Author: yotta@manage

Opinion: How govt’s focused approach is making ‘Cloud Vision for India 2022’ a reality

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Cloud is not just a lever for controlling costs, but also a huge catalyst or transformational agent for being the foundation for enabling quick adoption of emerging technologies such as AI and Blockchain.

India is an aspiring and incomparable nation when it comes to digital ambitions and scale. Landmark projects like Aadhaar, the Aarogya Setu app, or DigiLocker, are just some of the examples of India’s digital prowess.

Given the scale at which government departments operate, cloud is the perfect platform for accelerating e-governance initiatives. From a policy point of view, already a series of initiatives have been taken to ensure that India has a strategic advantage concerning the cloud.

The Government of India has announced GI Cloud (now called ‘Meghraj’) – an initiative to ensure optimum usage of IT spending by the government while simultaneously giving the impetus to improve the adoption of e-governance initiatives using the cloud. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has created a reference architecture to guide government departments to build their cloud deployment architecture with recommended components and activities.

The National Digital Communications Policy 2018 envisions establishing India as a global hub for cloud computing, content hosting and delivery, and data communication systems and services. It aims to do this by enabling regulatory frameworks and incentives for promoting the establishment of international data centers, content delivery networks, and interconnect exchanges in India.

Similarly, the National Data Center Policy, which aims at making India a Global Data Center hub, promotes investment in the sector, propels digital economy growth, and enables provisioning of trusted hosting infrastructure to fulfil the growing demand.

The potential of the cloud

In India, cloud computing has ensured the success of national initiatives and schemes such as Swachh Bharat Mission, e-Hospital, National Scholarship, My-Gov and e-Transport. One of India’s most landmark initiatives, the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) uses a multi-cloud architecture to ensure scalability. Today, the GeM serves over 50,000 buyer organisations and has a listing of over 19 lakh products and more than 80,000 services.

NIC’s SaaS-based service, S3WaaS, has empowered district administrators to create, configure and deploy scalable and accessible websites without much effort and technical knowledge. Another successful example is DigiLocker, a cloud-based platform for the issuance, sharing, and verification of critical lifelong documents or certificates. With more than 57.13 million users and 4.27 billion issued documents, DigiLocker has proved to be one of the biggest success stories of cloud in the government.

Last year, understanding the critical importance of the cloud in providing the foundation for enabling the growth of emerging technologies such as AI, India’s national policy think-tank organisation, NITI Aayog, suggested the creation of an AI-based cloud computing platform called AIRAWAT (AI Research, Analytics and Knowledge Assimilation).

Similarly, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), announced last year that it had gone fully digital with the launch of a unique cloud-based and AI-powered big analytics platform. All project documents and correspondences related to NHAI will be stored in a cloud-based data lake, which is linked with GIS tagging and a unique project ID, so that project data can be retrieved easily from any location.

The Indian Railways has given the responsibility of deploying open source Hospital Management Information System (HMIS), an integrated clinical information system, for its 125 health facilities and 650 polyclinics across the country for improved hospital administration and patient healthcare, using a cloud platform.

Emerging use cases of cloud

With the cost of providing compute and storage capabilities coming down drastically, it makes much more sense for government departments to leverage the cloud. The other big reason is the quick pace of adoption for emerging technologies such as AI, ML, Big Data Analytics, or IoT.

In India, many states have proactively taken several pro-cloud initiatives. For example, the Government of Maharashtra in 2018, became the first state to unveil a public cloud policy. Looking at the benefits of cloud-based storage, the Government of Maharashtra mandated its departments to shift their data storage requirements to the cloud.

Similarly, in October 2020, the Government of Telangana announced that it was making it mandatory for all its departments to deploy their existingor new applications on the cloud except for those applications that contained sensitive or confidential data.

Another classic example is Smart Cities, wherein various state governments are leveraging cloud and other digital technologies to provide next generation services to citizens. Madhya Pradesh was the first state to launch India’s first cloud-based Common Integrated Data Centre, Disaster Recovery Centre and Integrated Control and Command Centre (ICCC).

The ICCC is enabling the Madhya Pradesh state administration to monitor and administer multiple city civic utilities and citizen services across seven cities in the state through a central cloud. Now, other states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telanagana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh are following the suit.

These examples highlight why the move to the cloud is now essential or critical for government departments. Due to the capacity constraints, there are instances where the state data center has faced challenges in scaling up and meeting the requirements in a time-bound manner, which has led to poor application downtime and poor user experience.

Key trends that government departments should look out for

Today, the Covid-19 pandemic has made it imperative for accelerating digital delivery of public services. This has put immense pressure on government departments to quickly roll out new platforms or initiatives. With support for emerging technologies such as AI, ML or Blockchain, the cloud is the perfect platform for testing out new innovations.

