Skilling India for Digital Transformation: A CHRO Dinner Meet at Bangalore

iNurture Education Solutions partnered with Raise Global, a community development and events company, to conduct a CHRO dinner meet on January 7, 2016 at Le Meridien, Bangalore. The programme is part of the iNurture CHRO series that seeks to connect HR leaders from across industry verticals in the country. The theme of the programme was “Skilling India for Digital Transformation.”

The goal of this discussion was to bring together thought leaders from key organizations to offer insights and thoughts on how best to build digital competencies in an enterprise, supported by examples and case studies.

The event was attended by over 20 CHROs from large Indian organizations based in Bangalore. A few people who participated are:
• Kaustav Chakravarty, VP – Leadership and Talent Development (APAC, Europe, LATAM) at Accenture
• Suhas G Y, Head HR at L&T Construction
• Joseph Raviraj, Country HR Head at Volvo India
• Atul Sharma, Sr. GM – HR at Bosch Group
• Vines Nair, Head HR at RedBus
• Nadeem Pasha, Talent Acquisition at MindTree
• Lata Subramaniam, Ex-CHRO at IBM (Next Assignment is confidential currently)
• Ajay Kulkarni, Country HR Director at CenturyLink
• Rahul Biswas, Director HR (Global Services Business) at Hewlett Packard (HP)

The first topic of the evening was presented by Aravind Seetharaman, Ex-President at Cisco India, on the topic “Digital India and Skill Transformation”.

He began his presentation with the concept of the model of a nation and how skill development is tightly tied down to national growth. “Bharatha Varsha was when India was the largest economy in the world, contributing over 30% of global GDP, but now, our contribution is less than 10%,” said Aravind. He also explained the labor-employability mismatch and digital skills gap in the country. He spoke about the challenges of the educational system in India and revealed that we have one of the lowest student-teacher ratios in the world. Towards the end of his presentation, Aravind suggested a few ways to bridge the digital skills gap.

Pramod Idiculla, CEO, iNurture Education Solutions, presented the keynote address of the evening. He began speaking about the emergence of digital businesses and what it means to be a digital business.

“Every part of the business has gone digital today. Ideation, design, 3-D visualization, and realization have become digital. The impact of this is that without cutting-edge skills, designers and engineers coming out of institutes cannot even get an entry-level job. Today, digital literacy is as important to the future as Maths and English,” he emphasized.

Pramod Idiculla went on to explain the impact of the digital transformation for organizations. “While technology challenges and risks related to security and privacy, obsolescence, etc., exist, one of the key challenges that organizations face is the unprecedented shortage of digital skills,” he mentioned. Pramod Idiculla also revealed that the Digitarati, i.e., companies who are already investing in digital skills and reaping benefits, are 26% more profitable than their industry counterparts.

Pramod Idiculla spoke about the differences between digital natives and digital migrants. He explained that digital natives comprise the new generation of workforce that is extremely well versed with smartphones, WhatsApp, digital music and who believe in information at their fingertips at the time and device of their choice. Digital migrants are people who adapted to the smartphones but still argue if WhatsApp is good or bad and are acclimatizing to online buying.

Pramod Idiculla then explained how iNurture has helped leaders of the industry succeed in their digital transformation journey by partnering with organizations to inculcate digital skills in their employees. He concluded his presentation by throwing three key questions that every CHRO should be asking within his organization and then introduced iNurture with a corporate presentation.

The event concluded with a photo-op and networking over cocktail and dinner. The ELS team interacted with the CHROs and listened to their concerns