— Brian Pereira
Mumbai – 11 Feb, 2016 – At the Nasscom India Leadership Forum, Nasscom’s IT Services Council launched an important initiative to recognize and acknowledge technology talent and specialists in the country. The program is called Nasscom Tech Ngage and it has three key objectives: To celebrate technology and technologists; to identify leadership gaps; to change the market perception of the industry.
Sushma Rajagopalan, Chairperson of the Nasscom IT Services Council, who is also MD and CEO, ITC Infotech said, “We identified three areas that are going to be deeply affected in the IT services industry. How do we bring about the right kind of skill? The need for a platform that can encourage people from all walks of life to display their technology skills and their acumen. We also need to celebrate technologists and technologies. So in 2016 we will focus purely on technologists.”
Tech Ngage will be a sustainable annual feature much like NILF. Nasscom is going to do a “massive” hackathon pan India, at six locations. In future it will include international locations too. It will invite 15,000 people across India. These could be students, individuals or people from the Nasscom member companies. These individuals will post ideas on a portal and about 1,000 prospects will be selected by a jury to move on to the hackathon. And from the hackathon will emerge Nasscom Technology Explorers and Nasscom Technology Fellows.
R. Chandrasekhar, President Nasscom said, “This will encourage the pipeline to remain strong and to focus on the technology dimension of this business to be even stronger than it is today. It is importance in the context of growing innovation as a part of driving transformation and disruption across the world.”
Samir Dhir who heads this initiative and who is also Executive VP & Head of India Operations for Virtusa said, “There is a lack of recognition and platforms for technologists to celebrate in the country. It is very common to celebrate management roles but if I come up with a unique idea from a technology perspective, it is good but not considered great. So we decided to launch a pan India Nasscom platform that people will aspire to be on. We want to be inclusive and involve students, working professionals, senior architects – it’s an open platform for everybody.”
The first phase of the program will launch on March 1, 2016. This will result in themes like “How do you make your city smart and secure?”. There will be technology based submissions that will be evaluated by panels in the industry. The first phase will filter the number of entries. The shortlisted entries will then be presented to a jury through a face-to-face interaction. There will then be a 24-hour hackathon towards making a city smarter — entrants will need to think of ways to make a city better. They will embellish their product and present to an eminent panel comprising CTOs and technology architects from Nasscom member companies. The top 5 candidates from each city will become role models for that city, and will be called Nasscom Technology Explorers.
Phase 3 of this program will be at a national level, wherein all the Technology Explorers will have to present the strategy behind the solution they have built, and how that solution will help not only their city but also the nation. The successful candidates that will emerge from phase 3 will be designated Nasscom Technology Fellows. All the three phases are expected to be completed at the end of this calendar year.
Parthasarathy NS, President and COO, Mindtree, who is also on the Nasscom IT Services Council said, “This initiative will also create role models for the young people who are coming into this industry. We believe that by involving CTOs and senior technical architects of all our member companies the participation will become much wider and deeper, not just in the big cities but also in the smaller ones. We are confident that we will be able to reach a much larger group of people. And the technology gurus will be recognized in the public forums in this country.”
This is indeed a positive initiative by Nasscom which will reposition the Indian IT industry as more than a provider of software services and labour arbitrage.
The next Google might just emerge from India, after that!
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