“No doubt you can learn much more in a start-up than in a stable, established company, but there are other factors, such as peer pressure, personality type, and parents’ involvement in decision-making that affect a student’s inclination towards joining a startup” says Sameer Nagpal, National Head – Institutions.

1. In Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s version
of the Big Billion sales day, called Singles’ Day,
Alibaba reports sales of $14.32 billion!
PAGE
13TechnomicsTHURSDAY | 12 NOVEMBER 2015 | BENGALURUDECCAN CHRONICLE
Automation is about
to destroy entire
industries, jobsack Hidary, serial
entrepreneur and
scion of a wealthy
New York Syrian
Jewish family, looks at
the world from many
vantage points – from
his perch in his own
energy and technology companies,
from board positions at the X Prize
Foundation and Google X Labs, and
as a key member of the Clinton
Global Initiative.
What he sees – that the rapid pace of
digital technologies and automation
is threatening to not just disrupt but
to completely destroy entire indus-
tries and push the world towards a
crisis of jobs that no country is pre-
pared for – worries him. Enough to
have spurred him to form his own
Jobs and Education Party and run,
albeit unsuccessfully, for New York
Mayor in 2013. In Bengaluru for a
recent Nasscom event, Hidary told
S. Raghotham that India, however, is
on the verge of becoming a
‘Moonshot’ economy, although it, too,
will not be immune from automation
revolution for long. Excerpts:
●● How did you get into the Clinton
Global Initiative?
I got a letter from the President to be
a founder-member of CGI. A lot of
conferences is all talk and no do. And
the same people come back every year
and yap, yap, yap. Bill Clinton felt the
same way, and said, “why don't we
start a conference in which the entry
price for next year is, you make a pub-
lic commitment this year and fulfill it.
If you don't fulfill it, you can't come
back”. I have made several public
commitments for the environment
and sustainability in the last 10 years
and I've been able to hold to them. So,
it's exciting. CGI, to me, is one of the
highlights of the whole year.
●● What’s your next big social ini-
tiative?
Distributing a 100 million smart-
phones to women micro-entrepre-
neurs, starting in four countries –
Guatemala, Indonesia, Nigeria, and
some in India. In the US, smart-
phones become obsolete in 10 months
because people are upgrading
phones that fast. Why not
save those smartphones
from becoming e-waste
and instead give
them to micro-
entre preneurs
around the
world. By doing
that, we
realised, we
could turn
these entre-
preneurs to
using digital
m o n e y
transfers,
b e c a u s e
you can put
P a y T M ,
P a y P a l ,
Mastercard
and other
p a y m e n t
methods on
these smart-
phones.
They can
then go from
selling their
artisanal jew-
elry, baskets,
clothing locally
to selling into
the big market-
places like
Snapdeal, Flipkart,
Ebay.
This leads to my thesis
that India is about to
become what I call a 'moonshot'
economy. By 'moonshot', I mean
things start to move in a non-linear
way. Normally, we are used to, say, a
GDP growth of X percent a year. In a
moonshot scenario, things suddenly
conspire together to go non-linear.
●● What factors are conspiring to
do so in India?
One, the smartphone is becoming
ubiquitous as the cost plummets.
Today, India has 300 million active
smartphones. It took 10 years to get
there. The next 300 million will take
only 4-5 years. This leads to massive
non-linear change.
The second factor is the move from a
cash economy to a digital money
economy. Indiatoday is 87 percent
cash, 1 percent credit card, 7 percent
debit, and the rest bank-to-bank
transfer. 87 percent cash. That’s hold-
ing back the economy, because cash
slows down the velocity of money,
which has a direct relationship to
GDP growth. When you have digital
transfer, money moves quickly.
But India will actually surpass the
US in digital transfers because,
unlike the US, India is becoming a
mobile-first and mobile-only econo-
my. This is the future. The future of
society of this planet is going to look
like what India is going to be in 5-7
years. It's mobile-first, mobile-only.
Third, the move from 2G to 4G
telephony. There’s no 3G in India. It’s
a joke! But I believe within 36 months,
there will be 90 percent penetration of
4G in tier 1,2,3 cities, based on what
telcos are doing here. The rise of 4G
will mean a lot more is possible on the
phone than today — education,
healthcare, financial services, e-com-
merce video, content video.
