Hyderabad: HYSEA organised the second edition of its prestigious BizSummit 2021 today at HICC(NOVOTEL) with an overarching theme, ‘Expanding Growth Horizons in the new Normal’.  

Mr. Rajesh Nambiar, Chairman and MD, Cognizant Technology Solutions, India, was the Chief Guest on the occasion and virtually addressing the audience he said, “The COVID-19 pandemic has widened the divide between digital natives and legacy economy companies struggling to shift to a fully digital operating model. As more organisations look to become more digital, more quickly, the secular trend of digital transformation is going to be the key driver of growth for the IT industry. With digital moving beyond technology and into the heart of business operating models and processes, expanding growth horizons, including for SMEs, will be about deepening and broadening new-age capabilities required to realise agile, data-driven and automated processes with an eye on accelerating innovation and enhancing customer experience.”

Mr. Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary, ITE&C Department who was the guest of honor at event applauded the contributions made by HYSEA since the start of the pandemic in helping  with the smooth transition of Industry operations to Work from Home. He also talked about the new opportunities these (pandemic) times provide for IT companies in areas of Education, Agriculture, Digital Transformation and Servicing new geographies. He also shared that govt will announce in the near future, a policy with exclusive focus on MSMEs.

Mr. Mazher Hashmi, Senior Director and Executive Leader at Forrester, delivered the opening keynote on ‘Being Normal in the New Normal’ and talked about Five connected pandemic-induced shifts that will change business and technology forever.  Customer expectations he said, will shift on the spectrum of safety and convenience, Businesses will ride the digital engagement wave to create hybrid experiences, Firms and governments will invest in the once-impossible to drive the future of work, Smart firms will retire technical debt fast and then ride the tech disruption wave, and Business resilience will become a competitive advantage”.

Mr. Saurabh Gaur, IAS, Joint Secretary Ministry of Electronics & IT, Govt of India, New Delhi delivered a special keynote and talked about the six important pillars to build the vision of digital India including: Digital Services, Digital inclusion, Digital Infrastructure, Digital Trust, Digital Economy, and Emerging Technologies.

Mr. Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Chairman, CtrlS & Cloud4C delivered the leader note address ‘Hyper scaling & Reaching the next Orbit’ , sharing the success story of CtrlS journey and said the key differentiators which aided them in their success were Speed of deployment, Price, Power efficiency, Scalability, and 100%up time. CtrlS today has four Tier 4 rated Data Centers because they as an organization obsessed about Innovation, Alliances and expanding to Global Markets, he said. An interesting concept which helped them become a market leader was ‘creative destruction’ an out of box approach where CtrlS killed an existing  business with limited future to focus on new emerging technologies.

Andrew Edlefsen, Principal Commercial Officer U.S. Consulate spoke about how India-US trade in the last two decades has increased seven-fold to more than 146Billion dollars today. While India, he said was the 9^th largest trading partner for USA, but he saw great opportunities for companies in both the countries to increase bilateral trade and investments. He invited Indian companies to participate in the SelectUSA event which promotes investment in USA.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Bharani K Aroll, President, HYSEA and CEO,  Infopeers welcomed the participants both in person and in virtual audience to the BizSummit 2021. He said, “HYSEA has been playing a crucial role in promoting and assisting SME companies in Hyderabad. It is estimated that there are over 1500 IT/ITES/Technology companies in the SME category in Telangana who collectively employ over 50% of the working IT population. A considerable part of the state’s IT revenues comes from MSMEs and the government aims to give a further boost to this sector by crafting a special IT MSME Incentive Policy. I must say that Our state government has been very proactive and supportive towards sustainable growth of MSME’s in the Hyderabad ecosystem and in many tier 2 cities of Telangana. The latest in this direction is setting up an Advisory Committee on Telangana State IT MSME Promotion upon request from HYSEA to guide and coordinate MSME promotion activities in the state with representation from IT E& C Department, HYSEA and NASSCOM.  The principal Secretary, ITE & C Department, Govt of Telangana is the Chairman of the Advisory Committee. This committee is empowered to recommend appropriate incentives, promotional activities, and over see their effective administration during the policy term. This came to reality as HYSEA realized the challenges and difficulties faced by our SME community, particularly during the peak period of pandemic, last year and approached the Government to support with government projects”.

