It is a beta-world, keep learning and doing more: Sudhanshu Vats

“Capturing data in digital formats is the first and very important step for all businesses because digitisation provides you with crucial information and early-stage analysis eventually brings automation and leads to the digitalisation of your entire business process,” said Sudhanshu Vats, Deputy Managing Director - Pidilite Industries Limited, at e4m TechManch 2022.  

He was delivering a keynote address on “Effective Roadmap for Digital Transformation”.

According to Vats, “The third stage is digital transformation, which means a fundamental change in things that we do. Most industries in India are already in the second phase, which is digitalisation. Some companies are undergoing all three stages parallelly.”

After stating three major stages leading to digital transformation, Vats further told the audience about three essential ingredients – smartphones, cloud services, and social media – that are essential to achieve the transformation.

“Smartphones are near ubiquitous and getting smarter and affordable, offering great opportunities for marketers in developing countries. The mobile-first trend is fast catching up in the developed world also. Then comes Cloud services that provide real-time analytics, metaverse and other things. The third aspect is social media,” he stated.

Vats says the shelf life of any social media platform is equal to one generation. The Insta generation will become older and then the younger generation won’t use it. Then Snapchat and TikTok may replace it. The market allows you to choose your social platform, use it as per your need and increase its longevity.

Deliberating on another aspect of digital transformation, which he described as “Intelligent Bucket”, Vats highlighted how virtual assistants, interfaces, Internet of Things, and network security have emerged as building blocks of digital transformation.

According to Vats, businesses need an intelligent virtual agent like Alexa. They either they have to build one or use the existing one.

“This would be the first disruption. Then comes the intelligent interface - it could be 5G, AR, VR and other techs for immersive experience and learning. Augmented reality can do wonders in India where Bollywood is considered as a religion. You can have star brand ambassadors having fun conversations with your consumers,” Vats said, adding that VR has a huge role to play in sectors like education, tourism, construction and real estate for an immersive experience.

Speaking on the intelligent network, Vats said the Blockchain network was going to make life easier and has huge advantages in many areas.

On Intelligent things, he cited an estimate that said soon 20 billion things will be connected globally through sensors and AI such as autonomous cars, drones, watches etc.

“Having 20 billion connected things in the world of seven billion people is a strong proposition which is exciting, challenging and scary,” Vats said, highlighting an incident in Singapore where a drone had tracked down a resident for lowering the mask while talking over the phone at the peak of the pandemic.

Intelligent security, or cyber security, is the biggest challenge of digitization and businesses need to focus on this aspect as well, Vats advised.

“All businesses require these five big disruptions, some are already there, some are being built on. You must go for it all, take a holistic approach, choose the path and pace as per your need. But understand that if the plumbing is good then the building is also good. Don’t take shortcuts, use the right set of people and technique,” Vats said.

“It is the beta-world, keep learning and doing more. To take it to the next level, partner with someone,” he said referring to how Viacom had joined hands with 42 partners, including Google, Amazon and a host of other Indian companies.