Stricter H1B Policies Will Curb Contribution Of Indian IT Professionals To US Economy, Says NASSCOM President Rajesh Nambiar

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India’s global science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) contributes $254 billion annually and 60% of this revenue stems from US markets.

Rajesh Nambiar, president of NASSCOM, pointed out that India’s workforce is integral to the international tech ecosystem. The country’s ability to produce a staggering number of engineering graduates—nearly seven times that of the US —positions it as a vital player in meeting global STEM demands, particularly in fields like AI, data science and cloud engineering.

“India, at this point has the world's best talent pool. And I think we continue to be the sort of the global talent hub for the world, especially given the importance of STEM,” Nambiar said. “This talent pipeline doesn’t just fill roles in traditional tech hubs like California but also fuels growth in emerging hubs like South Dakota and Nebraska, where tech skills are scarce,” he added.

He also said that the U.S. has faced significant shortages in STEM and digital talent. So the demand for these skills is expected to continue to outpace non-stem roles through 2030. This is across the world, more so in the United States as well. So the Indian technology sector has been critical and instrumental in bridging these gaps.

With a new US president, another concern is if there would be any changes expected to the H1B visa regulations. Will it become stricter than it is now? Nambiar believes that over the years, the US presidency—regardless of which party holds office—has not significantly altered India’s overall performance in the STEM and IT sectors.

“Historically, we have managed to navigate shifts in leadership successfully. However, when we get into the specifics, programs like H1B visas, which form the backbone of skilled talent mobility, remain critical given the persistent demand for STEM talent in the US,” he added.

Here are edited excerpts from the interview:

Rajesh, thank you so much for joining me and I'm glad to have this opportunity to speak to you as you've taken over NASSCOM as the new president. Before I start, you've been in technology and IT services for your life or all your life, but before you did that, you were actually graduating from or graduated from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta.

I'm sure many of your colleagues have not taken the same path as you have, having encountered some of them along the way. What would you have done if you were not here or not in technology?

Great question. thank you, Govind. First of all, it's an honour to be a part of your show. Thank you for inviting me for this conversation.

Well, you're right. I mean, you know, if you look at Indian Statistical Institute, not many people have ended up in the tech ecosystem,but if I hadn't chosen this path, I'm absolutely I would have gone out and maybe hopefully would have done a little bit more education, gotten a PhD or something and then entered into the education field is what I would think.

It was always a passion for me to be teaching, but I think the math and stat, which the Indian Statistical Institute teaches was a little bit too much for me. And I think you need to be a lot more brainy than I am to somebody to succeed in that field. So I took the little bit easier route of being in technology.

And at that point, I'm sure you disappointed your family because this sounds like the kind of thing a family in India would expect their children to do.

Yeah, absolutely. Certainly some of the people are disappointed that I didn't pursue a PhD and then do something a little bit deeper in math and stat. But I thought this is a little bit more in the world at that point in time.

Everybody was jumping into computers and technology and consulting and all of that. I must tell you that it was a little bit of an easier path I chose at that point.

Speaking about math and stat, Rajesh, the one of the things that defines the competitiveness of Indian software, the Indian software workforce or the IT workforce is our ability in math and stats or and so on. I mean, including the whole STEM universe. Tell us about where you see where we stand today as a country, as our workforce in the global marketplace for talent, in the competitive marketplace for talent?

Oh, absolutely. I think there is no question that. India, at this point in time, has the world's best talent pool. And I think we continue to be the sort of the global talent hub for the world, especially given the importance of STEM.

A lot of people ask me this question— with the new US president, the second term of Donald Trump, would there be a bigger impact for us? I've always said this.

Look, broadly, when you look at strategically, there isn't much of an impact whether it is the democratic government or a Democrat government or a Republican government, I think you've always had enjoyed the right level of focus with the U.S. and the talent hub that we have. The reason I'm talking about the U.S. is because above 60% of our, yeah, that's one of the top of the mind. The other one going is that above 60% of our $254 billion revenue with this industry creates comes from the United States.

