28th Endowment Lecture of IIT-M & EFSI

On the 11th of November, the Twenty Eighth Endowment Lecture of IIT, Madras & Employers’ Federation of Southern India was held at DoMS, IIT-M. President of EFSI Mr.A. Venkatramani provided the welcome address by briefing on the Origin of EFSI, its interaction with the government on matters of labour legislation. Professor K. Ramamurthy, Dean (Academic Courses) gave the presidential address and introduced to us the Chief Guest of the evening Mr. Raju Venkatraman, Founder & CEO, Medall Healthcare Services Pvt Ltd.

Mr. Raju enlightened us with a lecture on 'The Future of Services Industry in India'. He started it off on a humorous note that he was no astrologer to predict without facts! He set his agenda for the evening to throwing the paradigms in the future service industry& presenting us with collected benchmark data. His initial focus was on the contribution of the service Industry towards the GDP of the nation. He focused on GDP at Purchase Power Parity (where India stays 4th in the list)as he regarded that to be a more relevant number than just the GDP. He came up with stats stating that among BRIC nations, India is more agrarian than others and yet 52% of its GDP came through the services sector. He also mentioned about the productivity delta stating that only 24% of India’s workforce contribute to this 52% contribution to GDP.
He remarked that Export oriented services would soon give way to services for and within the country. As he talked about the service sector boom, he gave the Telecom sector flourish as an elucidation to the case in point. With respect to people’s perception of the industry he said that if a service is simple, accessible and can make people perceive its value, they will definitely embrace the service.

Much of his speech centred on the fact that India is poised for growth in the service sector and it needs a clear technological, demographic & regulatory framework to handle it efficiently. He provided the inspiring air by mentioning that the Service industry growth would be directly proportional to the ambitions of the younger generation. He stressed upon the fact that Technology breakthrough & Innovations are a must for service sector’s future growth.

Coming from an IT/IT-ES industry background, he vouched for the role that  IT/IT-ES could play as a model for other service sector industries. He also asked us to be cautious and not to use Services & IT-ITES interchangeably as IT contributes to only a meagre amount in the services sector! He presented to us some slides indicating the paradigm shifts that services sector industries have undergone over the past century. He ended the presentation with a thought-provoking & engaging video that showed how the definition of ‘WORK’ could see a sea change in the near future! The video suggested that the future of work would be transparent, flat & extremely competitive. In that sense, the session was definitely an eye-opener!

Posted by
DoMS Interface Team