Infosys has done it and so has IBM. Indeed, across the globe a host of multinationals, from Cisco to SAP Labs, have nurtured ideas in intrapreneurship cells that have later grown into products fetching billions of dollars.
Most of these companies realise at some point that they need to grow faster than the expectations of their shareholders and if they believe the core business isn’t likely to throw up strong cash flows, they look elsewhere.
But can these incubators give the IT world the innovation it’s looking for? Will the $118-billion Indian IT industry be able to reinvent itself through such innovation? Could we soon see another Linux that helped IBM’s Emerging Business Organisation generate billions of dollars in revenues? Can Indian start-ups disrupt the Silicon Valley model and breed new software products? Will there be another Adwords or an iTunes soon?
These could be some of the questions that a clutch of the country’s top tech minds — Gopichand Katragadda, group chief technology officer, Tata Sons, Rajan Anandan, managing director, Google India, Dilipkumar Khandelwal, managing director, SAP Labs India and Ravi Gururaj, serial entrepreneur and the chairman of Nasscom’s Product Council — will try and answer on Friday evening at the Express IT Awards in Bangalore.
And gathered in the city’s software hub to listen to the experts and to celebrate excellence and innovation in technology will be the country’s tech fraternity. They will raise a toast to the winners of the second Express IT Awards — instituted by the Indian Express Group — who have been chosen by an eminent jury.
Winners will be recognised for their talent across seven categories. In addition, Subramanian Ramadorai, former vice-chairman, TCS, will be honoured for his outstanding contribution to the IT industry with the Lifetime Achievement award.
This time around, the Newsmaker of the Year is Francisco D’Souza, CEO of Cognizant, who takes home the award for steering his firm in a landmark year that saw it scale newer heights with a $2.7-billion acquisition.
The awards, across seven categories, showcase the most innovative and scalable IT solutions across the most relevant fields namely, IT Innovation, IT Biz, Mobility Solutions, Analytics Solutions, Cloud Solutions, IT Entrepreneurship and Green Technologies. Guest of honour R Roshan Baig, Karnataka’s minister for information and infrastructure development, will give away the awards.
The jury comprised Som Mittal, former Nasscom president, TV Mohandas Pai, chairman, Manipal Global Education, Google India’s Anandan, and S Sadagopan, director, IIIT, Bengaluru. PwC provided knowledge support for the awards.