That's very important market for us. But practically, the fact that they know that the new president, etc, we will have, we will certainly experience a bunch of things which are very different from what it is. While we have to wait and watch on the actual policies, and Trump is also very big on executive orders, and so on, so forth.

So you will find some of that coming up soon. But the U.S. historically faced significant shortages in STEM and digital talent. So with the demand for these skills are expected to continue to outpace non stem roles through 2030.

This is across the world, more so in the United States as well. So the Indian technology sector has been very critical and instrumental in bridging these gaps. And you talked about what is the play for the Indian ecosystem, whether it is math or technology.

So we've been playing this sort of bridging these talent gap for many countries, including the United States, particularly in states outside of the traditional tech hubs. What I mean is that you have in the US, you find this technology hubs, whether it's New Jersey, Chicago, and so on. So that the Bay Area, of course, California, but we've also been able to provide these talents, not just in these hubs, but the hubs that you don't think of naturally, South Dakota, for example, or Nebraska, these are the areas where very hard to find tech talent.

And then that's something which the Indian technology ecosystem has played a phenomenally big role in filling those technology gaps as well.

Right, so let's break down some of those things. So one is, let's say the talent that has to onshore. And that could be or that could see or face some challenges in the coming administration.

And we'll come to that in a moment. But let's first talk about the extent of integration that we already have, whether as companies who are working with clients onshore, whether with people or without people. And the second, of course, is the reverse, which is, let's say, the entire GCC universe.

And we've seen now, the acceleration pick up to a point that several new GCCs are coming on board every day, or in the year. So between the two, how is it all evolved? I mean, shaping up or how is it scaling up?

You mean that the talent system between the services companies and the GCCs?

My question really is links to the strength of the bridge between the two countries. I mean, before we come to, let's say, the challenges that we'll face.

Oh, phenomenal. I think if you look at the between India and the US, the technology relationship or technology trade relationship is certainly at a critical juncture, one which is, of course, as you mentioned, they're both challenges and opportunity, but there are more opportunity than actually challenges in many ways, right? India's effectively capitalised on the shifting trade dynamics.

And obviously, there's arbitrage in that equation, but it is more about technology arbitrage than the labour arbitrage over a period of time. Plus, we also finding that there's an innovation arbitrage. So this is giving us a comparative edge over anybody any other country which has a relationship with the United States.

So I believe that we're going to broadly, be very, very successful. And even, you know, we talked about the second administration, second term of Trump administration we could also not just in technology, but even otherwise, I think can accelerate the supply chain diversification, not just in our own sector, but also in sectors such as pharmaceutical, textiles, etc. So I think I believe that there is a great opportunity here for the industry to capitalise on.

Right. And let's come to the onshore part and the migration of talent. Now, one of the challenges that we could potentially face is obviously, you know, areas like H1B visas.

And while there are a lot of tariff, let's say, potential tariff walls, that is unlikely to affect services, at least that's how it looks right now. So tell us about H1B visas and that part of the challenge and to how is the industry or how is NASSCOM looking at that?

As I mentioned before, broadly, I think that you look at a very high level, look at over a period of time, we have done decently well, irrespective of which party actually came to the presidency in the United States. So having said that, if you get down to the brass tacks, and then I also mentioned earlier on the need for the same talent in the United States. So clearly, H1B types of programmes, H1B being the majority of that.

So talent migration is a big topic for all of us, talent mobility. So the stricter H1B policies will definitely restrict skill talent mobility from India to the United States, that's a very known fact. And this will affect the sort of the contributions of the Indian IT professionals to the US economy.

So limiting this talent flow, if you tend to have some policies around it, could definitely pose substantial challenges to the U.S. growth to begin with. And, of course, the innovation at a time where the demand for skilled professionals is crucial for sustaining their industry competitiveness in many ways. So of course, this I'm talking from the U.S. side of the equation, of course, there will be impact from India side equally as well.

