Happy to note that Mr Nandan Nilekani is back at what he is at best..the professional circles..after a brief brush with politics that too with the Congress party. Naavi has been highly critical of his association with Congress party which made him say things such as “Reservation is required in Private Sector”.
Now that he seems to have donned the corporate suit again, it is happy days for all his admirers. We welcome him and hope he will make his own disruptive impact on the IT eco system in the country.
I got to watch two of his talks recently on the topic of Disruption of Financial Services, one at TIE, Bangalore and another at IFMR Trust, Mumbai. He called it a Thought experiment and it was in deed very thought provoking.
The thoughts which he has seeded in the talk will be discussed and debated in the market place and as an Ex-Banker and a keen watcher of the developments of “Use of Technology in Banking” I will add some of my own thoughts in due course through these columns.
For the time being, I invite the readers to watch the you tube video below:
Nandan’s Presentation at TIE :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGM5TvAUF00
IFMR Presentation (Same as TIE but better videographed):
Panel Discussion at TIE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94GuUoXEmxc
The essence of what Mr Nandan Nilekani discusses is that in 2009, the advent of WhatsApp disrupted the Telecom scenario and changed the way data was consumed on mobile networks. In the same manner he feels that the advent of Paytm and the likes will change the way the Indian Banking system will function in the coming days and there can be some major upheavals in store.
In the TIE conference, Paytm and Bankbazaar promoters also add their views and suggest that the developments threaten the traditional Banking system. Obviously this requires some in depth discussions.
I invite the readers to contribute to this discussion as we go along.
Naavi