The cloud is also a proven platform for automation – a critical need in government departments today, as they grapple with challenges related to skilled manpower and scaling up to meet public demand for services. For example, AI-powered chatbots can answer common queries easily, while RPA can be used to automate routine tasks.

The pandemic has also made remote working a reality now. This is applicable to the government sector too, as it also needs to give government employees the same flexibility as given to employees from the private sector. The cloud is perfect for giving employees secure and reliable access to government applications and data.

The cloud allows government departments to acquire resources based on actual requirements, with the capability to increase or decrease computing resources as per demand. Globally, and in India too, government departments are increasingly feeling challenged in containing costs and providing the required infrastructure.

For instance, the state-owned Bank of Baroda has become the first public sector bank to consider Work from Home policy for a section of its employees. For Bank of Baroda to leverage staff resources better, the cloud will prove to be an excellent platform for creating flexibility without significant corresponding investments.

This flexibility opens up several possibilities – one can think of organisations such as Income Tax which receives huge load for filing returns in the last few days of the deadline given by the government. There are many such examples of departments across the government, which receive seasonal demand spikes. Another notable example is the dedicated web portal called Co-WIN (COVID -19 Vaccine Intelligence Network) which has been launched recently.

This is a complete cloud-based IT solution for planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the Covid-19 vaccination program in the country. While we keep hearing about technical glitches in the Co-WIN platform or the portal getting crashed (when millions of people recently rushed to register for the COVID vaccination), one cannot deny the fact that without the cloud, an initiative of this scale and size would be unimaginable.

As the above examples show, the cloud today is not just a lever for controlling costs, but also a huge catalyst or transformational agent for being the foundation for enabling quick adoption of emerging technologies such as AI and Blockchain. Today, the question for government departments is not why you should adopt the cloud, but when and how fast you can use the cloud to your advantage.

How cloud provides a robust foundation for emerging technologies like AI & ML?

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As businesses thrive in today’s highly competitive and continuously evolving marketplace, innovation has become paramount for organisations across the spectrum of industry verticals. Changing customer expectations and the need for delivering top-notch customer experiences mandates organisations to reimagine business processes at every touch point.

Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has significantly transformed customer engagement, with digital platforms at the core. This omni-channel digital environment will continue to remain a crucial part of the post pandemic world. As customer interactions move to digital, a vast data pool is created from multiple touch points and at various stages of the customer journey. Future-ready organisations have realised the importance of this data to make informed decisions and enhance customer experience with personalised offerings.

In the backdrop of this disruption, organisations are increasingly looking at leveraging emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Data Analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) to take customer experience to the next level. For instance, application of AI-driven analytics is enabling organisations to derive meaningful insights from the data collected through customer engagements on digital platforms, thereby allowing them to better understand customer needs and provide tailored offerings.

Let’s understand how the focus on emerging technologies is impacting cloud adoption.

Cloud at Core – Backbone to Emerging Technologies

It’s important to note that innovating with emerging technologies requires an agile, flexible and highly scalable IT infrastructure, especially with the amount of data that is generated. Legacy systems and traditional on-premise IT infrastructure lack scalability, agility and compute power to test and deploy modern use cases around emerging technologies. However, cloud comes to the rescue with its agility, hyper scalability, and compute power, thereby providing a robust infrastructure backbone and enabling IT teams to scale up and scale down as needed, run business applications, and ensure quick roll out.

Future-ready organisations, as part of their digital transformation journeys, have embraced cloud as the core of their IT initiatives. According to a Gartner report by 2024, more than 45% of IT spending on system infrastructure, infrastructure software, application software and business process outsourcing will shift from traditional solutions to cloud.

The report further acknowledges that emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, edge computing and advanced data analytics are seen as the next wave of disruption; and cloud serves as the foundation for these technologies’ use cases for businesses.

These trends clearly indicate that cloud delivers an ideal environment for business applications based on emerging technologies and how a cloud-first strategy is the first step towards a digital-centric business model.

Let’s look at how these emerging technologies will shape cloud adoption trends.