So specifically, when we are talking about H1B visas, I want to also mention Govind that the biggest takers of H1B are actually the top US companies. This is something which is not a very fully known fact across the board, right? And they're also the obviously that are very top spenders in R&D.

So we have done some analysis. And then according to that the H1B beneficiary approval data from the U.S. citizenship and immigration services. So India's tech industries, take all our Indian companies, whether it is TCS, Wipro, Infosys, HCL, all of them put together, they've actually brought down their dependency on the H1B employment. They've brought it down by 60% in the last eight years, if you see it was huge, I mean, there is the H1B, L1B category visas, eight years ago, that has come down by 60%.

But in the same period, use of these same visas soared by 189% at the likes of the Amazons, Googles, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, all of them combined. So the U.S. based organisations use these visas a lot more to bring in talent from India, than the India based employees.

I mean, the effect is probably the same if you really look at the talent mobility, I just want to make a point that this is not just an India problem, but it's also a broad technology issue. And then it will affect the U.S. economy equally. When you look at it, the key though, Govind, we need to de-link it from the illegal immigration and the broader immigration issues, talent mobility for specialised industries like U.S. will have to be seen very differently from what they are dealing with in the from illegal immigration policy.

Right, yeah, you're right. I think the issues are completely different. But I think in the campaigning, there seems to be some convergence in the way it is being depicted.

But let me come back, I'll come back to that in a short while. But when you talk about industry, that's Indian industry, which is the Indian IT majors and so on bringing down the H1B dependence by 60%. Does that also suggest that there is some structural changes in the way business is being done or projects are being delivered?

Well, two things, if you broadly see, one is these companies have learned to be a little bit more reliant on the local talent. So you find more and more of these companies are hiring from local universities, creating an ecosystem, acquiring companies with a certain talent base within the United States. So that's one part of it.

That means you're creating some local talent base, which is support what we need to do. Second is also the offshoring of all of them. In a sense, if in a project when you initially had 20% onsite and 80% offshore, now you're looking at a maybe a 10% onsite and a 90% offshore.

So ability for you and especially if at all there is something which the pandemic has taught us, it actually taught us to getting this work done from anywhere in the world, which also means that there is a, there's an increased buy-in, if you may, from the from a customer base broadly, who can say that no you don't necessarily have to have somebody sitting next to me in my office in New York, you can actually do this from wherever you want to do.

That's why the not only the tier one cities in India, but even the tier two, tier three cities are gearing up to meet some of this demand. So that has also given a little bit of not too much, but a little bit of easing of the dependency on the H1B.

Right. So let's, let's talk a little bit about the outlook for the industry, maybe the next year or next couple of years, at least, how are you seeing things as we've come out of this whole and appears to be, I mean, it appears that we've now emerged from the post pandemic phase, and things are normalising at least we can see that in the rest of the economy. So how are you seeing things?

Quite honestly this is a very mixed bag. I see both lots of opportunities. And of course, there are challenges as well. This is very unique, because I find they're very well balanced, you know, there are depending on that's why it is very gets to a company specific discussion when how they're actually leveraging this.

So let me give you a sense of what I'm talking about. On one side, we have the let's say the global macroeconomic uncertainties, we have the geopolitical tensions that we have, you and I keep watching every day in the news. These are resulting in supply supply chain challenges.

This, of course, cast a shadow the broader landscape. So these factors have led to definitely subdued discretionary spending. You know, from the startup ecosystem point of view, we're finding a little bit prolonged funding winter, and a little bit of a cautious investor sentiment.

That's what you're seeing on the one side. And let's call it for example, our headwinds, if you may. So on the other hand, several tailwinds present a very, very contrasting picture of optimism.

How do I say that? So you look at the accelerated adoption of AI, suddenly, you're finding a lot of green shoots where people are doubling down on what they need to do around AI, generative AI and what they need to get done, sustained growth in tech investments, we're finding a really good growth in those tech investments, rapid expansion in the domestic market. I know, going there, I don't know whether you've noticed that trend.

