Digitization can help India leapfrog others: John Chambers
New Delhi: Digitization presents India with a chance to leapfrog other nations to become the global technology leader, John Chambers, executive chairman of Cisco Systems Inc., said on Friday.
“For India, which has been a slow follower (in technology adoption), this is a chance to leapfrog and become a technologically advanced country,” said Chambers while addressing the EmTech India event organized by MIT Technology Review and Mint in New Delhi.
Digitization is revolutionary but brutal, said Chambers, who is also the chairman of US-India Business Council.
“Majority of the companies going forward will become digital. But 40% of existing companies today will not survive the next 5 to 10 years,” he said.
“Only those who can reinvent themselves in the process will be able to survive,” he said, adding that in order to increase longevity, every company in the world has to become digital.
“Digital is basically the capability to get innovation done faster,” Chambers said. “Digitization is how you innovate and how you change business processes. It is how you will disrupt the existing systems.”
According to Chambers, the digital economy will be worth $19 trillion (around Rs.6,000 trillion today) in the next 10 years and digitization is the biggest change ever, which will have 10 times greater impact than that of the Internet.