The fourth piece goes beyond digi-
tal. We won’t see a moonshot economy
in India if we don’t solve the energy
crisis. 40 percent of the country is off-
grid, another 40 percent has intermit-
tent power! But India has the opportu-
nity to leapfrog the US and Europe in
energy by not going down the same
road of a centralised system. Instead,
build a distributed system like the
Internet, and the 40 percent off-grid
population can have power on the
spot.
●● You are talking solar power?
Yes, but more important than solar
power — and this is the next wave —
battery storage. When Modi went to
Tesla recently, he went there
because…yes, electric vehicles are
exciting, but battery storage – and we
are talking refrigerator-sized packs of
10 KW lithium-ion batteries — is
more exciting.
●● Do you see that happening at
scale? We don't manufacture solar
cells, or batteries, in India.
You should not be manufacturing
these in India. The value-add is not in
manufacturing, it’s in installation,
deployment, maintenance.
●● But we do need to ‘Make in
India’ to create millions of jobs…
I agree. Unfortunately, solar, for
instance, is 90 percent automated
manufacturing. If you go to a solar
plant, you won’t see humans. You will
see a very long machine, into which
glass goes in at one end with some
chemicals, and out come solar cells at
the other end. There is one guy in a
white lab coat watching it, hitting but-
tons. That's it!
●● That’s the next big killer com-
ing, isn’t it – Automation?
This is a key point you brought up.
And think of the kind of automation
that's coming. Agriculture is set for
massive change. Tractors already have
GPS and make farming efficient. We
also have machines to harvest things
like cotton or wheat. But if you want to
harvest grapes or almonds or fig, today
it's done by hands. Now, there are mul-
tiple venture-backed companies that
are making drones with propellers,
that have hands on them and they go
autonomously— this is the new revolu-
tion: not by joystick, but autonomously
— and pick the grapes, pick the
almonds, the fig, etc., off the trees.
There are drones being trained to do
fertilisation, seeding. These drones can
shoot seeds six inches into the ground.
So, in America, in the year 1700, 85
percent of the population was involved
in agriculture. Today, it is 1.5 percent.
It's about to go to half a percent. People
don’t think about automation in agri-
culture!
Amazon bought robotics company
Kiva and transformed its warehouses.
Kiva is a machine with wheels that
picks and carries stuff to the guy put-
ting everything in the box for delivery.
It increases productivity. It also means
there will be fewer – 40 percent fewer --
people in the warehouse.
Foxconn has announced that it will
replace all one million of its workers
overthenexttenyearsthroughautoma-
tion. That's dramatic. In 6-7 years, our
mobile phones will be put together
entirely by machines, not human
hands.
●● How do you prepare for some-
thing like this? We already need 10
million jobs a year. It’s going to get
worse!
Yes, and the only way is innovation,
creativity, to create new start-ups that
will hire all these people. Traditional
companies are not going to hire all
these people. That’s why, here is the
big picture: India must move, for
example, from IT services to IT
innovation and intellectual proper-
ty (IP). How much IP is being creat-
ed in the Indian IT sector? India has
been No.1 in creating these massive
IT services companies — 300,000
people, 200,000 people. Fantastic.
But zero IP! This is a big danger
sign. We have to go to an IP-based
IT sector right now. In an IP-
based economy, there are more
jobsbecause people are needed to
address new technologies, to
develop them.
●● Is any industry immune to the
automation revolution?
My company Agent 99 in Menlo
Park runs hackathons for compa-
nies that want to innovate. A lot of
our customers are actually non-
technology companies
who wake up and ask, "Oh, I am in
the construction business, how am I
going to be disintermediated or dis-
rupted or even completely
destroyed?” Or, “I am
in the steel business, how am I going
to be disrupted?” You would think
how can a solid business like the steel
business be disrupted. Actually, the
steel business is going to be complete-
ly disrupted in the next five years.
●● How?
In buildings today, we have these
girders, crossbeams and structural
things like that made of solid steel.
But look at the Eiffel Tower. It is made
up of cross-hatches. It's hollow, not
solid. Yet, it is stronger actually,
because it has flexibility and
strength. So, a researcher at CalTech
applied digital algorithmic technolo-
gy -- humans can never do it -- and she
looked deep into the micro-level. She
realised that if she built material at
the very smallest of levels in the form
of cross-hatches, it takes 90 percent
less steel than normal structures. It's
still steel, but it’s 90 percent less steel,
and superstrong.
