Dato’ Vijay Eswaran gave a speech at the Federation of Andhra Pradesh Chamber of Commerce & Industries’ CEO Club event on Jan 11, 08 in Hyderabad, India. Sify.com covered the article here.
Hyderabad, Jan 12, 2008: If Mahatma Gandhi were to deliver his post-independence speech to Indians with current day communication technologies, how would be delivered to a billion-plus population today?
Well, it would be streamed over mobile phones, giant-size LCD screens in large cricket and football stadia and possibly tribals watching it on their laptop with a wireless interface in forest tracts. This is not a Utopian idea. But an advertisement of one of the major European telecom services provider, Telekom Italia, according to Dato Vijay Eswaran, Founder and Chief Executive of $1 billion QI Group, based in Hong Kong, who displayed this commercial that showcases the power of convergence.
Gandhian principles
The commercial has been so beautifully conceived that it could have been from any one of the large Indian telecom carriers, Eswaran told a gathering of Chief Executives and NRIs at a meeting hosted by Federation of Andhra Pradesh Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FAPCCI). As a founder of QI Group companies, which has evolved itself on Gandhian principles and takes pride in serving only vegetarian food, Eswaran said that Gandhian principles are perhaps more relevant in today’s flat world than ever before, transcending geographies.
Speaking about the potential of knowledge economies, which is often confused with IT, he said most current day wars are fought in the mind and decided on economic clout. And there are clear pointers that countries like India would call shots in future.
Heading a QI conglomerate, Eswaran said that he set up the company during the dotcom rubble. And turned it into a near $1 billion corporation operating in 23 businesses across 166 countries. All this was achieved in less than 10 years since its inception in Hong Kong.
