before in this part of the world, attracts needs to attract a certain kind of a venture capital, and I would call it patient capital, right?
1:11:19
SPEAKER_02: Uh so what are the challenges of getting that kind of a patient capital in say uh projects like these or ideas like this, and where do you see the gaps and how do we really bridge it?
1:11:33
SPEAKER_01: And your reference is largely to government projects.
1:11:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm saying uh it it largely to multiple projects, right?
1:11:41
SPEAKER_02: So a project like this, I won't think venture capital would be interested, but I would say that uh something transformational like this, right?
1:11:50
SPEAKER_02: The real challenge is the gestation period is always longer than say the venture fund's life, right?
1:11:55
SPEAKER_02: Which is like a five-year or a seven-year and things like that, right?
1:11:59
SPEAKER_01: I would honestly take a slightly uh differing view.
1:12:02
SPEAKER_01: I would say what I mean, I told you about how uh DigiLocker happened, and I would say that what the government did was not textbook venture capital, the way we understand it.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_01: But you know, I think there is a certain you know public or uh uh governmental equivalent of that that was done actually, because they they kind of said that this is a pilot, you know, they obviously put aside a budget for it, and the budget you know was part of the digital India budget.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_01: So there was clearly for it, but you know, it was uh you know, it was like seeding and there is an idea, and you got to kind of you know give seed money to that idea, and this idea has to be implemented from within the government.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_01: So I would disagree.
1:12:42
SPEAKER_01: I do think there is, I mean, it's not traditional venture capital, but it is some government equivalent.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't have the right term, but uh, I I do think you know there was some element of that.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_01: But I I I to take on the point slightly broadly, uh, you know, one of my learnings has been that, and let me kind of okay, let me take a step back is that actually I I I've also received a lot of criticism for why does come the government keep on uh you know building these platforms?
1:13:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, and we know this, right?
1:13:10
SPEAKER_01: That you know, you pick up any area, you'll find five government platforms that are already existing, and none of those five would be working actually, right?
1:13:17
SPEAKER_01: So there is this thing about you know constantly keep on building.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_01: And I remember back in 2015 when I, you know, I told my friends and it was well known that you know, I'm I'm going to be heading this team, which is going to build a platform.
1:13:29
SPEAKER_01: One of the criticisms I had to face was that you know, the government keeps on building platforms.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_01: So you've just kind of, you know, why are you kind of trying to build a platform?
1:13:36
SPEAKER_01: And I would say it's a fair question to ask.
1:13:39
SPEAKER_01: It's an absolutely fair question to ask.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_01: That, because if we are saying that the it is not the government's job to run Air India, then why do you think that it is the government's job to run, you know, Aadhaar or DigiLocker?
1:13:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe that question needs to be asked.
1:13:55
SPEAKER_01: And I initially didn't have the answer for it, but I think now, you know, five years hence, I can articulate that much better.
1:14:02
SPEAKER_01: So there's clearly things that the government should not do, right?
1:14:05
SPEAKER_01: The government should not be in business.
1:14:07
SPEAKER_01: And I'm let me qualify this is my personal point of view.
1:14:10
SPEAKER_01: So please take it in that sense.
1:14:12
SPEAKER_01: So very clearly, you know, there are things that the government should not do, right?
1:14:16
SPEAKER_01: Governments by and large should not be, you know, uh operating businesses and running them, right?
1:14:23
SPEAKER_01: Unless and until there is a strategic interest uh involved there.
1:14:27
SPEAKER_01: However, what you also see is that there are certain areas where somebody in the system, somebody who has the resources and somebody who has the stakes in the system, needs to kind of disproportionately allocate resources and spend time and make effort and do the foundational work.
1:14:50
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:14:51
SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't do the foundational work, the chances are it will never get kickstarted.
1:14:56
SPEAKER_01: So you're kind of in a situation where a lot of times you're you're faced, you're confronted with a situation is that unless and until you actually sink in the money and do the foundational work, this thing would never exist.
1:15:07
SPEAKER_01: And I think the project that I work for the government, DigiLogger, is a fantastic, it's a prime example of that.
1:15:12
SPEAKER_01: Is that unless and until somebody had said that, you know, this is like a money that's that we are putting in, we don't know whether this is going to work or not.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, an idea like this would never have kind of uh you know taken off ground.
1:15:25
SPEAKER_01: But once that foundational, it is also true that once that foundational work is done, then the operating parts of that platform or that system need to be kind of you know uh palmed off or kind of, I think it needs to be some kind of a public partnership, private partnership, wherein, again, the government should not, it should kind of stick to the basic premise that it's not the government's role to kind of be running businesses and running lots and lots of these platforms.