Mr. Kiran Cherukuri, Vice President, HYSEA and SME Forum Leader & CEO, TechEra, set the context for the day and the summit and said, “HYSEA Biz Summit 2021, focuses on unveiling the impact of the pandemic on overall growth trajectory of IT & Technology sector, especially on IT MSMEs. While planning for the summit a great deal of effort has been made to touch upon key areas of concern for all small and mid-size enterprises. Whether it is use of digital channels as a survival strategy for lead generation, transforming operations models to fuel growth or how investor community could be a growth lever for SMEs. A great set of round tables, keynotes and a distinguished line up of speakers will be touching upon a wide variety of Business Line Functions and highlight best practices, processes, models, and opportunities for growth in the new normal”, he said.   

Key Highlights of summit include: Four important round tables discussed Transformational changes that have taken place across the industries –  New  delivery models, newer processes, tools, frame works that have merged  across key organisational functions like  Delivery, HR, Talent, & Finance.

Ways of Business Development, Analyst & Advisor relationships,  Large and Integrated deal pursuits were discussed by the panel of seasoned  speakers of the Innovation in Business Development.

Investor led growth levers and access to capital is a  challenging area for MSMEs. The Investor round table with speakers drawn  from  leading Angel circuits, Venture & PE firms touched upon what do they look for while investing & how SMEs can attract the investments.

Fourth panel focussed on Emerging Opportunity Landscape across key Industry verticals like BFSI, Manufacturing, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Technology & Telecom sectors.

Distinguished Speakers at the BizSummit included: Rajesh Nambiar, Chairman & MD, Cognizant India, Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary, ITE&C Department, Mazher Hashmi, Senior Director and Executive Leader at Forrester, Saurabh Gaur, IAS, Joint Secretary Ministry of Electronics & IT, Govt of India, New Delhi, Nirvikar Jain, CEO of ISB DLabs Fund, Rajesh Manthena, Vice Chairman, Hyderabad Angels (HA) & Executive Director, Cancer Centers of America (CCA), Hyderabad, Vikarant Varshney, Cofounder & Managing Partner of SucSeed Indovation Fund, GR Reddy, Founder & Chief Facilitator, Husys Consulting Ltd, Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Chairman, CtrlS & Cloud4C, Andrew Edlefsen, Principal Commercial Officer U.S. Consulate – Hyderabad, India, Uma Gogineni, Chief Peoples Officer at VALUEMOMENTUM SOFTWARE SERVICES PVT LTD, Sandhya Rao Anappindi, VP, Head of Talent Acquisition, India at State Street, Lalit Katyal, Head of Business Finance at Tech Mahindra Ltd, R. Srinivas Rao, COO, HYSEA, Shashi Reddy, VP Engineering, Centre Head, Hyderabad at Qualcomm India Pvt. Ltd., Krishnamurthy Voora, Executive Vice President & Global Head of ADM Practice at Capgemini Technology Service India Ltd, Anuradha A, Executive Partner, Client Services Leader, IBM, Venugopal Reddy Kandimalla, Senior Vice President, Global Head Healthcare Lifesciences at Tech Mahindra Ltd, Kiran Cherukuri, Vice President – HYSEA & CEO, TechEra, Meenu Bagla, Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer at CYIENT LTD., Puneet Gupta, AVP & Large Deals Integrator, Global Markets, Infosys Ltd., Sairam Vedam, CMO, Innominds, & Kishore Borra, MD at Energy Tech Global.

Mr. Isaac Rajkumar, Managing Director, Opentext and Joint Secretary, HYSEA delivered the vote of thanks.