René Seifert - Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

Want to watch the President of an important state coming with a notebook and prepared Power Point slides? Want to see how he can by heart quote numbers from the comprehensive McKinsey study for the Indian IT industry not failing to add with a grin like a happy child: “I was lucky to get it fr free.” Then running through his presentation which becomes technically very sophisticated, elegantly weaving connectivity-bandwidth over satellite and cross-over joint ventures together to a vision of a global knowledge platform? Want to see a warm, friendly and non-assuming statesmen? And who finally apologizes for his only limited time at the Nasscom-conference, but refers to his website and requests that questions be sent to him by e-mail promising that they “will be answered within 24 hours.” Welcome to Dr. Abdul Kalam – The President of India. Although I presume this joke has been cracked in his context many times: Going through these numbers for the IT-industry is certainly not rocket science for someone who has done exactly that for his entire professional life, namely conceiving the Indian nuclear missile as the most decorated rocket scientist in the country. Dr. Kalam himself, due to fog at departure in Delhi delayed for one hour, who gave an impressive keynote today at the last day of the NASSCOM 2006 India Leadership Conference.

The Indian IT industry with growth rates in - to stay in the picture - skyrocketing 32 % will achieve in the financial year 2005/2006 an export volume of 32bn and is supposed to hit an impressive $60 bn by 2010 according to the mentioned McKinsey study. Not enough, according to the President. “Aim high, so I want to market to you to reach by 2010 a volume of $200 bn.” That’s ambitious, to say the least, and produced visible gulps among the present industry captains for whom the $60bn goal already appears very ambitious.

Dr. Kalam of course did not leave it to the vague. In his view the power to achieve such a rise lies in increasing the GDP growth rate in India from 8 to 10 % and unleashing the power of the tier 2, tier 3 cities and even villages by bringing internet connectivity to them and educating the workforce who could effectively write software code from there. In the “Flat World”- nothing totally inconceivable.

In a short Q&A-session, a delegate asked how such stretch goals could be achieved. The President replied that there were three answers: “First: I can do it!”. He paused. “And second: I can do it and third: I can do it!” Chapeau, Mr. President.