1:15:52
SPEAKER_01: The government should only be doing very basic, very minimal, very foundational work.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_01: I I would say that you know running a Aadhar and a DigiLocker kind of a platform is kind of you know falls under that ambit.
1:16:04
SPEAKER_01: But um but but by and large, you have to kind of figure out a public-private partnership model in which you know uh you invite the private sector, you invite different uh parts of the ecosystem to kind of you know build on top of what the foundational APIs are or what the foundational systems are, and then take it to the market.
1:16:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, that is a role that the government cannot play and should not try to play.
1:16:32
SPEAKER_00: So, Amit, speaking of venture capital, you were featured in an economic times article titled Rise of a New Tribe of Angel Investors.
1:16:41
SPEAKER_00: You know, reading that it made me realize that uh India might be uh, you know, there's a very interesting trend I noticed in that.
1:16:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, we might what we might be in what I call VC 1.2, which is uh you have a large swath of individuals running venture capital firms without startup founding or operating experiences.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_00: And you have an equivalent of that in the history of VC in the US, where you have your Don Valentines and you have your uh uh and your Tom Perkins running VC firms without having really started startups.
1:17:13
SPEAKER_00: And now we have a new class of angel investors in India, such as you know, yourself and many others on that list who have had a history of starting and running uh successful businesses.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_00: So, are we on the threshold of such a transition?
1:17:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's the first part of my question.
1:17:30
SPEAKER_00: And the second part of my question is can you also elaborate what is the difference uh between the advice a VC gives with operating experience versus advice a VC gives without operating experience?
1:17:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
1:17:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean I think this uh this point that you are referring to, it's kind of a little bit of a debate, uh, especially in the VC world, about uh, you know, operators versus non-operators and what is the value add or what is the role you know each can play.
1:17:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean I'll I I'd like to answer that question in a broad, uh maybe a philosophical way, is that I what my learning in life has been that too much of anything is is to be avoided, too much of anything is bad.
1:18:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've got to kind of go by that general principle is that uh the reality is that there is so much diversity, there is so much uh, you know, um if you just look at the world around you, there's just so much diversity, there's so much, so many things.
1:18:27
SPEAKER_01: And to expect that there is only one way to do it is maybe not the right uh approach to have.
1:18:33
SPEAKER_01: So there are multiple ways to solve a problem, there are multiple perspectives, there are multiple things people can bring on board, and we should generally be kind of keep our eyes and ears open.
1:18:43
SPEAKER_01: So while I come from an operating experience and I would probably be more aligned to you know operator VCs, but I do think that uh I would not rule out the value of uh you know people with non-operational experience, people coming from you know financial backgrounds, and they might be good at financial engineering, and there are certain, you know, um certain uh markets and certain opportunities where actually the financial engineering might uh play a bigger role than uh you know the technology innovation there.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_01: That is just the way of it.
1:19:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think there are parts of e-commerce which kind of, in my opinion, uh, you know, you don't necessarily need to be a very creative company at an in at a tech level per se to kind of build a large and an impactful and influential system.
1:19:27
SPEAKER_01: So my my personal view is that actually, as I said, too much of anything is bad.
1:19:31
SPEAKER_01: So I I wouldn't kind of you know confine myself to one end of the continuum.
1:19:35
SPEAKER_01: I think you know there's there's the scope for operator VC kinds, there's also scope for non-operator VCs.
1:19:42
SPEAKER_01: And uh I think the the the trick here is that you know in the specific situation or what you're trying to kind of you know uh build for, I think you've got to kind of analyze and understand what is that ideal mix for you, what kind of a person to bring on board.
1:20:00
SPEAKER_01: It is possible that you know having an operator might help.
1:20:03
SPEAKER_01: It is also possible that you know, yeah, I mean some operational experience would help, but I don't think he uh you know I mean there are many areas, for example, where if you are completely like uh coming up with um uh with a new paradigm, a new model, I mean, what would prior experience kind of help you, right?
1:20:22
SPEAKER_01: And I remember this one of these um quotations I read somewhere.
1:20:26
SPEAKER_01: It says that you know, startups need the uh the experience of people who have done it before and the enthusiasm and energy of people who haven't done it before.
1:20:35
SPEAKER_01: They need both actually.
1:20:37
SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Amit.
1:20:38
SPEAKER_02: I think uh we're coming to the end of our uh conversation and there are a couple of uh rapid fire questions that we have for you.
1:20:45
SPEAKER_02: Uh so the first question from my side is what does the word successful mean to you, Amit?
1:20:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh I mean, this is not rapid fire, this is philosophical.
1:20:56
SPEAKER_01: Um I I think now I do think that uh you know one should have my views are more uh you know kind of aligned towards trying to have a balance in life, not just professional success, but you know, things like family, things like society.
