India should embrace and push new-age opportunities, says panel

A panel discussion on the Indian economy at the AIMA's 50th National Management Convention on Vibrant India: Reimagining the Indian Dream, highlighted that the lack of skill sets remains a challenge for the country.

Speaking on the right skills required for India to become a semiconductor and generative AI hub, Omkar Goswami, Founder and Chairperson, CERG Advisory Pvt Ltd stated, “One of the reasons why companies have been slow to invest in the semiconductor scheme is because right now you don't have an ecosystem. You don't have people with skill sets. You don't have the skill sets to start a large semiconductor facility.”

He added that the same can be overcome by education, but right now India will have to import people with the right skills.

However, Bimlendra Jha, Managing Director, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd, said, “Today, education cannot be on the same basis as it used to be. Today, education is far more democratized. It is available. And AI, to my mind, is not going to be artificial intelligence. That changes our way of educating ourselves, but it is going to be the augmented intelligence.”

Sharing his lessons about India’s semiconductor journey, R. R. Mukundan, Managing Director & CEO, Tata Chemicals Ltd, said, “One of the biggest learnings for me is that we did all the right things but didn't follow through to scale them up.” Citing the example of the Semi-conductor Laboratory, Mohali, he added, “India was already on par with generation two of electronics. But when the Semiconductor Laboratory in Mohali was burned down in fire, Some of it we didn’t rebuild again, and we lost track of it in the policy. It's not that we have not thought ahead of the curve. It's about forgetting what we've created an ambition for not following it through.”

Citing how India can lead the opportunity in the hydrogen economy, Mukundan stated that if one doesn’t follow through on the promising opportunities, someone else will be supplying them. He added, “In hydrogen, the top three countries in the world in competitiveness today are measured by most research institutions, not practical. It's Saudi Arabia, Australia, and India. If we don't get our act together and we don't pay scale, I don't think Saudis and Australians are waiting for us to give us time. They're also building, so we need to build at scale.”

 The panellists believed that India should not let go of these opportunities. So really, these are once-in-a decade opportunities that India should embrace and push.