The area which I think is vibrant right now is defence. There is a lot of money if you have the wherewithal to deliver. It's more product-oriented but the govt is funding the to the tune of 50 per cent of your project cost and they ask for no equity, no questions asked. The defence has a wide variety of needs, AR VR is there, autonomous navigation, using drones in conjunction with the navigation system for agricultural purposes

When we come to Indian products and industry, most of the things are cheap. Even if some of the products are great, we are just going into the pricing model to push it into the market just like China. To make India adapt Indian products and compete with products like Google pay, adaptability is a factor. Now everyone from B2B to D2C businesses wants to cut down their costs. So I think the positioning of our products and services needs to be in a manner so our adaptability and our export ability can compete with other products in other emerging markets. It is about the perspective that from a small shop to big businesses need to focus on adaptability and support each other. We need to give more chances to our domestic service and product providers.

Specialisation is the core factor in our IT industry but technology is changing day by day. Now angular is going down and other technologies like React JS are emerging. So suppose you are making a team and you are specialised in a particular platform or technology but if it changes you need to survive in the IT industry. So I think specialisation is okay but not in particular technology as it's not suitable in the current scenario.

We are doing work that we already know to win the race of delivering the projects on time but not innovating which we need to do as an individual and as a company due to the time constraints. For me, that's the takeaway.

When we talk about the trends the first thing that comes to my mind is all about start-ups. All the companies that are serving start-ups might be facing some common issues. When startups come to us with their innovative ideas, we know we cannot sell them a ready-made scripted product off the shelf. So every time you are developing an innovative product. The first thing that comes to mind in this is pricing. When startups come to us they are looking for innovative solutions and pricing. They want quality service but at a lesser price. That is very challenging. When we talk to foreign clients even though they are also startups they are looking to invest better. So we prefer the foreign startups over the Indian ones. So that is the most challenging part for our company.

Success and failure, everything has its inertia so if someone is having a problem with anyone they will continue having problems. When we are estimating a project it's pure maths so we cannot just say instantly on their face that we can deliver this project in a specific time without analysis. Whenever we are taking a project it's an analytical process, we can analyse its cost. If it's not working then we should refrain from taking that project.

If the problem arises from a known channel then it's a big challenge. What we do is analyse their budget and estimate our resources cost and in case the gap is huge then we politely decline.

We have to do work that is profitable otherwise rest is charity. Sometimes your competitors can deliver the same project at a lower cost than you're not able to, it is especially true for companies that specialise in a particular aspect. When you specialise in something you can deliver it at a lower cost. You have to decide what kind of startups you want to work with. Then only you'll be able to make money as well as deliver the project at a lower cost.

There is a perception that jinx companies in Kolkata, where it is assumed that we can offer a project at a lower cost so the client's budget goes down automatically when they are considering companies here. This is not the case when they approach companies in cities like Bangalore. The companies in Bangalore and Gurgaon are given more credit, even if they are not able to deliver, they will still charge more just because of their location. Technology changes but domain knowledge remain the same. So it's important to focus on that.