Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji emphasised on Thursday that technology must be equitable and not concentrated in the hands of a few. He called for disseminating vernacular content online to ensure inclusive spread of technology. He was speaking during a discussion on "From Digital Divide to Digital Dividends" at the India Economic Summit by the World Economic Forum.
Replying to a question on how to make Indians use technology to approve different aspects of their lives, Premji said: "The pace at which technology is being used in India in so many different profound ways is fundamentally changing. I am very hopeful that the pace at which this picks up is a question of time. I am not worried at the pace at which this adoption happens. What I worry about is that it's equitable."
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"One thing we would have think about very strongly is availability of content in local languages. Predominantly, everything that is available today is in English. We shouldn't create another divide through this when we have the chance to address up front," he further added.
Earlier during the discussion, Premji said that the IT services industry has changed dramatically over the last 20 years from being enterprise-focussed to customer-focussed.
"How do large companies go from being enterprise-focussed to being customer-focussed, to be very experience-led, leveraging these new technologies. There is a huge opportunity for these new-age technologies to drive a very strong design-led thinking which is highly customer-centric," Premji said on how the IT industry can help usher the next phase of digital revolution in India.