  • Rise of Intelligent Businesses: The key to becoming an intelligent enterprise is data. Valuable insights derived from this data results into business intelligence and one of the biggest distinguishers of any organisation. In this direction, organisations need to run cutting-edge AI-ML based analytics over their data pool and garner insights. This is possible only on cloud as it provides immense storage and compute capabilities as and when required. Cloud enables end-to-end data analytics, from storage of data to generating actionable insights.
  • Automated Environment: The need for automating business processes has been more prevalent in the last one year. As remote working became the new reality, organisations were pushed to adopt automation, which would ensure seamless operations even in times of disruption. This also opens doors to enhanced workforce productivity as automation of time-consuming manual processes and allows them to focus on more important areas and innovation. Cloud’s ability to automate itself and scale up and scale down depending on the workloads significantly reduces the burden on IT teams.
  • Reimagining Cloud with AI: This novel technology is increasingly finding its place in digital transformation roadmaps of organisations. In order to fully enable an AI-driven business, it’s crucial that organisations make AI accessible to its entire workforce. Availability of AI toolsets on cloud allows employees to learn from the insights and make customer engagements more meaningful. Hence, a cloud infrastructure which is powered by AI will be among the primary considerations for organisations.
  • Cloud Enabled Hyper Connectivity: With developments in the areas of autonomous vehicles, smart city infrastructure, 5G and IoT enabled intelligent Edge, the realms of cloud are expanding beyond mere availability. Cloud is the platform that makes reality of a hyper-connected world possible as it forms the foundation where different technologies connect and talk to each other. Smart cities’ integrated command and control centres leverage the power of cloud enabled dashboards to monitor and analyse data coming from a vast network of IoT devices deployed across cities. As 5G becomes a reality, there will be an influx of new datasets which will reside and get analysed on cloud. Similarly, as more and more people get connected on IoT devices, organisations will have to prepare their cloud infrastructure with the greater computation capabilities.

Innovations Bringing Cloud at the Center

In a post-Pandemic world, organisations will continue to innovate as part of their digital transformation roadmap and emerging technologies will continue to define their efforts. In line with this direction, IT leaders will focus on building a cloud infrastructure that equips their business with the tools and capabilities needed to bring the best out of technologies such as AI, ML, 5G, data analytics, and IoT among others.

Another Gartner predicts that the rapid pace of innovation in cloud infrastructure and platform services (CIPS) makes cloud the de facto platform for new digital services and existing traditional workloads alike, which is why 40% or all enterprise workloads will be deployed in CIPS by 2023, up from only 20% in 2020.

As observed above, with more and more workloads moving to cloud platforms and everything transitioning to as-a-service, cloud adoption will be redefined by its capabilities to perform intelligent tasks and serve as a one-stop platform where all technologies connect with each other seamlessly and enable a truly modern digital experience for all stakeholders.

Connectivity is key to enabling digital transformation

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Today, business and IT leaders increasingly focus on leveraging digital technologies and innovation to keep their organisations productive, efficient, relevant, and, most importantly, forward-looking. The need to transform how they do business has led to the proliferation of the technologies like cloud, AI/ML, Big Data Analytics, and IoT; and the current unprecedented situation has made all these technologies mainstream, as enterprises are looking to take advantage of all the digital innovation happening around them.

For organisations to remain competitive, they must embrace digital transformation and the requisite infrastructure needed to achieve it. As business leaders are putting digital transformation at the center of their growth and profitable strategies, the digital infrastructure’s role that manages it has become more important than ever.

This is where flexible, resilient, scalable, secure, and high-speed connectivity that is easy to manage and deploy will not only bind all the pieces of the digital transformation together but also act as the core of business continuity. And the current distributed workforce scenario has further amplified the need for every organisation to be supported by a resilient connectivity solution.

The backbone of digital infrastructure

We all would agree that data is the lifeblood of digital transformation, and connectivity enables this lifeblood to flow. This means data flows through the network infrastructure multiple times, whether it is created in the cloud, on-premise data center, IoT devices, or a remote location. Suppose any organisation is looking to leverage the value and derive insights from this data. In that case, the underlying network must provide the appropriate levels of protection, resiliency, security, speed, and compliance for the data.

And this is the reason why managed service providers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and IT services firms are looking to bolster their connectivity resilience so that they can serve and support their customers in the best possible way. Just like cloud computing introduced utility service models for processing power, intelligent network and connectivity have brought flexibility and agility to the way organisations get connected to the world.

As far as data centers are concerned, they are seen as a connectivity hub offering their colocation customers tremendous possibilities while building their networks. The success or failure of any colocation data center largely depends upon the strength of its interconnect options. While enterprises look for cost savings pertaining to power or cooling or benefits associated with data security when they co-locate servers in a data center, the right connectivity services can act as key enabler in transforming their business.

Enabling business agility

In the current scenario, enterprises are opting for carrier-neutral data centers that provide the best option for networking data and help build customisable network solutions. These data centers offer customers access to multiple Cloud Service Providers and ISPs, giving flexibility they need to scale and adapt to changing business needs.

Apart from enabling business agility, carrier-neutral data centres’ network services also address the data connectivity needs of enterprises of all sizes. These services ride on a high capacity, high performance, and neutral network, which seamlessly integrated with a national and global network powered by multiple ISPs, Internet Exchanges, Content Distribution Networks (CDNs), carriers, and other network service providers so that organisations can build their communication networks to deliver the optimum end-user experience.​

Interconnectivity & low latency is key

Building resilience into the networks any enterprise depends on is more important than ever and that’s why carrier-neutral data centers ensure their connectivity solutions does not fail and, at the same time, help in orchestrating the critical interconnectivity any business requires.

