COVID-19 on IT Industry

Hello guys and welcome to the first podcast and today the first guest of my podcast is none another than my own father. He is a leader in IT industry and he is the vice president of company. So in this podcast I am not going to take his interview as my father but I am going to take his interview as an IT industry leader. So welcome to my show father. So my first question to you is as the coronavirus pandemic has affected whole world in very large numbers and so every world now we can say that whole world is in lockdown. So how does lockdown and this coronavirus pandemic has affected the IT industry and specifically their sale and productivity? Yeah see the novel coronavirus is changing the daily habits of millions of people globally including where and how they work and many businesses have made a choice to work from home. The ideas protect the health and help the control displayed of the virus. IT industry is blessed that many IT employees have happy to work from home. Many employees are on a daily basis working from home and that has really helped in this particular situation. As far as the problem that IT industry is facing while working from home is the IT infrastructure support during this particular environment because we have a huge servers and use firewall and everything installed at our office which needs routine maintenance, we need a routine checkup. So that needs to be done even during this situation and IT helps support has to go to the office once in a day even if the coronavirus has given the lockdown kind of situation they have to visit once in a day to the office and make sure that everything every IT infrastructure is working and they are in place. The other problem which IT industry is facing the security firewall or maybe cyber security kind of things because we are accessing the sensitive data of the client while working from home. So this particular situation needs to be cyberly secured the environment and everybody is not using kind of virus protection so the firewall kind of things when they are working from home. So that really needs an extra care to make sure that when we access the client data, when we access the client process it needs to be secured and there is no leakage or linkages. So these two things we are facing when we are working from home but fortunately our IT people are innovative they are finding the ways how to address these challenges and we are able to work from home and giving the same productivity and same support to our clients. So the maintenance problems let us keep this aside because in every industry, everywhere they need some or the other kind of infrastructural management where they can scale their productivity or at least maintain their productivity. But now talking about sales, so how this lockdown is affecting the sales of IT companies because a whole global business is affected. Around two trillion dollars have gone down due to this coronavirus pandemic. So how does the sale, what is the recent situation of the sale specifically? Yeah, it is a good question. As far as the sales is concerned, in fact every country is in a lockdown situation, every industry is in a lockdown situation. So it has really affected the sales particularly as far as the new sales or the new prospect or the new cutting, the new client is concerned. It is almost impossible to get the new clients in this particular situation because all the response down or rather there is no response for any new prospects or any new clients when we access them. So new clients or new sales is literally reduced or rather become a zero in this particular situation. The only way to survive for any IT companies is to look at the existing client, to serve them better, to provide them the timely support to maintain the same productivity, to maintain the same quality as if that we are working in from a office and increase their business or maybe grow their business. That is the only way to survive in this particular critical situation. So yes, sales is very much affected. Only thing is that we can only grow the existing customers and survive or maybe compensate the loss of new sales. So now when this coronavirus pandemic will go down and the lockdowns will be shifted up, then what are the new prospects of IT industry? Because nowadays a technology is going through towards AI artificial intelligence. So how IT industry is looking at artificial intelligence and also after when this lockdowns will be lifted up, what are the future goals of IT industry and what are the immediate next steps for the IT industry? Yes, once the situation will be improved, once this lockdown and everything will go away, once it is clear of the coronavirus will be over. The immediate step for the IT industries is to look for the ultimate use of AI in the industry because the healthcare industry is the majorly affected de-virus. I cannot say it is affected but yeah, in fact they are in the most demand in today's situations. So every IT industry or every innovators will work hard towards using the AI into healthcare and make sure that if this kind of pendulum comes again, how to face this kind of situation in such a way that there won't be any lockdown or even if there is a lockdown it will be minimized and how to protect against the coronavirus or such kind of future viruses. That would be the first step or rather the most demanding step for all every IT industries or every healthcare industries and to make sure that they use IT and AI in the healthcare to provide such kind of protection to each and every citizen of the country. Okay, so now you have said that the improvement of IT industry and demand of IT industry and the AI is going to go very high after the lockdowns and the pandemic situation will go normal. So when demand of IT and AI will go up, what do you, the main thing is employees. So what will you see in an employee or what will, what quality do you need in an employee? Because as demand will go, the employment will increase and nowadays in engineering field, the employment is the most important thing with where all engineers are looking for. So when we talk about specifically the IT industry, how do you think that the employees are going to make through the unemployment stage or how IT industry will