# Summary Enabling Digital Transformation for Social Impact+
This feature is based on the podcast with Mr. Gireendra Kasmalkar “Giri”, the Founding Director and CEO of Ideas to Impacts Innovations Pvt. Ltd., Lead Investor and General Partner at Pentathlon Ventures and Owner of the Ideas to Impacts Hub. I had a conversation with Gireendra on how technology is enabling a sustainable social impact within the society and the social ecosystem. The podcast features a detailed discussion on impact of technology accelerators especially in the B2B sector, and social impact of disruptive technology including Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Machine Learning among other technologies. The podcast is an excellent source to understand how various technologies are enabling digital transformation for a social impact both globally and in India.
“AI/ML is not another technology but a complete different way of doing things”. Giri
The ongoing pandemic has disrupted the world, forcing businesses to rethink their strategy, especially digital transformation. Some companies, especially in the US, China, selected European countries, including Finland, Sweden, etc., have emerged on the top by implementing a transformative digital strategy to enable social impact by leveraging technology. The following is an excerpt from my conversation with Giri and not a substitute for the Podcast. The read, backed by research with focused data points not found in the Podcast elaborating on global digital transformation efforts and informative videos to enunciate the thought process. The feature includes a note on Artificial Intelligence, a brief on Blockchain and how it’s impacting the global development sector, Bond-i offering from the World Bank, cloud computing, etc. An excellent read for the audience looking to know how emerging technologies are positively disrupting businesses to enable social change and impact society.
Nishant Malhotra| Founder & CEO | Middle Road OPC Pvt Ltd | The middle Road
Nishant Q: I begin our conversation by asking Giri how his work enables sustainable innovation in the technology sector through IoT (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence, and machine learning at Impacts Hub. The hub is one of the largest accelerators/incubators in India. Please do share your work philosophy. How are you different from other incubators/ accelerators within this sector?
Giri: Our philosophy is that an early-stage fund and an incubator/accelerator go hand-in-hand. At an early stage, the start-up does not just require funds but also mentoring, access to markets, talent, and simply mingling with other entrepreneurs. We provide that at our Hub through our ecosystem of mentors, advisors and corporate partners, in addition to our partners and investors in our Fund. Being a fund + incubator makes us unique. Plus, we are in Pune’s Baner area, a tech hot-spot. Within slightly more than a year, we have 30 start-ups, 350 techies (AI/ML, IoT, Block-chain), and more than 100 events where Gurus on various topics of interest of start-ups have spoken.
Nishant Q). Ideas to Impacts works on a low-cost Smart-Town Model. You have opened Small Town technology centers in tier 3 cities like Rajgurunagar, Satara, etc. Would you like to comment on how you are invigorating the model in non-metro cities? What matrix do you use to make sure the quality standards example people skill sets are on par with the best in India?
Digital Transformation Social Impact
Giri: At Ideas to Impacts, our tagline is “Distributing the Future evenly.” In the fund, we do that by being in Pune when most funds are in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore. But my background is in IT services, and the “smart town model” refers to what we do in our IT services company by delivering cutting edge IT services from the non-metros. The fact is that the “best in India” had to come to metros from all over in search of opportunities. However, if the options can be taken to people in tier 2 or rural regions, some will stay back. This is simply the logical next step of Indian off-shoring. The delivery pyramid of the innovative town model includes a metro layer with seniors and a non-metro layer with juniors. With this combination of skill and aspiration and the suitable distribution of work, we hope to have even better delivery than the purely metro model. That is required if the model is to be sustainable. We see COVID providing a significant boost to our model with everybody getting used to remote working, just as Y2K gave a boost to Indian off-shoring 20 years back.
Podcast Gireendra Kasmalkar | The middle Road YouTube Channel
Our conversation delves into Pentathlon Ventures and the significance of business 2 business (B2B) technology companies in India.
Nishant Q: B2B technology companies are one of the fastest rising companies among the Startup ecosystem in India. According to Zinnov, in 2018, 43 percent of the 7,400 start-ups in India were in the B2B sector up 26 percent of 3,100 start-ups in 2014 from B2B. 1 This is a whopping 294.8 percent increase in just four years. In which technology sectors have you seen an upside among your portfolio of start-ups. What parameters do you look for in selecting your companies’ example metrics, KPI, etc?
The podcast link on Apple.
Giri: With B2B-Tech our focus is horizontal and we look for all verticals that B2B-SaaS can disrupt. We look for companies with early revenues in India, but must have the scope to go global. The conversation talks about rising importance of emerging technologies especially Cloud Computing and Fintech both globally and in India and the open source India Stack fintech project. | Graph: Microsoft segment wise revenue comparison for quarter ended March 20 Y-o-Y; fig in $ billions
“Cloud computing today is one of the biggest enablers for business among the SMEs small and medium enterprises globally including India. SAP, a leading multinational company in the enterprise software especially ERP solutions derives 80 percent of its business in India through the SME sector. SAP recently launched Global Bharat project in association with NASSCOM Foundation, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Pratham InfoTech Foundation to provide skilling along with access to global markets by transforming digital businesses among the MSMEs. (micro, small, medium enterprises. ” The middle Road
# Enabling Social Change & Impact- Digital Transformation
I ask a question on B2B eCommerce sector wherein the revenues are expected to be ~$250 billion this year? 2
Giri discusses his view on the B2B eCommerce sector and how he directly enables a social impact within the society through initiatives like Smart India Hackathon. Giri is the board member and President of the Executive committee of I4C that promotes many initiatives, including the Smart India Hackathon, which drives innovation among students in India. The idea is to understand the evolving mindset among the youth and how the initiative differentiates itself from similar projects, including the Atal Tinkering Lab program. It’s noteworthy to understand the problem-solving behavioural impact among children through a focus on experimental learning exemplified by countries like Finland. Giri further talks about his role in driving social innovation and entrepreneurship through Pune International Centre – Social Innovation Group. He mentors the awardees (tribal /rural /urban) of the annual National Conference of Social Innovation.
