Nandan Nilekani
Mr. Nilekani has the credentials to back that assertion. Perhaps more than any other developing world business figure, he has become associated with the phenomenon of globalization. And all because of one phrase: The world is flat.
During a conversation with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman he made a remark that would make him famous and Mr. Friedman rich. "Tom," he said, "the playing field is being levelled."
What he meant was that the huge rise in computing power and the huge drop in the cost of transmitting data globally were allowing companies in developing countries such as India to compete on the same footing as their rich-world rivals. A company like Infosys, based in Bangalore, southern India, could run the payroll of a huge corporation in New York as effectively - and for far less - than a U.S. payroll firm down the street in Manhattan.
Out of that insight came Mr. Friedman's best-selling paean to globalization, 2005's The World is Flat, still a standard in airport bookshops from Tokyo to Istanbul. In it, Mr. Nilekani and others like him argued that globalization helped countries in both rich world and poor, allowing rich ones to lower their business costs by outsourcing low-end back office work and letting poor ones leverage the advantage of their young, eager and increasingly well-educated work forces.
Today, the whole process of globalization is under attack. It is precisely because the world is flat that the credit crisis born in the United States travelled around the world so quickly, infecting just about every corner of the globe.
"This is clearly a checkpoint in the globalization journey," said Mr. Nilekani, acknowledging that the global crisis has created "apprehension and trepidation" about the phenomenon.
It has proved, for example, that financial markets need strong, streamlined regulation - a point that most of globalization's champions never really challenged.
Still, "I think globalization is going to happen. It's been happening for thousands of years and it will happen for many more years. The current episode in some sense is just a point of introspection and pause," he said.
The Indian IT sector is a case in point. Since Infosys was founded in 1981 by "seven skinny kids" - Mr. Nilekani was one of them - it has become the most dynamic and globalized part of the trillion-dollar Indian economy. Its revenue grew from $50-million (U.S.) in 1991, when Indian's era of economic reform began, to $50-billion today. Infosys alone has more than 100,000 employees spread around 22 countries, including Canada. And Mr. Nilekani, the son of a manager in a textile mill, was listed in Forbes magazine last year as having a net worth of $1.1-billion.
Like so many other companies, Infosys has been suffering of late. Growth slowed to 11 per cent in the fiscal year ended March 31 and Mr. Nilekani, the company's co-chairman, said it expects the business to actually shrink by 3 to 6 per cent this year, an unheard of thing in a sector used to year after year of gains.
But he argued that, even as countries and companies suffer, the world continues to flatten. Computers are becoming smarter, smaller, faster and more wireless. Telecom charges keep falling.
In fact, the global crisis has made it more important than ever for companies to transform themselves into smarter, more efficient organizations - just the thing companies like Infosys can help them do.
"This global crisis is going to fundamentally change companies," Mr. Nilekani said. "They will have to reinvent themselves hugely; their supply chains, what they sell, how they sell - all that is going to change and that is going to drive the business transformation of the kind that we do."
To keep up, Infosys has invested heavily in educating its work force and seeking out the "best practices" from around the world. Before long, he said, the company will start growing again. That will be good not only for India, which has seen its economy take off in the past two decades because of entrepreneurs such as Mr. Nilekani, but for the rest of the world.
"When countries like India and China grow, they create huge markets," he argued. Already, he says of India, "we are buying more from the world than we're selling to the world."
The way Mr. Nilekani sees it, the story of globalization is far from over. Crisis or no crisis, the world is flat.
May 6, 2009
WORLD: The Prophet of Progress
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TORONTO, Ontario / Globe and Mail / World / ReportonBusiness / May 6, 2009
'I personally believe that one of the fastest ways we can recover from this global crisis is increasing trade among nations and not by putting up barricades.'
By Marcus Gee
mgee@globeandmail.com
Capitalism is done like dinner. The free market is over. Globalization is dead. The great recession has finished them all. So say the prophets of doom.
Nandan Nilekani has a different view. Mr. Nilekani is a prophet of a different kind: a prophet of progress. The co-founder of Infosys Technologies Ltd., a leading Indian IT and offshoring firm, believes that globalization is here to stay, despite the biggest economic slump since the Second World War. In fact, the way to beat the crisis is to embrace globalization, not reject it.
"I personally believe that one of the fastest ways we can recover from this global crisis is increasing trade among nations and not by putting up barricades," he said this week while on a visit to Toronto.
Nandan Nilekani
Mr. Nilekani has the credentials to back that assertion. Perhaps more than any other developing world business figure, he has become associated with the phenomenon of globalization. And all because of one phrase: The world is flat.
During a conversation with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman he made a remark that would make him famous and Mr. Friedman rich. "Tom," he said, "the playing field is being levelled."
What he meant was that the huge rise in computing power and the huge drop in the cost of transmitting data globally were allowing companies in developing countries such as India to compete on the same footing as their rich-world rivals. A company like Infosys, based in Bangalore, southern India, could run the payroll of a huge corporation in New York as effectively - and for far less - than a U.S. payroll firm down the street in Manhattan.
Out of that insight came Mr. Friedman's best-selling paean to globalization, 2005's The World is Flat, still a standard in airport bookshops from Tokyo to Istanbul. In it, Mr. Nilekani and others like him argued that globalization helped countries in both rich world and poor, allowing rich ones to lower their business costs by outsourcing low-end back office work and letting poor ones leverage the advantage of their young, eager and increasingly well-educated work forces.
Today, the whole process of globalization is under attack. It is precisely because the world is flat that the credit crisis born in the United States travelled around the world so quickly, infecting just about every corner of the globe.