The focus of most of the data center service providers is always on supporting customers to ensure their business is strengthened by secure, resilient infrastructure and fast, flexible connectivity, enabling them to bring their data, applications, and customers closer. In this endeavour, the leading service providers are trying to create a data center interconnect network on a dark fibre to help customers hosted on multiple data centers. This, in turn, will help such customers opt for low latency network.

When we talk about data center connection, everything boils down to speed and performance. In their quest to offer all the advantages to the customers, data center service providers must ensure that the connection is not getting hampered by latency. This is where cross-connections prove beneficial, wherein cross-connect cabling that shares bandwidth between Internet Service Provider and server reduces the number of hops between carriers. By avoiding all other network switches, no extra latency is added, which provides businesses with fastest connectivity possible.

The continued reliance on connectivity 

Technological innovations are driving a new paradigm for enterprises and coaxing them to embrace digital transformation. In such an environment, business success is largely dependent upon ensuring a resilient network connectivity.

Most importantly, business leaders must ensure their digital strategy delivers the required RoI, and at the same time, innovation outcomes allow them to disrupt. All these can be achieved by having a resilient interconnectivity strategy. The new normal is that organisations must achieve always-on, always-available secure connectivity across enterprise applications, data, and systems if they strive to compete in today’s dynamic business environment.

From the data center perspective, organisations must go with a colocation provider that offers high levels of data center connectivity. While evaluating data center facilities, enterprises should also assess the interconnect and infrastructure capabilities to ensure they receive the right connectivity solutions needed to grow their businesses and better serve their customers.

Source – https://etinsights.et-edge.com/connectivity-is-key-to-enabling-digital-transformation/

Thriving in the new normal with everything-as-a-service

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Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) encompasses Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

The current pandemic has accelerated the pace or adoption of digitalisation in our professional or personal lives. As more and more organisations are embracing digital-first strategy, they continue to see the benefits in terms of business agility, eliminating redundancy, and driving efficiency. Besides, they are increasingly investing in new technologies to churn out business intelligence, build new business models, and create business value.

This trend of digitisation, automation, and the connected world is a double-edged sword for enterprises of all sizes. On one side, it is opening a big market for the businesses to reach out to the customers spread across the world; on the other side; they are creating huge competition for themselves.

With this global landscape in front of organisations, in terms of opportunities as well as threats, it becomes imperative for them to be innovative and offer the best quality product and services to the market. The success or failure of businesses, however, largely depends upon their ability to scale up or scale down in the shortest possible time as well as provide the best of the customer experience.

Rise of ‘As-a-Service’ model

How do organisations manage this dilemma of scaling up or down and not making long-term CAPEX and OPEX commitment?The straightforward response to this is that enterprises should look at adopting ‘As-a-Service’ model. Besides digitisation, consuming everything on ‘As-a-Service’model will ensure that they are scaling up or down faster and maintaining a profitable, cost-efficient business house. This model will also help them deliver new and innovative services and seamless customer experiences.

Cloud is one such phenomenon, where service providers are taking a risk on their customers behalf, invest millions of dollars to create the infrastructure, and convert that infrastructure into services. Enterprises need to put their applications on to the cloud and consume whatever suits them. In this model, being termed as ‘Everything-as-a-Service’ or XaaS, services rendered and delivered completely reside on the cloud with virtual access to almost everything.

‘Everything-as-a-Service’ encompasses Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which simplifies the deployment and integration of cloud services. With more and more services are being delivered on the cloud, providing virtual access to everything, and with digital technologies like AI/ML and IoT playing a critical role in building these services, ‘Everything-as-a-Service’ will gradually become a necessity for a truly digital-native enterprise.

The industry is witness to the adoption of SaaS technologies that replaced on-premises applications to an extent. However, big or small enterprises are still stuck with legacy technologies and are piling on more without thinking about how that will affect the fast-changing business models. Looking at how many micro-service applications are yet being developed in-house and enterprises’ struggle to think beyond their legacy infrastructure, cloud vendors are approaching such organisations (having captive data centers) with a promise of delivering everything on ‘As-a-Service’ model.

A true differentiator for enterprises

Another trend being witnessed in the market, where the best of the OEMs, ISVs, SMEs, and SOHOs, are working in the advanced technology space and coming up with the best tech products and innovative services. The infrastructure providers partner with these companies while adopting their technology, integrating it with their infrastructure, and orchestrating and delivering all these to the customers’ large segment on ‘As-a-Service’ model. This kind of partnership is bound to help businesses focus on their core expertise and handle their IT needs cost-effectively, as all the services will be available to them at zero CAPEX investment and zero OPEX commitment.