She has a contract with the military
to stuff 600 feet of this material, folded
like Origami, into a 40-foot container,
so that when you open the box at a
riverbed, it jumps out to the other side
of the river and forms a pontoon
bridge. In a minute, it springs out, and
tanks, personal carriers are going
over it!
This is an example in which the
business model of this very old
industry – vertically integrated steel
plants — that probably thinks it is
safe, is about to be crushed because of
an algorithm — unless they adapt.
●● You mentioned our IT industry.
They are only just now waking up
to automation…
The last thing IT services compa-
nies imagine is that they are going to
be automated out of jobs. But think
about this: desktops and servers used
to be set up by humans. Now, there’s a
configurator programme, and it’s
smart. It knows every configuration,
has machine-learning, knows the
organisation and its policies well.
Companies that adopt this software
save big time. It’s a tech company put-
ting tech people out of work.
Hellloooo!
In this round of automation, no one
is immune. One of my favourite
examples is, many restaurants in
China and Japan hire a person just to
make fresh noodles by hand right in
front of the customer. Now, there's a
robot that looks very nice, it lights up
and talks to you, and it makes noo-
dles. It costs about $10,000, works 24/7,
and lasts 10 years.
Automation in this round of robot-
ics is not just happening in the indus-
trial setting, it's happening at the con-
sumer level. And I believe that
automation in the round coming up,
because of the non-linear feedback
loops, is actually going to outpace our
ability to create jobs to replace the
ones that are lost.
●● Do you have visibility into what
kinds of new jobs may be created?
But I am thinking more radically
than that. We must rethink what
everyone's role in society is. Today, we
assume, everybody should work for a
living. I am not sure we can continue
that assumption in this scenario.
In the near term, in the first wave of
robotics, yes, we should ask, what will
be the new jobs? And I can tell you
some: One fun new job in America
that didn’t exist three years ago is a
Drone Operator, a guy trained in just
moving a joystick. Hollywood is hir-
ing them, and real estate and oil com-
panies. It’s a $100,000 a year job!
Assistant Genomic Analyst is
another job that doesn’t exist today,
nor does Assistant Genomic
Counsellor. Genomics is becoming so
simple, easy, fast and cheap that
everyone in America will have their
genome fully sequenced. Someone
has to analyse all that data to patients.
These jobs result from new break-
throughs in technology. That's fine for
knowledge-workers. What about for
the non-knowledge, blue-collar work-
ers?
We have a major issue. Yes, some
people may be employed in the robot-
ics industry. After all, somebody has
got to maintain the robots. We may
create some jobs like that in the first
phase of robotics, which is, say, the
next 7-8 years.
But beyond 2022-23, non-linear feed-
back loops begin to take over: robots
will make robots, Artificial
Intelligence makes Artificial
Intelligence.
All Artificial Intelligence today,
every line of code of every Siri, every
machine-learning, every recommen-
dation engine of every e-commerce
site was written by humans. But
what if code can be written by
machines? There's no programme
today that can spit out code. That's
coming in the next 2-3 years!So, this
feedback loop of code writing code,
particularly AI code writing AI code,
will result in programmes so com-
plex that in a generation or two of
that, a human will no longer be able
to read the code, parse it. No one is
ready for this kind of dislocation
that's coming. And when you tell
somebody about it, they are like,
“hey, you are crazy!”
HOW
MUCH IP
IS BEING
CREATED IN
THE INDIAN IT
SECTOR? INDIA
HAS BEEN NO.1 IN
CREATING THESE
MASSIVE IT SERVICES
COMPANIES --
300,000 PEOPLE,
200,000 PEOPLE.
FANTASTIC. BUT ZERO
IP! WE HAVE TO GO TO
AN IP-BASED IT SEC-
TOR . IN AN IP-BASED
ECONOMY, THERE
ARE MORE JOBS
BECAUSE PEOPLE
ARE NEEDED TO
ADDRESS NEW
TECHNOLOGIES,
TO DEVELOP
THEM.
J
Would you join a startup
or an MNC after college
What attracts you to start-ups?
What do you find daunting
about joining a startup ?
SSttaarrtt--uupp
MMNNCC 44%
56%
What attracts you to an MNC
Why would you not
join an MNC ?
What are your expectations
from your first job ?