The last year, we actually grew faster in our domestic market than the overseas or the what we call export market, which is a fantastic statement to how the industry in India is developing double digit growth in the GCCs. You talked about the GCC segment and why they need to, we need to pay attention to that phenomenal growth, a very, very heightened focus on our engineering and R&D, ER&D as we call it, they've been growing really well, a very, very vibrant and fairly diverse deep tech startup ecosystem. And of course, increasing funding for generative AI startups, all of these collectively is signalling a very, very healthy growth trajectory.

So I talked about the headwinds first, and this is the sort of the bunch of tailwinds. So very balanced. I believe that we are on the bottom of those, the cycle and that we're going in the upward trajectory.

But time will tell how this all shapes up. So I'm very, very bullish, very positive, if you look at what is it, what is it to come.

You did talk about 60% of India's IT service revenue, that's $250 billion coming from the United States. Now, the US economy has been very strong in the last year, and has also seen growth rates, which have not been seen for decades. So all of this means that companies in America, I mean, the geopolitics apart, but the companies are doing well, which logically means that they should be investing more in IT and technology and expansion, including, obviously, absorbing AI. What does all of this mean for Indian IT companies, at least as we stand here right now?

The industry is certainly moving towards a very intelligent and a resilient transformation. So this is capable of absorbing certain amount of volatility, of course, beyond a certain level, everybody will find it hard to deal with this volatility. But, and I believe that the industry is all set to build a very sustainable growth model.

And you're finding that the new, the kind of the tailwinds I mentioned, especially around pivoting into the AI, generative AI, looking at, a broader understanding of our customer base, all of that is actually very positive for the industry. If you look at the ecosystem around deep tech and AI startups, you know, those guys are also been doing really, really well. So I believe that the broader industry is definitely poised to grow.

And then I think extremely positive when I look at what the companies are trying to do.

Right, and I'll come to deep tech and startups AI in some more detail in a moment. I was talking to Sanjeev Jain at Wipro, on the same series, a few weeks ago, and he was talking about how they've done sort of knowledge transfer to 240,000 employees, including their top brass on AI and AI applications. And then, of course, how they've applied AI within their own company, which I'm sure is the case with other companies as well.

But if I were to ask you for a mood check of sorts, rather than a specific response, how would you say, is Indian IT, as in a broad sense, coping with the advent of AI? To what extent do you feel, or how happy are you as you see the absorption and assimilation to really move to the next stage of then delivering high end projects and so on for clients world over?

I think it's a little bit of a mixed bag, there is so much of optimism around the potential of AI, let's put it this way, especially with the advent of generative AI, we find that more and more POCs are getting built. So if you listen to any of the company's earnings preview, you'll hear that there is so much of optimism around how much they're working in AI, the narratives around the discussion of what they're having with the customers are all around AI. Now, has that, has it been translated into real large enterprise level project?

The answer is really no, right. And that's where I think the gap is going to be. And but there's the potential for having some of that is very, very high.

And I believe that there is also enough discussions around responsible AI, and are we really making sure that we are doing this in the right way? Are we building those AI systems the right way? Are we building enough security and cybersecurity into some of these AI systems so that we'll make sure that this will go the right way.

All of those conversations are beginning to happen as we stand now. Obviously, there's a lot of discussion on the jobs as well. And if you want, we can get into the details on what the impact of AI is going to be on the job.

So I believe there is sufficient conversations beginning to show some initial results. We haven't seen any large impact on the enterprise system. Of course there'll always be phenomenal effect on the productivity of individuals, you will find a lot of use cases around transforming customer service, for instance, going that something which all of us pick up.

All of that is we're seeing, but we are yet to see any large scale enterprise level, you know, impact on this one.

So when you say large scale enterprise, you're saying that, let's say a BFSI client sitting in America is not yet putting out large AI transformation contracts. Is that or are you speaking more internally?

No, I think it's both. I mean, these companies have, of course, internally, you do a lot of productivity enhancing measures with using AI and generative AI, for sure. But if you as you rightly said, if you look at a large BFSI client, have they found a phenomenal use case where they could apply generative AI and ensure that they're transforming the company at this today?

