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About The Event

Atos Syntel Leaders Convergence provided an opportunity for the Academic and Industry Leader to discuss and deliberate the challenges and opportunities for Industry 4.0. This Convergence served as a common platform to discuss the current issues and challenges faced by higher education in terms of core skill development, preparedness and job opportunities for students for the new industrial revolution. The Convergence featured power panel discussions with senior industry leaders from some of the reputed organizations across sectors, who discussed, deliberated and shared about the employer’s perspective on shaping young fresh talent for Industry 4.0.

It is a great honor for me to see this from a groundbreaking ceremony to a beautiful infrastructure that the teams have set up as we speak. Through this initiative, we have placed Tirunelveli on the software global atlas. Just like we have Silicon Valley on the west coast of California of the United States, this place has the potential to become another such hotspot. Here we have created an opportunity for the locals to join us and create cutting edge software, highest quality, defect-free software that we can deliver to our customers. If you look at Japan in the 70s they were struggling with quality issues, but later the country came together, overcame the defects and became a superpower in the world of automobiles and appliances and a lot more. My vision for our country is to make it a superpower in the software world by giving the best quality code ever produced. Like I already said our center here will give a lot of opportunities to the folks to make that happen. Here we are going to start with two Fortune 500 companies that are going to start working on digital and automation projects in this center.

I am glad that we are starting our operations here in Tirunelveli today. From the Syntel perspective, we started this a few years back in 2013. Atos acquired Syntel in October 2018; as soon as the acquisition was over, we placed Tirunelveli on our global delivery map. It took six months to get it operational. Tirunelveli is an integral part of our overall global delivery operations. We have about 33 and a half thousand people in India working for Atos Syntel. We are in Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru,Chennai, and Vadodara and now in Tirunelveli. This will form a network of global delivery centers. I hope we will be able to scale our center here with the support of all the colleges and universities that are in the area. This is a part of the first phase of the multiple phases that we hope to have in Tirunelveli; the first phase of which, this building is the first one we have here in a campus spread over 25 acres.

There are two important aspects that all of us should remember. Firstly, this is going to be a part of our Atos Syntel global facility and if you look around, this facility is no inferior in any aspect to any of the world facilities we have. What it implies is that the talent here will be at par with the global talent that we work within 73 countries. Secondly, as an organization, we don’t exist by ourselves, we exist within a community, so today when we planned the inauguration, we wanted to celebrate our colleagues’ hard work and fill the facility with business. Moreover, this is our community, so we decided to bring in ICT Academy so that we can build an ecosystem that has not just Atos Syntel but also everyone around us.

Power Panel- Technology Leadership

Tirunelveli is a region which is far away from the metropolitan cities, but our students are very talented but the only thing is that they lack exposure to city culture and other developments. In this context, my request to ICT Academy and Atos Syntel is that it will be really helpful for the students if you are able to come up with internship opportunities for our students, helping them get rid of their fears and make them more confident.
 

Glad to be here for the Leadership Convergence. It is not just the technology but also the business that is really important. How we use and implement technology is important as well. I remember we did a project with Coca-cola where their huge problems were fixed by the effective implementation of IoT in their systems. Additionally, this center is a part of the huge global network we already have. We treat and expect our people equal; we expect productivity, innovation and dedication in them

This is the most expected day for us, especially for everyone in Tirunelveli. I feel honored that I am part of this day. I can assure Atos Syntel that this facility in Tirunelveli will have the best of all the facilities in the global delivery operations. There are a few reasons why I believe this; the quality of the colleges in this region. We have one of the finest colleges in this part of India. The student base is great; the faculties are very good that this place is exporting teachers to the rest of Tamil Nadu. The reach is so high that you will be able to find at least one teacher from Tirunelveli in any part of India.

It is a great milestone for the people residing in Tirunelveli to have their own IT Park. In 2008, the government conducted an event called empowering Tirunelveli. When I came for that program the land acquisition for this IT Park was going on. The event happened on 19th and 20th of January 2008. On day one, we had around 18,000 students and on day two around 16,000 students. It was a huge program with the presence of around 55 corporates from across India, and Syntel was also one of the corporates that participated. From then the discussion went on and we were in talks with Syntel and few other corporates. Then Syntel came up expressing interest in Tirunelveli. After the acquisition, my only hope was that even Atos should be interested in this venture, and they were.

Panel Discussion – HR Trends on Industry 4.0

We are in an exciting time, fortunate to see this whole revolution happening while we are a part of the academic, corporate and various institutions, and we will be a part of the whole journey of Industry 4.0. The world around us because of Industry 4.0 is disrupting. All the businesses we are into are seeing huge disruption. We are now seeing a whole new convergence of various new technologies, which impact the whole current business models. Every company has to go through this disruption in order to survive this. So this calls for a different type of leadership and skills. In order to adapt to this, we will have to transform ourselves. To cope with this, Atos Syntel has come up with new programs and models to hire talents from not just top tiers colleges but also of colleges from rural areas.

Our philosophy is we focus more on looking at the right attitude rather than looking at the knowledge and skills from the fresher perspective. The reason being, it is easier to teach a skill but it’s not the same with attitude. Attitude is underlying nature which each individual has. Our philosophy is to hire for attitude and train for skills. With this, we have been extremely successful as a company. One common thing that we see among freshers is that their aspirations are very different when they graduate. Most of the students want to become software engineers even thou there are lot other domains that can be equally rewarding. We hire the graduates and put them under assessment constantly, to know where their actual interest lies. And we have our own academy to achieve that.

One initiative that Syntel started almost 10 years back had a huge impact creating a change among industries; through the hiring model Syntellect. Now rather than going to colleges and hiring, they created a platform for the students to take part in an examination and if they have the right skill set, they will be selected for the interview. Now even various large corporates are trying to adopt this model. The trend here right now is, we will have to work together to make sure our students’ quality is on par with the company’s expectations. So, no matter what corporates are trying to hire, the students will be prepared. This is the trend setting in right now.