"This is clearly a checkpoint in the globalization journey," said Mr. Nilekani, acknowledging that the global crisis has created "apprehension and trepidation" about the phenomenon.
It has proved, for example, that financial markets need strong, streamlined regulation - a point that most of globalization's champions never really challenged.
Still, "I think globalization is going to happen. It's been happening for thousands of years and it will happen for many more years. The current episode in some sense is just a point of introspection and pause," he said.
The Indian IT sector is a case in point. Since Infosys was founded in 1981 by "seven skinny kids" - Mr. Nilekani was one of them - it has become the most dynamic and globalized part of the trillion-dollar Indian economy. Its revenue grew from $50-million (U.S.) in 1991, when Indian's era of economic reform began, to $50-billion today. Infosys alone has more than 100,000 employees spread around 22 countries, including Canada. And Mr. Nilekani, the son of a manager in a textile mill, was listed in Forbes magazine last year as having a net worth of $1.1-billion.
Like so many other companies, Infosys has been suffering of late. Growth slowed to 11 per cent in the fiscal year ended March 31 and Mr. Nilekani, the company's co-chairman, said it expects the business to actually shrink by 3 to 6 per cent this year, an unheard of thing in a sector used to year after year of gains.
But he argued that, even as countries and companies suffer, the world continues to flatten. Computers are becoming smarter, smaller, faster and more wireless. Telecom charges keep falling.
In fact, the global crisis has made it more important than ever for companies to transform themselves into smarter, more efficient organizations - just the thing companies like Infosys can help them do.
"This global crisis is going to fundamentally change companies," Mr. Nilekani said. "They will have to reinvent themselves hugely; their supply chains, what they sell, how they sell - all that is going to change and that is going to drive the business transformation of the kind that we do."
To keep up, Infosys has invested heavily in educating its work force and seeking out the "best practices" from around the world. Before long, he said, the company will start growing again. That will be good not only for India, which has seen its economy take off in the past two decades because of entrepreneurs such as Mr. Nilekani, but for the rest of the world.
"When countries like India and China grow, they create huge markets," he argued. Already, he says of India, "we are buying more from the world than we're selling to the world."
The way Mr. Nilekani sees it, the story of globalization is far from over. Crisis or no crisis, the world is flat.
Nandan Nilekani
Mr. Nilekani has the credentials to back that assertion. Perhaps more than any other developing world business figure, he has become associated with the phenomenon of globalization. And all because of one phrase: The world is flat.
During a conversation with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman he made a remark that would make him famous and Mr. Friedman rich. "Tom," he said, "the playing field is being levelled."
What he meant was that the huge rise in computing power and the huge drop in the cost of transmitting data globally were allowing companies in developing countries such as India to compete on the same footing as their rich-world rivals. A company like Infosys, based in Bangalore, southern India, could run the payroll of a huge corporation in New York as effectively - and for far less - than a U.S. payroll firm down the street in Manhattan.
Out of that insight came Mr. Friedman's best-selling paean to globalization, 2005's The World is Flat, still a standard in airport bookshops from Tokyo to Istanbul. In it, Mr. Nilekani and others like him argued that globalization helped countries in both rich world and poor, allowing rich ones to lower their business costs by outsourcing low-end back office work and letting poor ones leverage the advantage of their young, eager and increasingly well-educated work forces.
Today, the whole process of globalization is under attack. It is precisely because the world is flat that the credit crisis born in the United States travelled around the world so quickly, infecting just about every corner of the globe.
"This is clearly a checkpoint in the globalization journey," said Mr. Nilekani, acknowledging that the global crisis has created "apprehension and trepidation" about the phenomenon.
It has proved, for example, that financial markets need strong, streamlined regulation - a point that most of globalization's champions never really challenged.
Still, "I think globalization is going to happen. It's been happening for thousands of years and it will happen for many more years. The current episode in some sense is just a point of introspection and pause," he said.
The Indian IT sector is a case in point. Since Infosys was founded in 1981 by "seven skinny kids" - Mr. Nilekani was one of them - it has become the most dynamic and globalized part of the trillion-dollar Indian economy. Its revenue grew from $50-million (U.S.) in 1991, when Indian's era of economic reform began, to $50-billion today. Infosys alone has more than 100,000 employees spread around 22 countries, including Canada. And Mr. Nilekani, the son of a manager in a textile mill, was listed in Forbes magazine last year as having a net worth of $1.1-billion.
Like so many other companies, Infosys has been suffering of late. Growth slowed to 11 per cent in the fiscal year ended March 31 and Mr. Nilekani, the company's co-chairman, said it expects the business to actually shrink by 3 to 6 per cent this year, an unheard of thing in a sector used to year after year of gains.
But he argued that, even as countries and companies suffer, the world continues to flatten. Computers are becoming smarter, smaller, faster and more wireless. Telecom charges keep falling.
In fact, the global crisis has made it more important than ever for companies to transform themselves into smarter, more efficient organizations - just the thing companies like Infosys can help them do.
"This global crisis is going to fundamentally change companies," Mr. Nilekani said. "They will have to reinvent themselves hugely; their supply chains, what they sell, how they sell - all that is going to change and that is going to drive the business transformation of the kind that we do."
To keep up, Infosys has invested heavily in educating its work force and seeking out the "best practices" from around the world. Before long, he said, the company will start growing again. That will be good not only for India, which has seen its economy take off in the past two decades because of entrepreneurs such as Mr. Nilekani, but for the rest of the world.
"When countries like India and China grow, they create huge markets," he argued. Already, he says of India, "we are buying more from the world than we're selling to the world."
The way Mr. Nilekani sees it, the story of globalization is far from over. Crisis or no crisis, the world is flat.