I haven't seen much of those large scale enterprise case cases. I mean, of course, don't mistake it for lack of activity. I mean, you find a lot of activity.

But at the end of the day so those activity will have to culminate in something which is really big. And I haven't seen anything at this point in time. And just certainly seen a lot of productivity gains clearly automating the customer service, all of that is happening.

And very specific nuances around creating, for instance even cyber resilience, etc, using AI. So you will always find those good use cases, which we can leverage. But we are yet to see some of those enterprise level transformation use cases using generative AI.

So then let me ask you the flip question. I'm reminded, I think it was in a discussion, perhaps where NASSCOM was the host. And someone telling me that while we are talking about advanced, let's say, computing systems, and so on, that many BFSI clients at that time, this must have been a few years ago, were actually looking for fairly age old programming languages, because their ATMs needed that.

And that is what their requirement was at that point. So in a way, are you saying that some of the biggest contracts and business requirements will still be to do with most likely more traditional AI with a, sorry, traditional IT and IT services with a sprinkling of AI?

No, no it's obviously a combination. You cannot move away from what we have today. So technology shift, while it is rapid you'll really find that AI and generative AI, etc, will catch up in terms of doing a lot of new systems. Let's not underestimate the power of some of the systems, current technology systems, be it traditional legacy, etc, that doesn't go away in a jiffy, right eventually, I mean, over a longer period of time, they might get replaced even today, with the advent of any technology that you see, you still have a lot of legacies left, right?

You still have people still have to run their core systems day in and day out. And to your point, you know, look at the languages that being used, right? I mean, today, if I go out and ask, which is the most popular computing or programming language the answer actually is English, right?

Because of the fact that you could technically not know any of the programming languages to really start to doing some customisation and programming, etc. And that's a transformation that we have arrived. But does it mean that there are no programmers required?

The answer is definitely no, because there's, as I said, a significant piece of over 90% of the systems have no AI influence at this point in time. So that will continue to gradually change over a period of time and not in a hurry, definitely not.

Right. And that brings us to now the job landscape and how that is changing. So in the last year or so, we've definitely seen Indian IT companies shrink, and maybe expand a little bit once again, but the shrinking has happened for the first time in decades quite clearly. So where do you see that? And what is sort of driving the jobs paradigm? Is it changing technologies? Is it slow down in business? Is it a structural change in the nature of business or something else?

So the numbers that you're referring to are as too many parameters which is going into it to make what the trend that you see. First of all, the good news is that after several quarters of quote, unquote, the headcount top, the total headcount decline for some of these companies, they've all have actually registered a little bit of a growth this quarter, I don't know that he noticed it. So which is a good news that I think people have finally turned around that, that broader employment, you know, curve, if you may.

The second thing is that this happens because of several parameters. And I'll come to the Genev, generative AI and the impact it's trying to emit in a bit. But you know, that there are several factors, some of it is efficiency factor when you know, things got really, you know, tight, people looked at inwards and made it more efficient.

People used tools to make the most of what they want to get done. I don't know whether there was a lot of AI productivity impact, but there was a little bit of those, certainly, but there was also other things, for example, getting a little bit more efficiency, looking at positioning what they were trying to do internally into what they could do for a client, a lot of stuff happened for that period of temporary decline that you saw in some of those headcount numbers. Now, coming to AI, I've always said this, right? I don't think AI will replace jobs.

People with AI will replace people without AI, let's put it this way, right, which means that you will still find some churn in the lower end of the spectrum, you will still find people are doing mundane jobs, they're not able to apply their specific capabilities and skill set, they don't understand AI, and the especially generative AI and the impact of what they could do with their jobs, there is definitely a churn, which is going to happen. I'm not suggesting in terms of the numbers maybe the total number of jobs getting created, maybe even higher than the total number of jobs getting replaced.

