In an exclusive interview with rediff.com, Gupta, co-chair, Global IIT Alumni Conference, said one of the objectives of the parley was not to showcase the successes of IIT graduates in information technology and technology per se, but also in a broad sphere of activities, from financial services to consumer and industrial enterprise.
Gupta, immediate past chairman of the US-India Business Council -- the first Indian-American to hold the post -- joined McKinsey's New York offices in 1973, assumed leadership of its Scandinavian offices in 1981, and joined the Chicago office in 1987. He took over as Chicago Office Manager in 1989, and served as the Managing Director Worldwide from 1994 to 2003.
An international renowned consultant with years of experience in a variety of industries, including telecommunications, energy and consumer goods, Gupta is also associated with many educational, professional and business associations.
They include chairman of the board of the Indian School of Business; chairman of the board of associates of the Harvard Business School; board member of the Global Fund for AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis; World Economic Forum Foundation board member; and member on the United Nations Commission on the Private Sector and Development.
Gupta holds a BTech in mechanical engineering from the IIT-Delhi and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Besides all of the usual networking and alumni reunion bashes etc, what are some of the tangibles you'll hope to achieve at this conference?
We are hoping to have a lot of discussion related to the evolution of the IIT system -- all the IIT directors are going to be there and there are very large numbers of active alumni who are interested in where do IITs go next. So there will be a fair amount of discussion and deliberation related to that topic. We are also going to understand through the conference, the ongoing needs of alumni and how to continue to invest in building the IITs reputation in this country and so on.
So there will be a lot of discussion also on what the alumni groups' future activities should be in helping alumni as well as IITs as institutions.
When you talk of building the reputation of IITs, I know you have acquired quite a high profile in recent years in the US and internationally following reports on programs such as CBS 60 Minutes and various articles in some of the leading mainstream newspapers in the US. So in terms of building the IITs' reputation, do you mean branding the IITs in the mold of Stanford, Harvard, MIT and the rest?
Sure. And we hope this kind of branding will give great opportunities to the IIT graduates. It further enhances their reputation, which means that basically IIT graduates would become more attractive to institutions, will have a better basis to succeed and so on.
We also want to provide broader alumni services whether it be in terms of being able to connect with other alumni, in terms of areas such as placement and so on and so forth. That would be another dimension of it.
We want to make sure that we build a significant community that then gets connected with the IITs and helps develop them by giving back in terms of both financial resources and otherwise.
There are approximately 150,000 IIT alumni in the Diaspora with probably about 40,000 here in the US. Is interconnectedness with the Diaspora in terms of propagating an envisaged concerted effort in giving back and also helping to brand the IIT internationally a main goal of the conference, or is it just a US-based IIT alumni interconnectedness effort?
Absolutely, it's an international effort. As you know, there are a number of people coming from all over the world for this conference and they are quite complementary in terms of what the views of alumni there and here are.
So it certainly is to work collaboratively to make sure that we give back as much as we can.
There was a time when there was a certain degree of resistance and antipathy by those in India in terms of what the US-based expatriates, the professionals, who had done very well for themselves, wanted to offer, whether it be recommendations and suggestions to make the IITs into what they perceived was more progressive and global. Do you believe that kind of tension has completely dissipated?
I wouldn't separate it from US-based versus non US-based. I think in general the alumni want a greater say and a greater voice in how the IITs are shaped forward because they are important stake-holders.
There was maybe a little tension between alumni in general and the administration -- whether it be the IIT administration themselves or the ministry of human resources and so on.
But I think it is part of a normal dialogue of give and take and I do see there is a common purpose and common goals between the government, the administration, the alumni in seeing that the IITs develop well and there maybe some differences on how it should be done but that has to be worked out through dialogue.
There is a perception among US-based IIT alumni and I am sure among other Diaspora IIT alumni too, that the IIT curriculum is still caught up in theoretical aspects and in today's age of globalisation may be rather impractical.
For example, Infosys, Wipro and others, I believe, when they employ IIT graduates, still have to put them through intensive training periods of a year or more to get them geared to the globalisation needs and challenges of today. Is that something you'll hope to push for?
This is common in most companies that hire university graduates whether they be from IITs or from here. They have to be trained for their own purposes. So that's not anything so different. That happens everywhere.
For example, we at McKinsey hire business graduates from the leading universities but we do the training afterwards when they join us.
You and many IIT-ians who have done incredibly well for themselves and established themselves in the US, were the products of the '60s and the '70s -- with a few exceptions among younger generationers like Sabeer Bhatia -- and have to a certain extent catalyzed the economy in certain sectors like the IT industry and been the backbone of Silicon Valley.
Is there a concern that this kind of sustainability vis-a-vis new IIT graduates in the US may not be viable and the IIT sheen could quickly disappear with the exit of the current generation?
One of the objectives of this conference is to showcase not only the successes of IIT graduates in IT and technology, but in a very broad sphere of activities, including many, many different industries, financial services, consumer industries, industrial enterprises.
I am sure when you look at the programme, it covers a waterfront in terms of different industries and so on. It also highlights the success of IIT graduates in academic institutions in all kinds of academia; not only in science and technology and in engineering but also in finance and marketing and so on.
So it seeks to broaden the showcase in terms of the impact of IITs in a broad set of fields, which implies more of a leadership contribution broadly in society and in business and that's what we want to highlight.
The fact that a pretty high-powered Congressional reception for the distinguished IIT alumni, which is a first, being hosted by Congressman Tom Davis and Senator George Allen, in addition to the US House of Representatives coming out with a unprecedented resolution showering praise on the IIT and IIT-ians here in the US and their contributions, makes for quite a heady run-up to the conference.
Was it a deliberate decision to hold it in Washington, DC, to make sure that the powers that be in the Beltway in both the Administration and Congress get a sense of what the IITs are all about?
Absolutely. We want to make sure that IITs are known and understood for what they stand for in a very broad circle and by many stake-holders in this society -- academics, business, government and so on.
Is it the hope that a conference of this kind will also help to alleviate some of the paranoia over issues such as outsourcing and offshoring to India?
Yes, even though that's not the main purpose of the conference. It has to come out that way that the contributions of IIT alumni have been in many fields and has been substantial. We also make the argument in outsourcing itself that it makes huge contributions to the US economy.
While, that's not the main objective of the conference, but it's bound to come out.