help the employees to reduce the unemployment? Yes, IT industry is in two days arena as far as India is concerned, I think it is the most foreign exchange earning industry in India and also it is one of the most employment generating industry in India. As in when these coronavirus situation will be over, naturally the demand of IT sex like anything and it will definitely generate more and more employment because now everything is going towards the automation, everything is going towards the AI machine learning, IOT. So naturally the demand of the IT employees or demand of the IT expert would increase like anything and that demand will definitely, the supply will definitely come from the institutes, engineering institutes and the other institutes from where we will get the students and will support our demand. So naturally we need more and more experts from the IT industry and all the institutes, all the Agigasal Institute should make in mind that when we need IT experts, they should produce the IT experts in such a way that they can be productable from the day one or maybe at least within a six months. So that is what the IT industry would be needing. Now as you have taken many interviews, so according to the present educational institutes which are producing the students, what do you think that a student at least needs to have to make through the employment or the interview procedure and they can make their food strong in the IT industry? Yeah so during the interview process what we have learnt that the students, they have got a good box but when they actually perform in the interview, the first thing is the lake of good communication and the lake of confidence that is what we always see. Because due to this lake of confidence and lake of communication skills, they really lose a good job because they are not able to express what they know. So the first thing every student should have is the confidence and the communication skills. That is a must in order to express your knowledge, in order to express your abilities and expertise in front of the interviews, not only in front of the interviews but once you are selected, then also this is must because you are directly communicating with your directly communicating with your higher ups. So in that case the retin and viral communication is must. The other thing which we have seen that the students have the theoretical knowledge but when they need to put this knowledge into practice, into a life projects, they fail miserably or they need a lot of upbringing or grooming. That is a really massive challenge for all IT companies and that is the reason in fact all IT companies would always prefer to have the experience guy rather than the phrase guy. And so they are not much investing in the phrase guy rather they would like to go for the experience guy. So my appeal to all the IT students is that you improve your communication skill, to improve your practical skills, whatever you learn, you try to put into practical and see how it works and how you are able to express your knowledge. So communication skill, confidence and practical knowledge is a must for every students when they want to work in such a demanding such a competitive IT world. And as you have talked about the communication skills and practical knowledge, so you said that IT industries are working, are basically employing the experiment. So will you suggest a graduate or the student who is at his last year of graduation to at least ship in the IT industry and how IT industries are looking for giving the internship to students and their training programs. As such every big industry or even a small IT industry, they have certain budgets for the phrase. So they recruit the phrase that train them on a particular project and then after an year or maybe after six months they put them into the live projects. So that is being done by almost all IT industry. You can say 90% of the IT industries are employing the phrase and they also have the final project or the final semester project for the IT students or the intern. We call them the intern. So that facility is already there. Only thing is that it is up to the IT students of the final year, how to get selected in such inter-sea pour such job fairs so that they can work in a good companies. And from your 20 plus years of experience in the IT industry, what do you think that the major thing which IT companies should work so that the existence or survival of IT companies can go beyond a few decades? The only way to survive is to be the fittest. It is a common law that fittest would survive. And in terms of the IT companies fittest means to equip the latest technology to have the knowledge of latest technology. So in order to survive or in order to even grow, you need to upgrade your technological advancement, you need to upgrade your technology and you need to know all the upcoming and new technologies and provide the services to your clients into those technologies or you need to know them to migrate from the old technologies to new technologies. So upgrading yourself is the major key or is the major reason of survival. And lastly, how IT industries are looking to the new entrepreneurs or the new startups? Because nowadays startup culture is blooming and it is said that it is going to bloom after the lockdowns are lifted up and after the situation goes normal. The major potential is being seen in the startups. So how IT industries are looking to startups? Because 50% of the new startups are from the IT industry. Because in IT industry, to initiate the startup is comparatively easier than the other industries. You don't need a much in order to start your company in the IT industries. You just have an idea, a couple of laptops and a couple of people and you can start your startup. So that's the reason startup culture is very common in IT industry and IT industry is supporting the startups like anything. We have a lot of infrastructure, we have a lot of other even news to support the startup and even a lot of venture capitalists there in IT industry to support the IT startup. So we have a good culture as far as the startup is concerned. Thank you so much for being the guest in my Ford Podcast and I would like to see you in other podcasts as well. Thank you very much dear.