In India we have been taught that it's OK not to innovate - even as kids. I don't know where we get it, but we have not imbibed a culture to foster innovation.

Sticking to what your ancestors told you does not allow you to innovate. For example, we have been using a plough which looks the same for hundreds of years without making any improvements. If you look at the ploughs in Europe or USA, you will surprised to see so many changes happening over the last hundred years.

Innovation is the main engine that drives a product company like ours. We have been able to stand out from the competition and deliver real value to our customers in an environment that is dominated by tier-1 players.

Indian companies focus more on services than products. How important is a product-based innovation?

Services was a good first step to get into information technology. Since we missed the industrial revolution, we have not seen much of product culture in India. Products based on technology is an extremely critical step if we want to create wealth on a sustainable level without having to resort to providing engineers as a resource.

Product innovation is a must for India. We cannot just stay at services forever. We need to move to the next level – that does not mean we abandon services. We will continue to concentrate on services – but to create a self-sustaining ecosystem – we need to invest in research and technology products.

For example, whole of Indian IT-BPO industry makes $72 billion employing nearly 2.23 million people, whereas Cisco and Microsoft put together make $100 billion employing only 150,000 people.

Our increase in IT output per year is very predictable and it is proportional to the number of engineers we create per year. There is no way we can create more wealth unless we embrace technology products in this country.

Image: An employee with a Sloka base station. | Photograph, courtesy: Sloka Telecom

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