The Digital Revolution Has Arrived With a Bang: T.V. Mohandas Pai The COVID-19 pandemic led to innovation which in turn proliferated a massive growth of artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning and automation
By Ashmita Bhogal •
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Startups are young companies which are innovation-driven and they work to build revolutionarily unique products and try to fix the gaps that are there in the ecosystem by using Internet. And while Internet has been around for the last 20 years, the very essence of it came in front of us in the last 18 months with the onset of COVID-19 and startups led the way in adopting digital transformation.
T.V. Mohandas Pai, chairman, 3one4 Capital; co-founder and chairman, Aarin Capital; and chairman, Manipal Global Education, talked all about it during Entrepreneur India's Tech and Innovation Summit 2021.
"The Internet is a platform where everyone is connected," he illustrated this with the help of some data. Out of 7.8 billion people on the planet, maybe 5.5 billion people are connected to the mobile, another 5 billion people are connected to the Internet in some other form and about 4.5 billion are connected through social media and this is going to accelerate, explained Pai.
Now we can get everything from the Internet, from food to clothes to entertainment, and it makes the whole world come together on a scale and on a speed that we have never seen or experienced before, which is transformational and has changed the world.
"In 2019 the world spent $2 trillion on digital transformation and this year maybe the world will spend $2.5 trillion," said Pai.
If we look at top 10 companies in terms of market capitalization, 8 among them are digital transformation companies and the other two are Saudi Aramco with the largest number of oil resources in world and other one being Berkshire Hathaway which is an investor.
With the incoming of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world found out that we can see blue skies and clear water with the pollution coming down all this has led to issues such as climate change, sustainability and circular economy come on center stage. The capital outburst has led to innovation and has led to a massive growth of artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning and automation.
Talking further about innovation, he said innovation cycles have shifted from 36 months to 18 months for the last four years, and the huge outburst of capital has led to a change in everything. And that is the world we are going to live in.
Another important thing, according to Pai, is how work from home has become the new reality with the COVID-19, and there will be hybrid working with over 35-40 per cent of people working from home in the near future. He suggested that in future the global travel will come down and the old business model of retail of cafes and everything else may shrink though it will still remain as we still need human interaction.
Pai underlined the fact that, "India had changed tremendously and that's the world that is going to be."
India has 55 thousand startups which have created $350 billion of value with over 62 unicorns which has, in turn, created 1.5 million jobs. As estimated, by 2025 India will have 100,000 startups creating 150 unicorns at a minimum and all these things are happening because of the software industry, said Pai.