According to research reports from IMARC, the global XaaS market is projected to reach $344.3 billion by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 24 percent during 2019-2024. The increasing adoption of cloud-based monitoring, coupled with the growing need for scalable storage services, represents one of the key factors strengthening the growth of the global XaaS market.

The report further suggests that organisations worldwide are currently undergoing a digital transformation, which has resulted in the robust growth of corporate data. Cloud-based solutions offer affordable and efficient options for data storage, which is further contributing to the market growth. In line with this, the reducing cost of subscriptions with improved bandwidth and connectivity is also anticipated to bolster the market growth.

Enterprises are seeing XaaS as a game-changing business model, as it is helping them with a broader user base, creating and delivering more customer-focused solutions, exploring new markets, and cross-selling products and services

Hence, one cannot deny the fact that ‘Everything-as-a-Service’ has the potential to transform the landscape across industries, making them more efficient and optimal in resources utilisation. With the tangible benefits of XaaS observed by industry experts, it is gradually being adapted to create new business models and scale existing models through innovation.

XaaS has become a primary driver in technology initiatives undertaken by enterprises. The rapid evolution and adoption of the cloud have led to the fast acceptance of the XaaS model.

The future belongs to XaaS

While the world has turned upside down over the past one year, the COVID imposed digitisation in our professional and personal lives helped everyone stay afloat. During this critical period, business organisations truly realised the value of the XaaS model among other digital technologies, as the adoption of it helped them sail through the disruptions and, at the same time, maintain business continuity.

When we look at the growing use cases of cloud, AI, ML, and IoT or citizen privacy concerns which will also make data to be locally stored in the domestic data centers– all these trends indicate that India will need a big dose of infrastructure in terms of data centers, cloud, and supporting services and everything must be made available on ‘As-a-Service’ model.

Source : https://www.dqindia.com/thriving-new-normal-everything-service/

Celebrating Women Leaders of India Inc.

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On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2021, Yotta is proud to celebrate women power, by putting the spotlight on exceptional women who have made a mark for themselves, either as a Business or IT Leader.

Recognizing their effort of excelling in their chosen fields, converting every obstacle into opportunities, and assuming leadership roles in their respective organizations, we are delighted to feature some of the leading Women Leaders of India Inc. who chose to follow their passion and dreams and today, they have truly become an inspiration and mentors for many aspiring women professionals.

As these women leaders set examples before the society and the world at large, let’s get to know more about their growth journey.

Aneesha Pant

“I don’t feel anyone else can influence your growth. It is up to us to make a mark for ourselves and not expect the society or anyone else to give you any special privileges. Only skillset, performance, and attitude should be the benchmark for hiring and not gender or diversity.”

Aneesha Pant
CTO, YES Securities

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Annie Mathew

“I do not believe women shy away from any challenge, let alone that of managing technology. With so many calls on their time, prioritising is logical and unfortunately, technology operations tend to be very demanding across a 24×7 cycle.”

Annie Mathew
CIO, Mother Dairy

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Binita Prasad

“While a female leader has to face a lot of challenges, there are numerous ways to overcome them. We need to focus on finding ways to eliminate obstacles rather than wasting time on reactions”

Binita Prasad
Head – IT, Sany Heavy Industry India Pvt. Ltd.

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Deena Mehta

“Culture of inclusiveness and diversity comes from a common goal. And every obstacle has an opportunity hidden in it. If you can overcome the obstacle by providing an acceptable solution that cannot be discarded easily, then your progress is assured.”

Deena Mehta
MD, Asit C. Mehta Investment Intermediates Ltd.

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Glory Nelson

“The secret sauce to success is a blend of passion and dedication. If women are passionate about their work, they can reach to any kind of leadership role.”

Glory Nelson
Chief People & Tech Strategy Officer, Xebia

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Jijy Oommen

“Organisations with greater workplace diversity achieve better results, as women lead with empathy and make better and faster decisions that give companies a serious competitive edge.“

Jijy Oommen
BFSI Technology Leader

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Mehjabeen-Taj-Aalam

“Women need to play to the strength of their own skillset, instead of matching the style of their male counterparts. If you are offered a new role or a challenge, do not underestimate your competencies or get tentative about your eligibility – see learning as part of the job.”

Mehjabeen Taj Aalam
Technology Head – Digital & Customer Engagements, Tata Capital

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Priti-Rathi-Gupta

“It is a well-known and accepted fact that women bring diversity in skills as well as higher Empathy and Ethics Quotient. We, as women, have been gifted with unique qualities that make our lives, workplace, and the world a better place. Go, use these qualities abundantly.”

