IT in the week of 29th January – 4th February 2024

 Important developments/milestones

• Union Interim Budget (technically a Vote on Account) 2024, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman had no surprises; all tax items remained untouched; social sector saw significant increase in budget outlay; naturally, it was well-received by all sections of the Society (1^st Feb 20224)

Science, Technology, Innovation and Higher Education Institutions

• Union Interim Budget talks of Rs 100,000 Crores corpus fund to provide interest-free loan up to 50 years to promote private sector R & D (1^st February 2024)
• Indian Institute of Technology, Madras gets an endowment grant of Rs 110 Cr from Sunil Wadhwani to set up a School for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence Centre (30^th January 2024)
• With 6004 students, Karnataka is home to the largest number of international students in India (46,878 students from 170 countries), according to Times of India Report (5^th February 2024)

Global Tech Companies in India

• Apple iPhone shipments from India crossed 10 million in the year 2023 (4^th February 2024)
• WISTRON announced an investment of Rs 1,500 Cr in a new plant in Bangalore to assemble laptops (4^th February 2024)

Indian Tech Companies

• TCS bags a $ 2.5 Billion 15-year contract (the largest ever deal) from UK’s Insurance major Aviva (29^th January 2024)
• Wipro to layoff hundreds of middle-level staff (4^th February 2024)
• PayTM stopped by Reserve Bank of India to operate any services (1^st February 2024)

 People

• Former Deputy Prime Minister and BJP leader LK Advani conferred the highest civilian award Bharat Ratna (3^rd February 2024)
• Elon Musk’s Neuralink – an embedded chip in human brain – was first installed on a human being (31^st January 2024)

Start-up Scene

• EduTech start-up Byju’s, that was once the largest valued Unicorn with $ 22 Billion valuation, saw its value eroding by 99% to a mere $ 200 million (29^th January 2024)

Interesting Applications / Apps

UPI goes to France; India’s NPCI and French Lyra sign a partnership agreement (2^nd February 2024)

ERP and SCM – part of the Extended Enterprise – Talk give to VLFM participants at IIT Kanpur

I enjoyed talking to the participants of the VLFM (Visionary Leaders For Manufacturing) Program jointly organized by IIM Calcutta, IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras.

The 32 participants are middle level executives who spend a year pursuing full time education (including visits to Japan and other manufacturing destinations) at the three premier Institutions. They have their prior experience in

• Aerospace (HAL)
• Automotive (Maruti, Ashok Leyland, M & M,  John Deere, Hero Honda, Kirloskar, SKF)
• Infotech (ITC, SISL, Oracle)
• L & T (Engineering & Construction)
• Marine Engineering (OMI)
• Metals & Mining (SAIL, Tata Steel, Vizag Steel, NMDC, Vedanta, NALCO)
• Oil (HPCL)
• Pharma (GSK)
• Power (NTPC, NPC)

 

VLFM gets its inspiration from LFM of MIT. Professors Jim Orlin and Nitin Patel of Sloan School at MIT ho gave me enough “Gyan” about LFM in mid 90’s.

I gave a set of three lectures on 21-22, February at IIT Kanpur.

I talked to them about the evolution of ERP and SCM as independent areas of an enterprise; leading companies like SAP (in ERP space) and i2 (in SCM space) talked of they being the “best of breed”. Over the years, the users have realized that in a connected world ALL enterprises are extended enterprises with some aspects of SCM  (Supply Chain Management) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) very much part of their business. 

Taking the example of “educational Institution” (like IIT or IIIT or IIM or Harvard), while ERP would address the

• Lectures (Course Management, e-Learning, Content Management, Registration, Class room scheduling, exam scheduling, grade-book, transcript management),
• Library (Digital Library, Catalog, Order processing),
• Labs (Supplies, Scheduling), and,
• Life (Mail, collaboration, projects, visitors, announcement)

(the 4L’s of Learning),

• Admissions (JEE for IITs and CAT for IIM’s)

that is more like SCM for IIT / IIM may be as important (or more important) than the campus activity! In fact while the annual budgets of the 7 IITs is Rs 1,000 Crores the JEE Coaching is easily estimated to be 10 times larger!

Similarly,

• Placement
• Alumni

are more like CRM; these are as important as the core activity itself!

I alluded to this need for extended enterprises by taking examples from several other industries (including automotive, iron & steel, oil & gas and banking)

What probably went well with the students is my personal involvement with many of these industries

• Board Membership of Bank of India, NMDC, BEL, NLC & IREDA, VisualSoft, Informatics… and,

my extensive consulting

• Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Maruti, BHEL, NTPC, Indian Oil, ONGC, Amara Raja, TVS, Reserve Bank, SEBI..

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience; more so to be back in IITK (where I spent my formative academic years 1979 to 1995)