Set a goal go for it: Gurnani

Hyderabad: “Changes are happening right in front of us and it will continue to happen.  All of us have the option to let the change happen but we will write the change and we will transform ourselves,” said C P Gurnani, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tech Mahindra.

Delivering the ‘New India Manthan - Leadership Talk’ at IIT Hyderabad recently in the presence of Prof Ch Subrahmanyam, Acting Director, IIT Hyderabad. He lauded the interdisciplinary approach of IIT Hyderabad to the soon-to-be-launched B Tech in Artificial Intelligence.

Speaking on ‘Shaping Our Future, Digitally,’ he said, “The engineer of tomorrow is not going to be an engineer peers only. He is going to be more ambidextrous. Artificial Intelligence by itself is meaningless. It only works when you combine it with data and when you decide that AI is supposed to deliver.”

Lauding the work underway at IIT Hyderabad, Gurnani said that students should have some kind of goal that should be visualised first. Students should fundamentally say “I need to act.” The first part is to aspire and the second is to act on it.

“You will find different ways to act. Some of you will go to incubation cell here, while others will go to entrepreneurship cells somewhere else while others will set up your own lab and don't need any help. Everything is right, the only thing you have to remember is you have set up a goal and the only way you'll know you are doing it right or wrong is by making an attempt.” He also interacted with students and took questions from the students. He added
Prof Ch Subrahmanyam said, “As of now, IIT Hyderabad is offering B Tech Programmes in nine departments and starting from next year, we are going to offer a B Tech in Artificial Intelligence. We have around 200 faculty members and close to 2,600 students. We have a 5G testbed and we offer courses on Industry 4.0.” 

An accomplished business leader with extensive experience in international business development, start-ups and turnarounds,joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, Gurnani led Tech Mahindra's transformation journey, and one of the biggest turnarounds of Indian Corporate History - the acquisition and merger of Satyam.

In a career spanning 35 years, he has held several leading positions with HCL Hewlett Packard Limited, Perot Systems (India), Limited and HCL Corporation Ltd. A chemical engineering graduate from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, he is a distinguished and active alumnus of the Institute. Gurnani has been chosen as the Ernst and Young ‘Entrepreneur of the Year [Manager]’, CNBC Asia’s ‘India Business Leader of the Year’, Dataquest ‘IT person of the Year’ - for the year 2013 and Business Standard ‘CEO of the Year’ 2014.