Priti Rathi Gupta
MD, Anand Rathi Shares and Stock Brokers Ltd., and Founder, LXME

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Ritu Madbhavi

“My success can be attributed to being passionate about what I do, attention to details, and proper planning. Women professionals need to work without expecting special treatment and deliver results like any other colleague. The recognition will be purely on merit basis.”

Ritu Madbhavi,
Group CIO, FCB Ulka Advertising

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“My passion, attention to details, and self-belief helped me succeed” – Ritu Madbhavi

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Q. As a Woman Leader, how challenging has it been for you to succeed in your chosen field?

Surprisingly, I have never experienced gender bias of any kind. The challenges that I have faced are similar to any other male colleague. Given the dynamic nature and the speed at which technology has been evolving, one has to keep abreast with the latest developments in the IT field and identify ways to fit technology to your organisational needs.

Q. How have you been able to convert obstacles in your career path into opportunities?

My success can be attributed to being passionate about what I do, attention to details, and proper planning.

Q. Tech industry is dominated by male leaders. How women can excel, assume leadership roles, and make a mark for themselves?

Again, I would like to emphasise that I personally have never experienced gender bias. I do feel that women workforce has to stop thinking of the women versus men comparison. They just need to work without expecting special treatment and deliver results as any other colleague. The recognition will be purely on merit basis.

Q. How can we create a culture of inclusiveness and diversity at a workplace?

I think there is a need to develop a culture of tolerance and empathy. It is extremely important to make people comfortable at a workplace. As a leader, you should be approachable, and your team members should feel comfortable discuss anything with you.

Q. Any interesting anecdote that you would like to share that has inspired or kept you motivated in your career?

Many moons ago, after my son was born, I was freelancing and doing corporate IT training. Almost 2 decades after that, a CIO walked up to me in a conference and said that he had attended my training sessions, basis on which he was promoted to the position of the CIO. It was a very special moment for me.

Q. Which is one woman personality you admire the most and why? Your message to the aspiring Women Leaders?

Rather than naming a famous personality, I want to give an example of a friend. She lost her father at a young age and was brought up by her mother who did odd catering jobs to make ends meet. Unfortunately, soon after marriage she lost her husband and found herself in a difficult position of supporting her old mother and young daughter.

Leveraging her mother’s contacts and cooking skills, she started a catering business, gave her daughter a good education, and sent her abroad for higher studies. Today, she runs a flourishing business and has a team under her. She is a living example of a woman who beat all odds and succeeded in life.

My message to aspiring women leaders is that please look ahead calmly and plan meticulously. Do not get discouraged by the difficulty that life throws at you. Carve your own path.

“My success can be attributed to being passionate about what I do, attention to details, and proper planning. Women professionals need to work without expecting special treatment and deliver results like any other colleague. The recognition will be purely on merit basis.”

“Women do not shy away from any challenge” – Annie Mathew

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“I do not believe women shy away from any challenge, let alone that of managing technology. With so many calls on their time, prioritising is logical and unfortunately, technology operations tend to be very demanding across a 24×7 cycle.  

For women to succeed in any field, a support ecosystem that recognises their unique challenges is essential. When women work against subconscious conditioning and believe that their careers are as critical, they will co-opt their family and extended network into being their partners in this journey.

Traditionally, women tend to be more self-sacrificing and likely to give up their aspirations for the perceived larger good. Millennials seem to be challenging these mindsets and it is only a matter of time before women step up to claim their right not only to education but also to a fulfilling career.”

“Obstacles do not block the path, they rather create it” – Priti Rathi Gupta

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Q. As a Woman Leader, how challenging has it been for you to succeed in your chosen field?

Financial services is a male-dominated field, where the incumbent service providers and large majority of the users are men. Amongst the businesses, that I set up and led, Commodity Futures, was a “men-only” and largely unorganised sector. This has been by far my biggest challenge, as going to Agricultural Mandis by a woman was quite an exception.

Professional success can be achieved by passion, hard work, building the right skills, and self-belief. And women need a double dose of all these to succeed professionally. Shattering a glass ceiling is not just a phrase.

Q. How have you been able to convert obstacles in your career path into opportunities?

“Obstacles do not block the path; they create the Path”.

I believe all successful businesses are built on the back of a unique problem that they solve. When you see the world through this lens, then obstacles look like opportunities. Being a woman in this domain gave me the advantage of designing products and services for the underserved category. Lxme, a financial platform for women, was born out of the latent need that a woman could only identify.

As a woman, I have also got the opportunity to represent my organisation on various business boards, councils, and associations. It is now a well-known and accepted fact that women bring diversity in skills and higher Empathy and Ethics Quotient.

Q. Tech industry is dominated by male leaders. How women can excel, assume leadership roles, and make a mark for themselves?

