Interview with Krishnakumar Natarajan, Chair – NASSCOM EMERGE Forum
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To mark the 2nd anniversary of EMERGE newsletter, the editorial team interviewed N Krishnakumar (KK), CEO & MD, MindTree Ltd and Chairman, NASSCOM’s EMERGE forum. In a freewheeling conversation, he looks back at how the “EMERGE” brand was built, talks about some of the important initiatives launched and also articulates his ideas on the road ahead.
How it all began:
The idea of creating a brand around Emerging companies came as a result of a survey done among such companies on behalf of NASSCOM a little over two years ago. The main purpose of the survey was to elicit the voice of the emerging companies and understand their expectations better. At the time, there were a whole host of expectations that companies articulated; the essence was that they wanted NASSCOM to put in place some programs and initiatives that would help the segment specifically. NASSCOM’s team decided to create a brand “EMERGE” around which to launch a series of initiatives.
The work so far
During our conversations with member companies, one of the points that came up repeatedly was the benefit of learning from those who had done it before. Thus was born the Mentorship program, where a set of companies across locations is mentored for a period of 6 months by a group of mentors who are co located, and bring in expertise in different functional areas. In addition, visibility of emerging companies is enhanced through initiatives such as the Top 15 Exciting Emerging Companies to Work for, Innovative Emerging companies, EMERGE 50, etc which have been launched. Also, delegations to different countries exclusively for emerging companies were started. Till date we have had 12 groups visiting 6 countries.
In addition, to make members more aware of the initiatives and how they could take advantage of them, the EMERGE newsletter was also started. And that was not all. An online EMERGE Community was created, which, I am delighted to say, has 1750 members as of today. This has become a near real-time forum for members to discuss various issues relevant to them, and also helped a fragmented and dispersed audience collaborate seamlessly. Buoyed by the success of this initiative, NASSCOM now has twice a year “EMERGEOUT” Conclave in various locations. Two editions of this Conclave have been successfully held, once in Delhi and more recently in Chennai. All of this has truly led to the strengthening of the EMERGE brand, and more importantly, created opportunities for members to stay in touch constantly and interact with industry leaders, influencers and experts on an on-going basis. This is leading to strengthening the vision of NASSCOM that to continue to be globally successful the Indian Industry needs to have an ecosystem of large and globally scalable emerging companies.
What is next?
Now that the foundation has been laid, I think we need to move ahead and look at the next set of strategic interventions- there are a couple of ideas that come to mind. One, in order to get around the size “disadvantage” can emerging companies that have complementary skills and offerings team up to approach the market jointly ? As an idea this is pragmatic, but I understand that it requires a lot of effort to implement on the ground. But, if done successfully, this can be a great way to expand market access and reach. So, I am very interested to see how to take this forward.
The second big idea is to create a breed of emerging companies that are ambitious and want to take leadership positions in their respective areas, on a global scale. What do I mean by this? The time has come for companies to understand that size alone is not the only measure of success. It is possible to make your mark even when you are a smaller company, if you have a great solution, or can solve a customer problem uniquely. This in a sense means our member companies need to be more confident; they need greater self belief and they need to think possibilities, and perhaps adopt some innovative method, like for example, the idea I suggested earlier (collaborative selling).
My expectations from emerging companies
Last, emerging companies also need to start thinking about how they can give back to the industry. As a start, companies that have been mentored could look at how they could transfer their learning to other members. Can we start dreaming of an Industry where we are there for each other and build on each others success.
Interview by Sudha Kumar, Prayag Consulting for the NASSCOM EMERGE Newsletter
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The idea I liked most is learning from mentors. Emerge is a wonderful community and is going to be a big thing in future.