What NSN Murty teaches about brand purpose

The infra projects, the outcomes will be little bit visible later in the day. It's because it's currently the design in the build phase. Once these are over, then you'll see a kind of a visible improvement in the core infrastructure of the city. Hi sir, you made a shift to consulting after being in the industry for several years. So what motivated you to make this shift? How do you cope up with the demanding lifestyle of a consultant? So it's a little known secret that I was in consulting. I started my career with

consulting. So into the industry and therefore the consulting bug was always there because it gives you an entrepreneurial kick when you are in the consulting. So it also correlates to your next question. The other part of it is the stress or the kind of effort that is required in the consulting world. Because it's more entrepreneurial, you are doing different things. You are actually answering or taking up challenges. You are solving important problems. So it's never a stressful

life. It's really fun actually a lot of time. So that's what passion is and I think consulting is what we love and therefore we are very well tuned to it. Also, I mean obviously coming, talking about building new India infrastructure, it's impossible not to talk about smart cities. The government has been pushing through. So what is the progress with respect to the smart cities? Okay, so the progress has been phenomenal in the smart cities. The 100 cities, all of them have been

able to set up their governance infrastructure. They've been able to put up their own, create their own special purpose vehicle which is the public limited company. Get the CEOs on board, the organization structure, the consultant on board. Done lot of technology driven projects. Most of the cities have been able to take out the RFPs for their technology projects. There's traffic management, surveillance, command centers. And lot of cities have already been able to actually get the roads, the flyovers, the underway, passwork,

the parks, the core infrastructure. Those projects have been taken. The infra projects, the outcomes will be little bit visible later in the day. It's because it's currently the design in the build phase. Once these are over, then you'll see a kind of a visible improvement in the core infrastructure of the city. Right. So according to you, what are the key elements of success for smart infrastructure? A difficult question to answer because, let me tell you, because smart is an adjective. So,

for you and for me, it's going to be quite different from someone else on the street. So, therefore, government actually had this 24 elements under which the KPIs have been fixed and the benchmarks were given. Besides that, the ministry also runs ease of living index. So, they also identify the various areas under or eight pillars under which they identify the whether the quality has been delivered or not. So, for me, if you ask me personally, for me, if I'm able to spend half an hour extra time with

my family at home rather than traffic, that's smartness for me. Right, right. Makes sense. Also, do you think our workforce is really prepared to work with Industry 4.0? So, workforce, we need to actually divide into three parts. One is the millennials and the Generation Z and the second layer is where the managerial stuff is and the third one is where the high technical subject matter experts and stuff. So, we have a kind of a issue where there is a high-end technical subject matter

experts requirement. So, that's where we have a gap there and I think the emphasis is on getting those extremely high-end skilled people to come into the cities to work on these because these smart cities are not just the top eight cities which are the metros but these are cities like Pasigat or cities like Silvasa and cities very, very small towns and we need these very high-end technical skilled people to go there. So, that's first gap. So, the workforce technology gap is there. The millennials

are the and I'm taking the extreme end. So, one is the gap in the second. Millennials are the most excited to actually take up this as a challenge because they see as a big learning and they are getting into these projects much more easier than anybody else. The managerial is the other important element where the government has been spending a lot of time in getting them trained on project management skills, financial management skills, procurement and stuff like that because the smart solutions will not be

procured or implemented in the same fashion as at any other typical traditional projects was implemented. Therefore, you need a different type of managerial skills to do the program management, operations management going forward. So, that's another piece which is there is a gap but there's a definitive capacity building program around that. And also, we all keep talking of smart cities but what do you think about citizens? As citizens are we prepared to actually even leap into it in the first place?

So, this is an interesting question because when the Clean India mission or the Swachh Bharat was not there, so we always thought we will be like this forever but when there is a mission, when there is a call for action and there is an awareness which has been created. Suddenly, actually the whole generations and generations work together towards making something which is much more better. I'm not saying we have reached the stage where we can actually call it ourselves completely good in terms of quality

infrastructure, clean roads and stuff like that but I think that awareness has driven us towards keeping much better hygiene, cleanliness and stuff and I think as a citizens we have started feeling proud about the city, the core infrastructure and slowly and steadily but not definitely as it's not there still still but definitely looking at how do we maintain and keep that infrastructure which government or private sector has invested in cleaner and much more operational. So, it's a… It's a… So, just about slowly and steadily veering towards that.

Absolutely and there might be a hockey stick moment in that and people will start looking but I think I'm looking for that inflection point probably we all will be more passionate towards the cities and loyalty will be towards the city to maintain it better but so it's slowly gradually moving towards that.