Women in Tech is now a rising phenomenon. To further propel it, these are a few steps that should be taken:

  1. Women should mentor and create diversity in the teams they lead.
  2. Gender equality in any field is a conversation that must include men too. The fact that women bring along with the required aptitudes, emotional intelligence even in the products that we build is a marked differentiator. Men in leadership positions should strive for gender diversity to enhance quality as well as productivity.
  3. Women in this field need to constantly work on two areas, Upskilling and Networking. Finding time for these is a must.

Q. How can we create a culture of inclusiveness and diversity at a workplace?

The following has worked for me while building organisations:

The first step is for organisations to recognise the enormous benefits that inclusivity and diversity bring to the business. Innovation, holistic customer service, and product designing are some outcomes that add to the bottom line of the company.

The cultural ethos of any organisation flows from the top and should percolate right to the bottom rung of the organisation. Leadership and executive teams should be created with diversity in gender, religious, race, and age.

Honouring and acknowledging varied employee needs, cultural and religious practices are effective HR tools that any business can incorporate. Respect and equality are non-negotiable protocols.

Building effective and clear communication channels to make the workplace safe and harmonious have always helped.

Building a multi-generational workforce keeps the organisation agile and evolving, particularly in creating diversity. The young are always more idealistic. For the millennials and the Gen Z, equality is a given norm.

Q. Which is one woman personality you admire the most and why? Your message to the aspiring Women Leaders?

Sheryl Sandberg is on top of the list. A woman in Tech, with an innate sense of empathy, who has created a woman-to-woman peer organisation.

To aspiring women leaders, I would like to say that nothing is perfect, but imperfection is an opportunity. We, as women, have been gifted with unique qualities that make our lives, workplace, and world a better place. Go, use these qualities abundantly.

“It is a well-known and accepted fact that women bring diversity in skills as well as higher Empathy and Ethics Quotient. We, as women, have been gifted with unique qualities that make our lives, workplace, and the world a better place. Go, use these qualities abundantly.”

“Our success lies in how we deal with any situation” – Mehjabeen Taj Aalam

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Q. As a Woman Leader, how challenging has it been for you to succeed in your chosen field?

For a working woman, career challenges are manifold. While some are gender driven, some are gender agnostic. We face many stereotypes and unconscious biases which tend to overlook our true potential and talent. Be it the Glass Ceiling, the Sticky Floor, the wage gap at work, or the leisure gap at home – you name it, we have lived it. Our success lies in how we deal with any situation. We can either fight it or make the limitations work for us.

Taking personal responsibility of my dreams and aspirations have always served me well. I operate from the belief that my dreams are no one else’s obligation but mine. When you process things that way, you work in a far more constructive manner. Instead of getting defensive and emotional, staying calm and focused will help you achieve more. I have always found it more beneficial to a create a common ground with challenging people and situation, rather than allowing them to hold me back. And this has repeatedly helped me in creating a cohesive and nurturing ecosystem for myself and others.

Q. How have you been able to convert obstacles in your career path into opportunities?

Before Alice got to wonderland, she had to fall. Tough things will happen. Don’t crib, work out a solution. And seek help wherever necessary. I have always believed that there is no lack of support out there, just a shortage of asking for help.

One of my greatest professional challenges has been to break out of the boxes people naturally want to place you in. Whenever I took upon new challenges or entered new domains, I surrounded myself with subject matter experts, creating a personal network of advisors or mentors. Depending upon where I was in the learning continuum, I connected at different levels, may it be with my colleagues, bosses, cross-functional peers, or even juniors. This ensured that I had the appropriate context and understanding of my job.

Getting comfortable with change is another important lesson I have learnt over the years. Being in the ever so dynamic and fast paced IT industry, the only constant we deal with is change. You can never afford to rest on your laurels. Just because you did something well in the past does not mean the future owes you anything. You need to work hard and prove yourself at all stages of your career.

Through my work I try to position myself as reliable and trustworthy. For women, given their family and social dynamics, this is the most important attribute that an organisation looks for before it can entrust you with additional responsibility. Stick around, become dependable, manage ambiguity. When employers start relying on you, they tend to discriminate less.

Q. Tech industry is dominated by male leaders. How women can excel, assume leadership roles, and make a mark for themselves?

As a technologist in the finance domain, I have noticed a smaller number of women representation and women leadership. Women employees represent a fair share of the overall workforce but there is a serious dearth of leadership opportunities for them. There are many factors at play for this shrinking women population as we go up the hierarchies, and the gap only becomes starker as we move into the STEM fields. This under representation of women in the technical fields is attributable to our social conditioning and stereotyping that provides a very non-conducive environment for growth.

Women need to play to the strength of their own skillset instead of matching the style of their male counterparts. If you are offered a new role or a challenge, do not underestimate your competencies or get tentative about your eligibility – see learning as part of the job.

Network. Perhaps the most destructive result of the work/family balancing act is that it leaves very little time for socialising and building professional networks. However, daunting it may seem, you need to make time for it as you grow in your career.

