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    Dell has to start thinking bigger with India leap-frogging in the digital era: Amit Midha

    Synopsis

    Dell EMC has been manufacturing in India since 2007 and is present here since 1998, has 24,000 team members and is growing.

    ET Bureau
    While making Indians move ahead in their digital journey, Amit Midha, president APJ Dell EMC Commercial, is feeling the urgency to reassess the goals of his company to match them with the country that has undertaken its biggest digital transformation drive. He tells ET’s Shramana Ganguly on how the country has gone aspirational and is pushing players like him to re-evaluate their mission. Excerpts from an interaction:

    I understand that everyone has moved beyond (investment) numbers and is talking about sharing knowledge. Your comments.

    Dell EMC has been manufacturing in India since 2007 and is present here since 1998. We have 24,000 team members and are growing. We are present in every aspect of business — R&D, analytics, financial services, sales, marketing, apps — every business unit is present here. We are not using India to run our India business but using it to run our global business. That trend will continue to grow.

    Be it GST, demonetisation or usages of Digital India, everything is very positive here.

    How do you see Dell EMC enabling India in its digital transformation?

    We are uniquely positioned to support our customers’ digital journey and I believe that Dell has a unique proposition and responsibility. The digital transformation of this scale has never been seen. One of the area that is important for all of us to consider as investment body is how much of talent needs to match up with digital transformation. So, we have been working hard on educating teachers on digital technology. We have trained 56,000 teachers and over 2,000 students so that they are ready to track digital tools and technologies, and become more productive as citizens.

    What is your India 2020 dream?

    We have had our financial and CSR goals, but every time we put them together, we realise the country goals are running ahead (of projections). So, we have to start thinking bigger. We think that our goal of growing faster than the market is good enough, but it is highly unpredictable because till GST and Make in India take shape, our goals won’t be aggressive enough. If loans are getting out there, more manufacturing is coming in here, therefore, 7-10% growth is not aggressive enough, it needs to be in double digits for a decade or longer. It depends on how these things play out. We will be reflecting on this. We are finishing up our next year’s planning cycle now and will set up a three-year aspirational view in a month’s time.

    We are committed to Make in India. But we think policy support is needed for the industry ecosystem. If that ecosystem is sitting outside and you are bringing all the parts in and are manufacturing and exporting, that is not competitive enough. We need to make parts here as well. We would like to be more indigenous.

    We have a substantial R&D base here. All our business units have a presence here — from software, to the chips, our client business software, cloud computing etc. Globally, no product lines exist that don’t touch India. But, we want to push ourselves to do more.

    Our capacities are not fully utilised today. We have made a proposal to the finance and commerce ministry on how our Indian capacities could be used for exports. We want to use India as a base to export more than what we are doing at the moment.

    After meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, I am very excited about what more can we do.

    What does the Prime Minister seek from players like you?

    He wants us not just to support his initiatives — be it Digital India or Make in India — but be a partner and advocate too. He wants us to do more than business. He says: be my partner, create something that can have a long-lasting impact. Be a spokesperson. Be an advocate for India with whomsoever you may talk to and tell them how good the India story is.
    The Economic Times

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