Nishant: According to Accenture, AI could add ~$1 trillion to the Indian economy by 2035
Towards the end of our conversation, I highlight that 11 percent of social start-ups in India are from Ed-tech (NASSCOM report). The idea is to drive the importance of social entrepreneurship within the business ecosystem for enabling solutions for the less privileged using technology or other means. A significant part of our conversation is on the social impact of emerging technologies focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Blockchain.
Blockchain is increasing deployed globally for social good. Accenture Lab’s collaboration with Akshaya Patra, a leading non-profit in India for the “Million Meals Project “is an excellent example of “Tech For Good” i.e. technology enabling social good for the underserved communities. The middle Road
# Technology, AI, Blockchain and Global Development: Rise of Fintech: Digital Transformation Social Impact
During the podcast, Giri mentions about use cases as examples to drive his point about how the impact of emerging technologies like AI and ML among startup’s in India is Enabling Digital Transformation for Social Impact. Giri gives a poignant overview on how artificial intelligence is making a difference through examples including self driving cars.
“AI/ML is not another technology but a complete different way of doing things”. Giri
According to Bain & Company, AI is defined as a machine’s ability to autonomously perceive, understand, make decisions about and react to its environment.
“Bain & Company researched the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the consumer-packaged goods industry CPGs, a sector which is in AI infancy. AI leads in industries like retail and tech. At the same time, wholesale and business services are laggards based on google trends listing search results associated with company name with AI or machine learning published last year. To understand the AI maturing within the CPGs, the Bain team measured companies against two criteria: AI portfolio size and scale realization to segment the companies into five AI brackets led by AI Scale leaders. They attempted and scaled more use cases across functional areas. Although data is limited, the results of the study are startling. A global packaged food company that lost $100 million per year due to high perishable costs redesigned its manual forecasting and order processing methods using AI and machine learning to attain a 40 percent to 50 percent reduction in waste backed by a 50 percent reduction in dedicated labor hours. The solution was scalable repeatable to identify inefficiencies within the set processes for improvements in functionalities. This points to the measurable impact of the emerging technologies to improve both the top-line and the bottom line of businesses, especially during the pandemic. At the same time, the adverse effects of increasing automation using AI and machine learning will lead to increased job losses, especially among blue-collared workers.” The middle Road
“BLOCKCHAIN is one of the most promising emerging technologies in the world today. The technology behind cryptocurrency Bitcoin, Blockchain is increasingly being deployed across different industries, especially banking and global development, by facilitating transactions, including crowdfunding. Blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology with a series of blocks containing information. Each block contains the marker code to the next block, making it impossible to manipulate the data. Originally designed in 1991 by a group of researchers to digitally timestamp documents to prevent backdating, the technology today is driving transparency and accountability behind global transactions.” China successfully employed Blockchain technology to drive philanthropy within the country. At the same time, The World Bank created Bond-i, a bond issued using the distributive ledger technology signifies the increasing role of Blockchain technology within the development sector.” The middle Road
“Healthcare is one critical sector wherein Blockchain is making increasing inroads to drive accountability and transparency. Kenyan Start-up Afya Rekod uses Blockchain to build a global healthcare platform to mitigate health risks due to COVID-19. China implemented Blockchain technology within its hospitals to optimize its response during the heydays of novel coronavirus spread within the country. Singapore’s Trace Together app is changing the paradigm of fighting COVID-19 by automating the data among its citizens near making contact tracing easier. The Singapore government is making the platform open source to enable countries to use the technology to fight the healthcare crisis. Emerging technologies are changing the global landscape in both the social and business spheres of life and transforming the development sector. Although a lot is within the realms of social good, a significant portion of its impact is hindering the wellbeing of society. In recent years, social media’s adverse effects have enabled social isolation to promote racial hatred through social platforms, leading to destructive human nature. A mindful regulation of harmful practices closely attributed to unadulterated use of disruptive technology is recommended to enable a long-lasting, sustainable change and impact within the world.” The middle Road.
All publications, articles (except ones cited as guest publications) , online courses (previous titled tutorials) are written, researched, structured and presented by me (Nishant Malhotra), Founder and CEO of Middle Road OPC Pvt Ltd. Guest features under Insights section are recorded under guest names while posts by interns are published under their name. Until now only one article has been published under Insight by a guest. All guest publications are edited and elaborated by me before its posted on the site. Most of the podcasts were recorded and edited by me except a couple of videos videotaped by the client and a couple of podcasts recorded and edited by a professional. These were further edited by me before presenting on the platform The middle Road.
References
- https://www.digitalistmag.com/digital-economy/2019/03/19/b2b-startups-are-on-rise-in-india-06197130/
- https://www.ibef.org/industry/ecommerce.aspx#:~:text=India’s%20internet%20economy%20is%20expected,the%20highest%20in%20the%20world.
- https://www.nasscom.in/system/files/secure-pdf/Indian_Start-up_Ecosystem_2018-Final_Report.pdf