Give back. We rise by lifting others. Support people, encourage them, and celebrate their success. Real leadership comes when people like you and want to work with you.

Q. How can we create a culture of inclusiveness and diversity at a workplace?

While explicit gender bias has largely disappeared from the workplace due to tougher legislation and increased focus on diversity issues, implicit biases are still rampant. To tackle these, an organisation needs to integrate inclusivity in its core values starting right from inclusive recruitment strategies.

It’s not just the responsibility of men to help women overcome these roadblocks, but also of other women. Especially women at the top need to extend their hand and help pull up other women too. It makes a big difference when there are women at the top.

Q. Any interesting anecdote that you would like to share that has inspired or kept you motivated in your career?

I once read this life maxim in a book and it got etched in my memory forever – “People will forget what you did for them or gave them, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Much later in life I realised that this quote was based on a famous quote from the civil right activist Maya Angelou whose own quote apparently was a close paraphrase of a quote attributed to Carl Beuhner – both however focusing primarily on one idea that people can forget a lot of things, but they cannot and will not forget how you make them feel.

Though the relevance of this idea extends to all the people with whom we interact, but in my own experience, I have seen the phenomenal constructive effect it has on relationships with our teams, professional counterparts, and seniors. We may not always agree with each other and from time to time, we are bound to have sub-optimal experiences, but we can always make those around us feel that we understand and respect them. And not just during people’s lows, but even during their highs – supporting and encouraging them, celebrating their success, goes a long way. We rise by lifting others.

Q. Which is one woman personality you admire the most and why? Your message to the aspiring Women Leaders?

I get exhilarated when I see a woman standing up and doing her thing. As I live and continue to get inspired from such women, I dream of a world where more women would be celebrated for their success and leadership.

Remember, your dreams are no one else’s obligation. If you want it, you are responsible for getting it. Assume that responsibility. The world won’t always be fair, and many won’t play by the rules.  But that’s part of the deal. Whatever will make you uncomfortable will be your biggest opportunity for growth.

“Women need to play to the strength of their own skillset, instead of matching the style of their male counterparts. If you are offered a new role or a challenge, do not underestimate your competencies or get tentative about your eligibility – see learning as part of the job.”

“Passion and endurance will help you realise all your dreams” – Jijy Oommen

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Q. As a Woman Leader, how challenging has it been for you to succeed in your chosen field? 

The technology leadership role, especially in the financial services industry, is extremely demanding, regardless of gender. You are thrown with new challenges every single day and it is up to you to either get bogged down or leverage them as stepping-stones that help you grow stronger. I chose the second path. This needs a lot of courage and resilience, which one should consciously work on building as a personal strength.

Q. Tech industry is dominated by male leaders. How women can excel, assume leadership roles, and make a mark for themselves?

True. The absolute number of women in the technology leadership space is very few. It is mainly for two reasons – one being very few women take up technology as their mainstream career choice; and secondly, many couldn’t stick to it and grow beyond certain stage.

Unlike many other professions, this is a 24×7 role as the technology being a key enabler for most businesses. And since it is constantly evolving, one has to learn, unlearn and again learn endlessly. Women by nature come with many family responsibilities that can become a lot tougher when you are at the peak of your career, where you got to juggle between personal priorities and professional aspirations.

Here, you need to work on building a strong support system around you consciously. Frankly speaking, it wasn’t easy for me too to navigate through that phase of life.

Q. How can we create a culture of inclusiveness and diversity at a workplace?

According to statistics, the women workforce participation in India is less than 20% whilst the women count is 48% of our country’s overall population. However, we see a huge surge in gender diversity in the IT workforce and a recent survey reported that 34% of the tech workforce in India is women, and most are below 30 years of age.

Retaining and growing the talents require the organisations to build the right environment for women to work and grow so that they can reach middle and senior management roles.

Time and again, it has been proved that organisations with greater workplace diversity achieve better results, as women lead with empathy and make better decisions faster, which gives organisations a serious competitive edge. As a result, companies with diversity in the workplace achieve better business results.

Q. Which is one woman personality you admire the most and why? Your message to the aspiring Women Leaders?

I admire all women who walked the path that many haven’t been before and some of the names coming top of my mind are Ms. Sudha Murti, Ms. Kamala Harris and Ms. Indra Nooyi who have created unique identities for themselves.

My message to the aspiring Women Leaders – Decide for yourself who you are and what you want to do in life. Don’t give up in the mid-way. Your passion and endurance will help you achieve your goals and realise all your dreams.

Happy Women’s Day!

“Organisations with greater workplace diversity achieve better results, as women lead with empathy and make better and faster decisions that give companies a serious competitive edge. We need to build the right environment for women to work and grow in their professional lives.”