Contributing to a robust technology ecosystem

Today, when the emphasis is firmly on ' Aatmanirbhar Bharat' and there are determined efforts made by the NDA government to promote the 'Make in India' concept, the release of the book 'Engineered in India': From dreams to billion-dollar CYIENT" by BVR Mohan Reddy seems a perfect fit in the current scenario.

Advance praise for the book, which runs into five pages, highlighting the multi-faceted achievements of Dr Mohan Reddy comes from a veritable Who's Who of India. The go-getting K T Rama Rao, Minister for IT , Electronics and Communications, Government of Telangana says: 'By sharing his unfiltered past, Mohan Reddy encourages today's entrepreneurs to see a limitless future'.

The others who follow are iconic achievers which include N R Narayana Murthy, co-founder, Infosys Limited who is all praise for the well-known entrepreneur as he adds: 'This book brings the distilled wisdom from his experiences and successes as an entrepreneur, a happy family man, an angel investor and a generous philanthropist. It brings out the DNA of his personality—leadership, courage, determination, honesty, integrity, simplicity, conviviality and concern for the less fortunate. Business leaders would benefit much from this book'.

Fellow industrialists like Anand Mahindra and many renowned academics and high-ranking government officials like Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Udyog too are effusive in their praise for the CYIENT founder. The Chairman, Mahindra Group mentions: ' Mohan has demonstrated that entrepreneurship is not just about profit-making but also about giving back to society. Engineered in India faithfully captures Mohan's journey and contains some of the finest business lessons'.

Kant writes: 'Today, India's technology landscape has transcended boundaries, created records and emerged as the world's third-largest start-up ecosystem. Our pioneering initiatives such as Digital India, Start-up India, etc., coupled with the unparalleled contribution of companies such as Cyient, have made India a formidable technology ecosystem.'

The forewords to the book are again by popular names like Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Finance Minister and M M Murugappan, a leading industrialist of south India. Spread into two parts, the book is divided into 16 chapters which traces Dr Reddy's impressive life journey.

In Part One, this memoir traces the background, the setting up, scaling, growth and expansion phases of Cyient, giving experiential evidence of what it takes to ideate, scale, grow and expand an enterprise beyond a country's borders and build a billion-dollar business. In Part Two, I address significant attributes of a successful, sustainable company: customer centricity, quality and process orientation, strategy, finance management, crisis management, people development and institution-building, against the backdrop of Cyient.

Simply put, the book encapsulates the underlying philosophy of the entrepreneur as he writes elsewhere in the book: 'If India was to reap the demographic dividend a young working-class population bestows on it, the nation needed to create enough jobs year after year. Else, the country was poised to face a demographic disaster with unmanageable levels of unemployment. Entrepreneurship, especially technology-based private enterprise, was the perfect engine for job creation, as it would boost innovation and allow India to become atmanirbhar (self-sufficient) Bharat and stand tall in a knowledge- intensive global economy. Entrepreneurship was my calling too, so I zealously dived into the activity and engaged with several start-ups over the years. The results are there for the world to see.'