The three days that I spent at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2009 left an everlasting impression on my thought process. With a number of reputed names in the IT circle interacting with each other, I was bound to listen.

As predicted, the most important topic of discussion was ‘Recession’. Lately, this term has found its way into the psyche of perhaps every business entity in India and abroad. Mr. Shashi Tharoor, in one of his speeches, has rightly said that there is an immediate impact of any development, positive or negative, taking place in the US, in India.

In context with the Leadership Forum, the same thought was clearly reflected in coffee table discussions as well as sessions at the Forum. The ‘concern’ of most senior executives was the current volatile situation, particularly that in the Indian IT Industry. All of them unanimously agreed that the downturn was quite unprecedented, and that the same would have a long-lasting effect.

It was quite interesting to listen to the different ‘solutions’ proposed by the business think-tank for the common problem doing rounds in the Indian IT Industry- Downturn. C.K. Prahalad emphasized on the importance of ‘unique personal experience’ with regards to future services. His views hinted at the fact that the economy would gradually shift towards the Pay-as-you-go model. And solutions would also need to be closer to businesses as compared to rigid ‘boxed’ systems.

I was all ears to Sharad Sharma (CEO, Yahoo! R&D) and Ashish Gupta (Managing Director-Investment Advisor, Helion VC) delivering their respective speeches on- How Niche companies can make the most of the crisis. Their speeches conveyed that specialization is the order of the day. The seminar on “Hard Times, Slow Economy, Sales Slump – will it get worse? Will you survive?” addressed by Nandan Nilekani (Infosys), S Ramadorai (TCS), Vineet Nayar (HCL) and Denny McGuire (TPI) surely motivated me to sit and introspect.

The gloomy picture of recession that’s etched in our minds was transformed into that of optimism when eminent speakers shared their ‘solutions’ for dealing with downturn. Among many others, cost effectiveness, increasing operational efficiency, infrastructure consolidation, exploiting existing assets to the fullest, and the most important- customer experience were some of the important solutions that impressed me. I couldn’t help but wonder that it’s extremely close to what I advise my clients to look out for, and felt more confident that Drishti is on the right track.

Mr. Kamal Nath, Hon’ble Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, said while addressing the inaugural session of the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2009 “The Indian information technology (IT) industry has flown the India flag high but we have for long looked outward. It is now time to look inward and maybe the current global crisis will trigger some inward looking”. His views instilled the much needed ‘hope’ we Indians badly need at trying times like this. Moreover, his tagline ‘Next practices as opposed to Best practices’ is indeed something to ponder upon.

I was particularly fascinated by the statement of C.K. Prahalad that it’s important to support small enterprises, as it’s quite difficult for large companies to thrive without them in the business ecosystem.

One of the interesting discussions during Mergers and Acquisition session and Cloud computing session was about Software as a Service (SaaS). There were different views on whether the Enterprise will adopt SaaS first to deliver growth fast or would SME be early adopter due to pressure of being more automated and efficient but keeping costs minimal. In the same session Mr. Sanjeev Agarwal (Helion) mentioned that non-Indian products that can first cater to India, then emerging economies and then developed economies would do well. It’s time we looked ‘inwards’. It’s time we do some brainstorming, not only to ward off recession, but also to emerge as organizations that can shape the global business scenario.