1:21:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I think when when you are like at a certain age bracket and you look back at your life, you should be able to say that okay, you know, I did justice to different parts.
1:21:23
SPEAKER_01: That is not the way I used to think 10 years ago, honestly, where I was knee-deep in uh in running the startup.
1:21:29
SPEAKER_01: But I I think that's a change that I've seen in myself.
1:21:33
SPEAKER_00: So my question to you, Amit, is what are some of the books that have really influenced you over the course of your life?
1:21:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh okay, that's I mean, I um I I I think that uh you know, I recently read um you well know Al Harari's uh you know Sapiens.
1:21:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm ready reading the second part of it.
1:21:52
SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's such an impactful and an amazing book.
1:21:55
SPEAKER_01: And I wish, you know, uh I read this book 20 years ago, right?
1:21:59
SPEAKER_01: This is the this is the the first book in history that all of us should be taught.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_01: I was I was hoping that you know somehow this book should can kind of become a part of our education system at a very prime level, at a very, very basic level.
1:22:13
SPEAKER_01: Is um that was I that is definitely something.
1:22:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't read a lot of books, honestly.
1:22:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I actually blame the internet because the internet has you know really killed my attention span.
1:22:25
SPEAKER_01: And I don't like that.
1:22:26
SPEAKER_01: I do uh you know do a lot of things, uh watch a lot of videos and all, but uh I hate to admit this, but you know, uh I don't read a lot of books.
1:22:35
SPEAKER_01: One of the books I'm reading right now is um so I play tennis and I'm a big uh Rafa Nadal fan, and I'm reading his uh autobiography, my story, and you know, I'm just blown away by the intensity that you know you can see in his personality as as I'm going through the book.
1:22:52
SPEAKER_01: You can just see uh the man behind the the game that you see on television.
1:22:57
SPEAKER_01: So I think that is something that books obviously have this immersive thing, they just drag you out of the the world and they kind of you know immerse you.
1:23:04
SPEAKER_01: So that's great.
1:23:05
SPEAKER_01: But I wish you know I I I could spend more time reading.
1:23:09
SPEAKER_02: So my next question is uh what's the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you?
1:23:18
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:23:19
SPEAKER_01: I would say that one something that has influenced me a lot is um is if you look at what Steve Jobs taught the world, and not just about technology, but about um a lot of things about how you should run your life.
1:23:37
SPEAKER_01: Many of the uh self-realizations that you know people have had looking at his life and his the way he um you know went about doing it.
1:23:46
SPEAKER_01: I think that has been fairly impactful.
1:23:47
SPEAKER_01: For example, his thing is that you can you can only connect the dots in hindsight, right?
1:23:54
SPEAKER_01: You you cannot connect the dots when you're looking forward.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_01: It's only when you look back and you can kind of connect the things.
1:24:00
SPEAKER_01: The second thing that he said is that you know, if if you're trying to uh decide what area to work on, look at the thing that really excites you.
1:24:08
SPEAKER_01: Look at the thing because finally, you know, you'll you'll excel at something if it doesn't look like work to you, it should look like play to you.
1:24:14
SPEAKER_01: Now that was a very uh, you know, it's a very uh radical way of thinking about it.
1:24:19
SPEAKER_01: I wish I'd heard this saying, you know, again 30 years ago when I was in school and college.
1:24:25
SPEAKER_01: But uh I generally find some of his writings and his quotations very inspiring.
1:24:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh Amit, if you could invite uh four uh individuals for a dream dinner, who would they be and why?
1:24:40
SPEAKER_01: I think uh, you know, uh I think Mahatma Gandhi would be one.
1:24:44
SPEAKER_01: I think his life uh has been inspirational.
1:24:48
SPEAKER_01: And uh I generally tend to kind of be more um uh, you know, I I I think of myself more in the rational sense and driven more by you know science and the whole uh the rational movement.
1:25:04
SPEAKER_01: So it'll have to be a bunch of people from the scientific world.
1:25:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe somebody like Albert Einstein and Newton and Galileo would be would be would make the list.
1:25:15
SPEAKER_02: What are the uh what are the three or four pieces of advice that you would give to an 18-year-old today?
1:25:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:25:23
SPEAKER_01: So the first thing I would say is that uh you know try to discover what your real interests are.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_01: And again, I uh piece of advice is that if you have access to the internet, the internet can be an amazing medium in terms of helping you that.
1:25:39
SPEAKER_01: Because if you can actually figure out what is it that you are really driven by, if you can identify that, I think that is a really powerful situation to be in.
1:25:52
SPEAKER_01: Because then it kind of makes sense that once you have identified that uh that area of uh interest, you know it it makes sense to focus your professional career towards that direction.