That's something which we'll wait and see how that all spans out. But there is certainly this notion saying that people with AI will might end up replacing people without AI. And we are also witnessing, as I mentioned before, a sequential increase in hiring finally, you know, quarter on quarter, you know, with a little bit of a boost in demand.

Companies also, by the way, improve their current utilisation levels, right? While attrition kind of remains unchanged over a period of time. So that's not a factor.

We're very, very optimistic that when we look forward to the next couple of quarterly results to see where this trend is becoming a reality, or it's only a aberration that the fact that we have increased increase in hiring. But I can tell you this, though, the demand for digitally skilled talent continues to remain unchanged. I don't think that we saw much of a much of a change in that.

And it's also imperative that we should strengthen our capabilities in niche areas, niche tech areas, we talked about some of those new technology areas, and also the focus on, you know, broader skill development in emerging technologies, business fundamentals, you know, for this industry to sort of have a long term success in the coming years.

So you talked, you touched on deep tech and AI startups or startups in general as well, and some of the challenges that they faced on funding, but you also said that, you know, things are easing out. When we talk about technology today, and including AI, we are also obviously touching on the hardware side of it, which we perhaps would not so much earlier. And when I say hardware, I mean, semiconductors, you've written about the big challenges of, let's say, the Nvidia H100 GPUs, and how it's revolutionising the tech world, but also taking up energy usage and energy costs.

So we have to think about a few more things than we used to perhaps earlier. So what are your thoughts here in as we try and build this whole semiconductor ecosystem, we invest in high performance chips, which comes with its own sort of challenges? And how should India be looking at all of this?

Oh, there's a lot there. Let me start with the first part that you talked about the deep tech and AI startups. So if you, the global downturn in startup funding, and you have also seen there's an impact on the Indian deep tech clearly, it's cost a little bit of a deep tech startup ecosystem, right?

In the calendar year 2023, Indian deep tech startups secured roughly about 850 million in investments. That was a decline of 77% over the year 2022. So it was a definitely there was a bit of an issue with AI startups garnering a majority of this because now there's also an AI slant to it.

And whether good or bad, I think people were the people with sort of AI in there, whatever they're trying to do, received a little bit of better positioning compared to those without AI in some sense. Both the early and late stage deals have witnessed a reduction of roughly about 60% this year. Now, this downturn is actually you can sort of say, primarily attributed to the smaller average investment sizes at both the seed stage as well as the late stage and the investors remaining a little bit cautious, largely due to the extended gestation period in, you know, typical of these ventures in some sense.

Now, if you look at specifically into the Gen AI startup investments, the country's Gen AI ecosystem has demonstrated very strong and a little bit broad-based growth with certainly significant advancement in innovation, funding, talent development, all of that. Now, in the quarter two of 2025, Gen AI startup funding witnessed roughly about 6x quarter on quarter search, which is good, right, fuelled primarily by the B2B platforms and productivity solutions and so on so forth. So funding was actually, it gained a little bit of momentum in the quarter that I mentioned, second quarter of 2025, with a record of 20 funding rounds, which I thought was great, marking a very, very strong recovery.

After as I mentioned before, the very sluggish Q1, I think Q2 we picked up a little bit. So anyway, long story short, I think I see a lot of recovery in those funding areas as well. The quarter of course, globally saw about four new unicorns in the space.

So pretty good, broadly. Now, having said all of that, while India is ranked number three in the technology startup ecosystem, it is at the sixth position when it comes to deep tech startups globally. So we need to do better in the deep tech ecosystem, much better than what we're doing today.

A lot of positive things, but still, startup must shift their focus from valuation games into sort of really value creation in some sense. So those are all the things that we need to be careful about. Now, the second part of your question was around semiconductors.

That's a very hot topic at this point in time, and I'm just coming fresh from Dubai, we had the NASSCOM Executive Council had an offsite and then we had lots of discussions around semiconductors. So in some sense, we believe that it's a great opportunity for companies to sort of look at it seriously. We had the likes of Micron doing just fabulous jobs in terms of creating whatever they're doing with a very significant investment, as you know, Govind.

