I think I don't need this. Good evening, everybody. It's an absolute honor for me to be here. Super grateful to SKOCH Awards and super grateful to you, Mr. Kochhar, for creating such an amazing platform and for recognizing the phenomenal work that everybody here has been doing and continues to do. I think you're giving a platform for voices that are many times not heard. So, super grateful to you and very much honoured to be here amongst all of you dignitaries.

It has been an absolute joy for me to just listen in to the kind of work that all of you are driving forward towards Viksit Bharat, towards 2047. Now, if I stand here and kind of think back on why—some of the questions that came up during multiple conversations, right? And how are we all progressing towards Viksit Bharat? And how is technology playing such a huge role in that transformation?

One question that I often get in my various roles is, "Hey, Sindhu, what is the next wave?" When we talk about the $280 billion technology industry? And I think that's a question that comes up quite often. Now, if I just think about it, the answer for me has been very clear, very simple as well. Because if you ask me—and I think you heard it also from our previous speaker—today, India is on the cusp of becoming a developed nation, right? And becoming a developed nation is also on that platform of becoming a global product innovation powerhouse.

Now, for me, when we talk about being a global product innovation powerhouse, this is not just a change in terms of how we look at it as an ambition, but fundamentally, I think there's a change in the mindset of how we are approaching things. Right? And it's also a fundamental change towards how India is positioning itself on the global stage. But honestly, if you ask me, if you want to get there and if you really want to kind of position things differently, I truly believe that there are three bold shifts that need to happen.

And that bold shift has to happen from all of us—the industry, it has to happen from the academia, it has to happen from change makers, it has to happen from innovators. Because especially—you know, all heard what happened yesterday from a geopolitical challenge that we are all facing. And it's not just yesterday, right? Every single day we wake up to things that are evolving, things that are changing, which also needs us to recalibrate, reimagine. What does it mean for all of us?

Now, when I talk about bold shifts that we need to make in order to get to be that powerhouse of product innovation, I think first and foremost, if you just look at technological advancements today, I mean, we've made major progress when it comes to being the services industry of the world. There's no question about that. When you look at our IT and services industry, it has really propelled our economic growth over the last decades. That's no question about it.

But in the age of AI, where technology is changing so fast, I truly believe that we have to reimagine the services playbook in this whole era and this whole age of AI. Because like I said, IT and services industry clearly has been a bedrock. But the future of how AI is changing the game—I mean, we all know it's whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not—AI is already everywhere. We are using it almost on a daily basis. Generative AI is pretty much mainstream if you ask me. The world of agentic AI is also happening, right? I mean, we are talking about a future where agents are going to talk to each other, right? Agents are going to do a lot of the work that normally humans are going to do.

And given that this is the atmosphere in which we live, the way we think about services is also changing significantly. And so for India, this is not a disruption where we kind of fear that kind of change. But I think there's a massive opportunity for us to also lead that change. And in order to lead that change, what we also need to do is to make sure that—when we go back to our curriculums, when we go back to our academia, when we go back to how our young talent who comes out of universities are equipped—we really need to give them all those right skills: how they think in this world of AI, like how do you look at a problem, how do you look at problem solving itself? How do you look at design thinking as a construct of how you break down problems?

Because technologies will keep evolving. But how do you look at a problem? How do you design-think it? How do you make sure that you think through end-to-end systems which can scale, which can stand the test of time? This is a little bit of the thinking—the domain skills which are so much needed when we talk about solving some of the world's most critical business problems. These are some things which I truly believe need to happen: change in that core talent agenda. And for that to happen, we need a deeper collaboration between the industry; we need a deeper collaboration with the government; we also need a deeper collaboration with the corporates as well.

Now the second thing, if you may allow me: we need to move from this consumption mode to creation mode. Now what do I mean by that? Today, if I look at India, I mean, clearly we've established ourselves—there's no question. Over the last decades we've been supporting and running the world's largest businesses. We are clearly seen as that powerhouse when it comes to supporting the world's back office. But however, if we want to build that brain trust where India is looked at as the place when it comes to brain trust, it also matters in terms of how much of that IP gets created here in India. How much of those patents get generated here in the country.

And that, I think, is also super important—that we think through that IP creation. How do you go about it? Today we say 2,700 of the GCCs have their home in India, and a big part of the GCCs is building innovations from India for the world. I represent SAP here, and 40% of the SAP R&D is happening out of India for the world. But what's even more exciting is a quarter of the patents that come out of SAP globally comes out of our location.

And now, if you change into nationwide—the creation of IP—I think we talked a lot about the digital public infrastructures that exist today. I mean, if you just look at homegrown solutions, be it Aadhaar, where we are creating digital identities for more than a billion people today, we have everything that we need. You have the India Stack; you have the third largest startup ecosystem in the world; you have a phenomenal ecosystem of GCCs; you have the startups; you have the academia all coming together; and you have a market where innovations can be consumed as well.

So my second point—which I would really say that we are continuing to work on as a nation, and continuing to work on also in my role at NASSCOM—is to build that product-first thinking, which I think is super important. It's not enough to build, but we also need to know how to own what we create.

Now the third thing which I want to leave you with is: we can use AI as an equalizer. Because AI, if used in the wrong way, can become a divider. So it's super important for us that we leverage the technology in the right way so that we can have that as an equalizer for development. I mean, we talked about how we go into the villages of the country, bringing in the change, the transformation. And here again, technology has a significant role to play to drive that change at scale.

But here again, with the technologies that are evolving at such a high pace, if we don't bring in inclusive strategies, then we again leave out people. So I truly believe that we need to have that fair access; we need to have that linguistic diversity which is so much needed in our country. Focus on skilling again becomes very, very important, so that we can eliminate the social divides which can very quickly come up if technology is not used in the right way.

And if you think about the potential of using AI—be it in healthcare or education or financial equity—I think there's massive opportunity for us to use that in the right way. But it'll always also depend on how we use it in a responsible, in an ethical way, and how we train those models with the right set of data so that the bias that we sometimes see in societies around us does not result in the solutions that we provide.

So where does all of this leave us? Clearly, India's path forward is to become a product nation—that's my call to action—one that marries the scale and the discipline of our services legacy with the boldness of new-age IP creation, with the boldness of creating new digital products, new platforms. And I don't think this is a dream of any distant future or anything like that. This is something that is a responsibility for us—to do it in the right way at this point in time.

Because if you think about it, if India can shape the digital products of the future, we cannot just be the powerhouse of the economy—we can totally redefine how that economy will look.

Now, I want to leave you with one final thought, because if you just look at some of the greatest transformations that we have seen in the world—doesn't matter where it is—one thing is constant: it's the boldness with which you can drive that transformation. The courage that is needed to look beyond the successes of the past and to really reimagine the future that we are trying to build. And I truly believe that all of us here in India have that courage—the courage to innovate, the courage to take those risks, the courage to own our creations, and also to build a growth story that is truly inclusive, that is truly sustainable, and that is truly bold.

With that, thank you so much once again, and I wish you once again a great rest of the evening. And grateful once again to you, Mr. Kochhar. Thank you.

Participants at the Social Contract of Business & Governance