40 50302010
15%
11%
41%
11%
7%
9%
2%
4%
70605040302010
61%
38%
47%
67%
70605040302010
61%
40%
49%
67%
14%
70605040302010
31%
49%
68%
34%
Jack Hidary
SSttaabbiilliittyy
CChhaalllleennggiinngg
WWoorrkk
FFaasstt GGrroowwtthh
TTrraaiinniinngg iinn
ddiiffffeerreenntt rroolleess
IInnssttaabbiilliittyy
SSttaabbiilliittyy
FFiixxeedd
WWoorrkkiinngg HHoouurrss
OOvveerrsseeaass
PPrroossppeeccttss
BBrraanndd
NNaammee
70605040302010
59%
43%
56%
LLeessss //NNoo
CCrreeaattiivviittyy
LLiimmiitteedd
LLeeaarrnniinngg
SSlloowweerr
GGrroowwtthh
UUnnoorrggaanniisseedd
PPrroocceesssseess
UUnnttiimmeellyy
PPaayycchheecckkss
OOdddd WWoorrkkiinngg
hhoouurrss
EEqquuiittyy
FFlleexxiibbiilliittyy
GGoooodd MMoonneeyy
BBrraanndd NNaammee
LLeeaarrnniinngg
OOppppoorrttuunniittiieess
CCrreeaattiivviittyy
BBuussiinneessss
AAccuummeenn
OOvveerrsseeaass
OOppppoorrttuunniittiieess
BBeetttteerr GGrroowwtthh
PPrroossppeeccttss
Start-up or
stable MNC?
Challenges don’t scare them, neither do long
working hours. Money isn’t their priority,
‘learning’ is, as they weigh options for their
first jobs – to join an established MNC or to
join a wobbly start-up. Shadma Shaikh reports
on an online survey she conducted amongst
final year students at some 20 Engineering
colleges and B-schools across India.
India will
actually sur-
pass the US
in digital
transfers
because, unlike
the US, India is
becoming a
mobile-first and
mobile-only
economy. This is
the future. The
future of society
of this planet is
going to look like
what India is
going to be in 5-7
years. It's
mobile-first,
mobile-only
More than half of the 200
respondents said they would
rather join a start-up than an
MNC. The uncertainty of
start-ups’ success, the cer-
tainty of long working hours,
the possibility of being laid
off within months, the
tremendous pressures to
perform – none of these
would deter them, they said.
Nobody ever got rich
working 9 to 5. Definitely a
promising start-up over an
MNC
— Karan Chadda,
a final year finance student at IIM-Rohtak
“No doubt you can learn much more in a start-up than in a sta-
ble, established company, but there are other factors, such as
peer pressure, personality type, and parents’ involvement in
decision-making that affect a student’s inclination towards join-
ing a startup”
—Sameer Nagpal, national head for institutions at Cocubes
The new generation of
entrepreneurs who have
made it big in recent
years seem to be the
inspiration for those
graduating out now to
hop onto a bumpy ride,
unlike those who
passed out even five
years ago, who mostly
still chose to start their
careers with an estab-
lished company.
NNoott aallll aarree rreeaaddyy ttoo
jjuummpp oonn tthhee ssttaarrtt--
uupp bbaannddwwaaggoonn,,
tthhoouugghh.. BBeeiinngg aassssoo--
cciiaatteedd wwiitthh aa wweellll--
kknnoowwnn bbrraanndd,, tthhee
ssttaabbiilliittyy ooff aann MMNNCC
ssttiillll eexxeerrtt aa bbiigg ppuullll
oonn mmaannyy..
WHAT IF CODE CAN BE WRITTEN BY
MACHINES? THERE'S NO PROGRAMME
TODAY THAT CAN SPIT OUT CODE.
THAT'S COMING IN THE NEXT 2-3
YEARS! THIS FEEDBACK LOOP OF CODE
WRITING CODE, PARTICULARLY AI
CODE WRITING AI CODE, WILL RESULT
IN PROGRAMMES SO COMPLEX THAT A
HUMAN WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO
READ THE CODE, PARSE IT.
Most respondents chose
‘quick learning’ over ‘quick
money’ as an expectation
from their first job. Their
ultimate goal, of course,
was about “making it big”.
Four years ago,
when my elder
brother cracked the
Accenture interview
on campus, it was a
big deal. Now, it’s all
about trendy start-
ups that have so
much to offer
— Swati Kunte,
engineering student at Vellore
Institute of Technology who’s
set to join taxi aggregator Ola.
Unlike in big
companies, start-ups
give a sense of
ownership and
opportunity to learn
on the field. I may
not be the master of
one, but jack of all is
the new age mantra
— Govinda Jakhotia,
a Nirma University student