1:26:04
SPEAKER_01: Unlike a lot of and and if you look at my own uh professional career starting from my educational background, a lot of things I realized that I was just running myself on defaults.
1:26:14
SPEAKER_01: You got to first do your engineering and then got to do your MBA, and then good MBAs went uh went in a certain direction.
1:26:21
SPEAKER_01: So I just kept on choosing the default things that came around.
1:26:25
SPEAKER_01: It was only when, you know, at a certain stage you kind of asked yourself, what's okay, what is it that you really want?
1:26:31
SPEAKER_01: And that was the shock that you know, uh, when I made that switch to and startup and entrepreneurship.
1:26:36
SPEAKER_01: So that is one piece of advice I would give to an 18-year-old.
1:26:39
SPEAKER_01: Try to discover what you are really interested in, what you are good at.
1:26:44
SPEAKER_01: I would say it's good if you are, you know, you know, top of the class in academics, but uh, you know, it is also true that academic brilliance is useful in some ways, but it should not be the be all and end all.
1:26:58
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:26:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh in in the Indian uh educational context, you do see you know families pushing their kids uh you know no end for academic excellence.
1:27:11
SPEAKER_01: And that is one another change that has happened to me is that I'm a less believer of you know academic excellence and brilliance than I was when I was growing up.
1:27:19
SPEAKER_01: I think yeah, it might it it does have some role, but if you look at uh the world around you, you don't see a very high correlation of people who are successful and you know how good they were uh academically.
1:27:32
SPEAKER_00: Amit, what is something that you believe in that nobody else agrees with you on?
1:27:39
SPEAKER_01: Let me think about this.
1:27:41
SPEAKER_01: Um I mean I uh this is partly belief and partly um you know also hope because I'm I'm quite interested in sports.
1:27:54
SPEAKER_01: So I would really uh hope that you know uh India at some point in time in my life.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_01: I think it will be in the top three uh in the Olympics Major Galli, and I think we can do it actually.
1:28:08
SPEAKER_02: My final question to you is uh having heard this speak and having done this uh you know long session, if you were to recommend someone who you see would be good for this podcast as a new guest, who do you think we should uh look at?
1:28:33
SPEAKER_01: And uh is this somebody from the technology world?
1:28:37
SPEAKER_02: Nothing.
1:28:37
SPEAKER_02: Uh it's it's you can you can say you know it can be anybody.
1:28:41
SPEAKER_02: Not an issue at all.
1:28:42
SPEAKER_02: It's not just technology, but as you can see, uh, you know, uh as you rightly said uh in your conversation, you need to be a bit of an engineer, you need to be a bit of a diplomat, you need to be a bit of so you need all this thinking to be successful, right?
1:28:56
SPEAKER_02: So therefore, I think this whole contraminds podcast is about that.
1:29:00
SPEAKER_02: So and imagine if you were to kind of look at a guest who you think would add value to the audience.
1:29:06
SPEAKER_02: Who do you think uh you know we would uh you know you would advise us and say get him as a guest or get her as a guest?
1:29:13
SPEAKER_02: I think they would add value.
1:29:16
SPEAKER_01: So I'll confine myself to technology.
1:29:18
SPEAKER_01: Uh I think uh, you know, one uh great uh person to talk to and introduce to your audience would be Sharad Sharma, who's uh the head of iSpirit.
1:29:28
SPEAKER_01: I think he's done a fantastic job.
1:29:31
SPEAKER_01: And he's also like kind of you know um at a very interesting, you know, he he occupies a very interesting position where you know it's right in the between the government and industry and a lot of other initiatives.
1:29:46
SPEAKER_01: So he'd be a great person to have on the show.
1:29:48
SPEAKER_02: Thanks, uh thanks, Amit.
1:29:50
SPEAKER_02: It was fabulous talking to you and uh we had a great time listening to you and some great insights and some brilliant quotes.
1:29:59
SPEAKER_02: Thanks a lot, and it was lovely talking to you.
1:30:01
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, thanks for having me, and you know, look forward to interacting with the uh Contra Minds community.
1:30:08
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
1:30:09
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Amit.
1:30:21
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening to this episode.
1:30:24
SPEAKER_02: For selected links and detailed show notes, visit www.contramines.com slash blog.
1:30:32
SPEAKER_02: Follow Contraminds on social media and let us know who you would like to see next on the podcast.
1:30:38
SPEAKER_02: If you are listening to Contraminds on Apple Podcasts, do share your comments and give us a rating.
1:30:44
SPEAKER_02: We are keen to know what you're thinking.
1:30:46
SPEAKER_02: Contraminds is also on YouTube.
1:30:49
SPEAKER_02: If you are listening to the podcast on YouTube, hit the subscribe button and stay up to date on all our releases.
1:30:56
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening and stay safe.