MindRush 2019: Companies have to be decisive, says CP Gurnani

Science fiction is a thing of past, says C.P. Gurnani, CEO and managing director of Tech Mahindra, at his session on Looking Beyond the Kerb (Future of Organisations post Industrial Revolution 4.0) at the Business Today MindRush 2019 organised at New Delhi's Taj Palace hotel.

"If you notice not many people write science fiction these days. What 'science fiction' writers predict has already happened yesterday," said Gurnani adding that anything that we can imagine will happen. Gurnani shared the example of Reliance Industries' Jamnagar refinery that he had visited about 10 years ago. He said that since then, the capacity of this huge facility has expanded nearly three times but the number of people have gone up by just 1.2 times. "That's a perfect example of Industry 4.0," he said.

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Talking about Tech Mahindra's acquisition of the troubled IT company Satyam in 2009, Gurnani said that while Satyam was a tainted company, he had made a few assumptions about it and its business, and those assumptions eventually paid off. Corporate boardrooms across the world have one thing in common. They have discussions centred on three areas: Am I disruptive or can I be disrupted? Do I have the right talent? Is there any start-up that we can acquire?

"Companies can survive depending upon how agile they are. I urge organisations to be decisive. I believe that the future is in your hands, and you have to be willing to transform. Most individuals need to understand that the change is so fast that if they don't change, it will be difficult for them. We need to realise that the change is forced upon us," Gurnani said.