So that's a good thing. We're also looking at it from the point of view, saying that, you know, where are the adjacencies? For instance you're familiar with this ER&E ecosystem that we have within NASSCOM, and that has been growing leaps and bounds.

Now, in some sense, they are better poised to serve the semiconductor industry, they can extend that whatever they're doing. So we're also looking at some of the opportunity for them to get a little bit more involved in, because they've already been involved in high tech manufacturing, high tech serving some of these, the likes of the NVIDIA's and Apple's of the world. So how do you make sure that the semiconductor ecosystem is served by this group?

So that's something which we need to see, or probably create a separate focus around what we want to do with semiconductors. So traditionally, I think, we had stayed away from, you know, the true hardware, true semiconductor industry, but I believe, you know, it's a time for us to truly look at them and say, what is the impact? Because there is more getting packed onto the silicon these days, and software than the traditional hardware that we are used to, or we have tried to sort of look at it differently.

Now I think with the semiconductor focus that we have as a country, I believe that we cannot let that pass by, I think there is so much focus around what everybody, how does the rest of the ecosystem serve this industry, and try to build a viable ecosystem for semiconductor in India is going to be the topic for us as well.

And this is something that I'd love to come back and do a separate conversation on, because this is so fascinating about how, you know, the sort of the ground has shifted, in some ways from our traditional separated worlds of hardware and software. So I'm going to definitely come back on this. No, I say 100% agree.

Yeah.

Last couple of questions. So what is we talked about deep tech and AI startups. And you also talked about how there are areas within that, which is Gen AI, for example, where you've seen now a fund, you know, resurgence or surgence. Now, what are you going to, what are you telling people who are starting out in this space? Or what would you like to tell them, particularly if they're thinking about diving into this right now? I mean, what are the areas that they can look at? What are the kind of specific use cases that people would either want to fund, or actually, more importantly, want to use in their enterprises?

One of the things, which is still a challenge in this area would be this patient capital, as we know, right. And that's something which is we've always struggled with it as an industry. And while we have made some progress, we'll continue to have the same issue.

So for somebody who's starting up now, I think it's very important for them to focus on the solution that they're creating. And what problem are you really trying to solve? Because if they get too caught up in technology, I don't think they're going to succeed too much.

Because, you know, it is very easy for people to get carried away by generative AI or AI, deep tech, and all of this, and then try and take a very technology view of things, then I don't know whether that will go too far. In my mind, if they're creating they're starting up something, which will truly solve a problem, or address a great opportunity for the industry for the human kind, that would be probably what I would I would start and then leverage the technology such as generative AI or AI quantum doesn't matter what it is, if you can leverage those technology to solve the problem, but if you start with technology, I think you'll end up in the wrong place. I honestly believe that if you start with something which is profound, something which is meaningful, something which you want to really solve, and then use technology to solve that problem, then I think you'll get better and you'll get ease of funding for you to sort of really go out and make sure that you're building something which will be sustainable. And then I feel that you'll succeed, the chances of you succeeding will be far higher.

We met with a lot of startups last week, when we were in Dubai they were leveraging the the DIFC ecosystem, the DIC ecosystem, they're all places who actually encourage the startups to do something really well. And we found that the the startups are really solving some really good, deep problems for the human kind, as opposed to sort of saying that I'm going to be a startup, right? That becomes a little bit in my mind, that is unless you're creating technology, which is fine you can always create technology such as a deep tech company will do, which is fine.

But if you're trying to build a solution, I think you want to start from a problem rather than a technology.

And when you talk about jobs, and you've dwelt on that detail already, again, what's your advice to young engineers who are entering the workforce? And I'm sure you get asked this question every time.

But the question is relevant, literally every six months, because things change. So what would you be, what are you telling them today? Or what would you like to tell them today, in terms of gearing themselves up for this opportunity that we have in Indian IT, or for that matter, even global IT?

