He was speaking at AIMA-AAMO’s National Management Convention in Kolkata on September 8. Said Mr Bikchandani, “Biggest constraint for managing new India in future will be lack of talent. Services like IT, ITES, Financial services, R&D in Pharma are all human capital intensive business where India has done well. But we are now running out of talent. My interaction with various companies tells me that there is a huge talent shortage round the corner.”
Offering solution to the looming talent crisis, Mr Bikchandani said, “Education sector reform is needed at both primary and high education level. In primary education sector, government needs to improve its education delivery. While higher education sector is seeing growth, much of the private sector institutes, including management institutes, are offering mediocre education. We need more quality institutions like IITs and IIMs.”
Calling his company a “child of liberalization of 90s” Mr Bikchandani said that his company owes a lot of its success to opening up of Indian economy in 1990s.
“We are the child of liberalization. Open economy gave us access to capital in form of VC funding. It brought about economic boom of which created jobs and increased demand for talent. It also gave us exposure to global competition from day 1 which made us think on a global scale.”
Laying out his recommendation for India’s future growth, Mr Bikchandani said,
“There are six drivers of growth for India’s future. Human capital, efficiency of operations, enabling environment, freeing factors of productions, judiciary reform and mindset change.”
Closing his talk with calling for a mindset change, Mr Bikchandani said, “We need to make a mindset shift.” Stressing on role of entrepreneurs in managing new India, Mr Bhikchandani said, “Most of our well educated people from IITs and IIMs don’t think of entrepreneurship as a career choice. That should change. Entrepreneurs create jobs. For example my company directly provides job to 1300 people.”
MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), Mr Bhikchandani quit his MNC job in 1990. He launched Naukri.com in 1997. His company Info Edge successfully listed on stock market in 2006, and has expanded his online business with presence in real-estate and marriage match-making market.
