Capturing the upside of disruption #Ankuran

As heavy rains pleasantly splashed across the streets in Mumbai, a batch of 200 plus students were busy capturing the upside of disruption.

The guests on the panel were Mr. Deepak Ghaisas, Chairman of Gencoval Strategic Services Pvt.Ltd. ,Powai, Mumbai and Dr. Pradeep Pendse, Dean E-Business , Welingkar Institute of Management. Mr. Ghaisas began by sharing his experience about how during his initial career he started with food industry at a hotel in Juhu. He then started his own restaurant in Muscat. After a few years, his thirst to do something different got him into the IT industry. He later started his own company 'Iflex' which got a million dollar funding. He later did IPO in 2002 and his company was valued at 482 million dollars before selling it to Oracle. The organisation has a presence in 138 countries. Today more than 6,00,000 companies are using its software.

He mentioned three things which he believes are important to earn money in life: 1. Do something better 2. Do something different 3. Do something new After this he decided to get into biotech stem cells technology , where he has now spent considerable amount of years in the domain. He then put forward the topic of current global disruption where he humorously put forwarded the example of US president Donald Trump. He said no one anticipated that Donald Trump would win, on 2nd November two major things happened, demonetization and Donald Trump winning the elections. He also mentioned about three types of people existing in market viz: 1.Who lead disruption 2.Watch it happening and ultimately become part of it. 3.Keep wondering what is happening. And people who keep wondering are in majority hence the term 'disruption'. He said that people who become part of it are better. "The sooner you become part of it, the better it is for you”. Supporting it he mentioned Einstein’s Quote “Doing the same thing over & over gain and expediting different results." He said in 1993 he used 2mb memory on his computer to do operations. And today he can’t settle for less than 1TB. He then spoke about job tenure of Fortune 500 CEOs. Average tenure of CEO’s was 10 years now it’s 5 years. He suggested students to read a book ‘Hypomanic Americans’.

Continuing on the topic of disruption he mentioned how photography disrupted when it came to market, how it replaced painters and created a revolution. Siting another example of disruption, he mentioned how when bulb came into market it almost disrupted the candles market. The point he was trying to make giving above examples was that things are changing and if CEOs don’t adapt ,they will be obsolete.

He mentioned how complex and changing environment wherein he highlighted operating scenario in a complex environment with rapidly evolving market and organisation dynamics. He also said that we all are connected and with fiber optics coming into picture things are becoming more connected. He pointed how disruption in education sector can happen. He said that with classrooms becoming virtual, colleges may cease to exist since it costs much for infrastructure. Supporting it he mentioned about his son using laptop for every content he consumes and how it will disrupt the television industry in coming years. He shared the growing prominence of analytics in advertisement industry where the content which people absorb or the ads which people watch completely could be re-targeted. He fore visioned how 3d printers will disrupt the industry. From shoes to cars almost everything can be made via 3d printers. He gav futuristic views on major disruption in Health care industry with stem cells technology creating a revolution, Cancer will be detected significantly early and how organs can be grown organically using stem cells .

All in all the session was informative and thought provoking.

The session concluded with an interactive Q&A session.