So go in, and honestly, I think when you look at this today, if I were to give, make a suggestion or recommendation, I think people have to double down on this capability called learnability. I'll tell you why, what I mean, because today we are talking about generative AI, you know, I can guarantee to you that three years down the line, we're going to talk about something totally different. So if somebody is doing their undergrad, and then they invest all their time and money and energy on, on learning generative AI is a good thing.

But no, let's make sure that they're also able to pivot into something new, you know, come three months, three years down the line. And hence, fundamentally, if you cultivate this skill set called learnability, which means that your ability to switch into anything different, maybe an adjacency, maybe not, that is the biggest skill set you need to acquire in today's world not double down on one technology or the other, broadly looking at saying that can I, can I be a lifelong learner and then ability for me to switch from one to the other should be very seamless. Because, you know, if you double down on one technology or the other, you can 100% guaranteed that, you know, three, four years down the line, you're going to be looking at, you know, you'll be obsolete, and then you have to look at something differently.

So the days where you learned one thing, you worked on the same thing for your entire career, and you're retired, that's no longer exist anymore, right?

So you got to be, you know, you got to be learning something and then knowing fully well, that what I'm learning today will not be useful for me in three years down the line. I think that's what technology has done to us, right? You know, the rapid pace at which technology evolves means that you got to be a technologist, not by learning one thing or the other, but ability for you to learn anything new.

So learnability is my top pick on that.

Right, last question, Rajesh, and I can give you a few seconds to prepare. What's the best times that you've seen and the most challenging times that you've seen? And what's the one or two takeaways from that?

Best times and challenging times overall in life?

Overall, in all these years in IT. And what would you take away from that? Or what can we take away from that, that will help be useful today in this, this very interesting time, going back to our early questions about, you know, Trump and this new world and so on?

One of the things for the industry, let's talk about the industry, each company would have gone through the cycle very differently, individuals would go through this differently. But if I look at the Indian IT services industry as a whole, then I would say the pivotal moment for us was clearly the Y2K, if I go back in history. Why am I saying that?

Because that's an opportunity that we saw ability for us to demonstrate as an industry, we were able to, you know, solve that broader problem for the world, and truly pivot and then make the rest of the world known the capabilities of what India could do, the Indian technology systems to do. The reason why I'm picking on on Y2K is because, remember, when come first of January 2000, the all the businesses that you've built over that last three or four years on the Y2K, solving the Y2K issue vanished overnight. So the, the clearly the whole industry was trying to see how do I grow from that point onwards.

And I think the industry took a phenomenal, you know, I would say a very resilient move of saying, now that we know these systems so well, customer systems so well, can we build a business around maintaining those systems? Can we build a business around leveraging those capabilities into developing something new for our clients? That is exactly what, you know, really propelled this industry forward.

So from that time onwards, and if you look at the growth trajectory, it was just shot up instead of declining those, those revenues, because of the fact that you don't have this cash flow business, which we developed on, on Y2K, the industry actually grew better than what it was before. So that is one thing that is clearly the best moment when we were able to pivot into something new. And now, I mean, the most opportunistic moment at this stage is exactly something similar.

What got us here will not get us to where we want to go, right? I mean, this is a pivotal moment where people might, you know, if the promises of AI and generative AI, etc, comes true, you are gradually going to move stuff away from the traditional way of doing software development, traditional way of doing software maintenance, traditional way of addressing broader business process management, all of that is going to change significantly. Are you ready to make that move? So as an industry, we need to learn to make the pivot, learn to make that move, move into something which is fundamentally going to be different.

I believe that there is a lot that the industry could do, leveraging the data, for example, and we are very, very good at leveraging data as a country, and we produce more data than anybody else. So how do you make sure that we are able to make the shift very seamlessly from a world with everything was done in a different way to a new world, where the artificial intelligence, especially with generative AI, things are going to change for the good, and then but also will change the way we would actually live and work.

Rajesh, that was a great note to end on. Thank you so much for speaking with me. And it was a pleasure talking to you as well.

Thank you so much, Govind. Really appreciate the conversation. Thank you.