Our Respected Vice Chancellor – Professor Chandra Krishnamoorthy, Our Esteemed Secretary to Government of Puducherry, Shri Balakrishnan, Fraternal Colleague and Conference Convenor Dr. Charumathi, Conference Coordinator and Joint Secretary Research Development Association Dr. Praveen Jain, Respected visiting and participating dignitaries, Dear Friends… Good Morning!

I value this opportunity to stand amidst you to deliver the keynote address today. I thank my colleagues organizing and coordinating this event today with partnering organizations – Research Development Association and Research Development Research Foundation and Rajasthan Chamber of Commerce & Industry for this opportunity.

This topic in itself is encompassing and covers multiple areas. It therefore provides a large canvas for participants to discuss a whole range of topics and issues. Today, there is a greater degree of interconnectedness between and among nations and varied regions & sub-regions across the world. This is happening for the sake of leveraging the fruits of collaboration. In itself, such a shift causes many parallel and concurrent effects. And here in lies the necessity to track, analyse, understand, manage and mitigate these effects. This group, ALL OF YOU, today have much to contribute to this process. An analysis into the recent past developments at multilateral organizational setting like WTO, Intellectual Property Framework, World Bank, United Nations, G8, G20 among others gives us an insight and perspective of the shifts we are witnessing and their driving factors.

Simply put, as the playing field expands, be it economic or cultural or social or technological or security related, so does the need to manage opportunities and risks. As academics, we tend to theorize our analysis into frameworks and models. At times, after a sumptuous breakfast, they can get a little too academic. Let me upfront try and put some questions that can substantiate where and how we need to consider approaching such issues in a holistic manner:

• Today, our fuel costs are determined also by events beyond our geographical borders. This is a popularly known aspect of international commodities exchange trade. A bad yield of Mangoes in India, results in spike in prices in Germany for Mangoes.
• Let’s take another instance: India’s tourism industry is about Rs. 96000 Crore or about US$17 Billion in value-terms. News reports via Newspapers, news web-sites, Internet TVs and Radio across Europe and Americas impacted our Tourism. It was reported that there was close to 30% fall in tourists’ inflow into Delhi attributable among others to incidence of lawlessness in the streets of New Delhi – I am speaking of a real life event here – The highly deplorable and unfortunate brutal attack on a woman and her friend that shook our collective conscience in December 2012.
• An earthquake that hit Japan impacted fund flow into our markets.
• A game developed by a bunch of young kids situated far away from India becomes a worldwide rage (and can we call it addiction?) – I am referring to games like Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Sudoko, etc.
• Nokia handsets, no more. Till sometime back, one would have thought Nokia was too big to fail having ruled most of the global markets.
• The song, Kolavari Di from Dhanush & Team or Gangnam Style dance moves from South Korean musician Psy or Flash Mobs phenomenon or more recent Ice / Rice Bucket challenge or Swacch Bharat campaign… these are just a few pointers to opening up ourselves to a whole new range of possibilities that so far may not have been considered mainstream.
• Chinese e-commerce major – Alibaba – raised 25 Billion US Dollars in September making it the largest IPO in history. It operates in China and has started investing in Indian e-commerce industry as well recently. It is by the way listed in New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In our own big success story – Flipkart, an ecommerce company founded in 2007 (although it majorly operates in India, it is legally registered in Singapore) raked in 1 BILLION US DOLLARS in July 2014 from named investors. [I came to know this morning that Flipkart’s Founders have in-turn invested in an offline games startup company by the name MadRat Games].
• 2014 February – the world witnessed in a state of “mixed-emotions”, Facebook acquiring WHATSAPP. I was drawn to the comment made by one of our Top Business Leaders, CEO of Mahindra, Mr. Anand Mahindra. He was quoted as saying: Every CEO’s trying to figure out What’s Up when FB pays $19Bn for What’s App. It redefines the meaning of, & method of, value creation..

These are some random incidents and events that I picked to stitch together as examples to show that we are experiencing a world with a lot of different kind of possibilities. It was popularly believed (and probably continues to be the case) that anything put up on sale in JN Street of Pondicherry will get sold – be it a Samosa or Smartphone. I would say that was still of a simpler time. Today, we have in-front of us, a playfield, vastly different from the one we are used to and yet rapidly changing. This presents us this VUCA situation. VUCA is an acronym. It is descriptive of a given situation and stands for: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Whether it is students – teachers –members of industry or indeed our Governments, there is largely a felt-need to recognize and address what is termed as VUCA situation. There is an increasing need to re-invent, re-orient, and reframe our thought and action frames.

What do these mean to us sitting here today? It is an occasion of coming together to brainstorm and reflect on the various paradigms of our business and operation models. There are some fundamentally constant conditions as well as many rapidly changing variables. I wish that this coming together of so many of us will help us in shaping our perspectives on the issues, challenges, opportunities that cut across various industries and practice areas. I wish this event all success and I do hope that by the time this event concludes we would have enriched ourselves with useful perspectives, insights, knowledge and fellowship.

Thank You once again for your patience and giving me this opportunity.

Wish you all a satisfying conference experience, great weekend and season ahead! Do keep in touch!