Rakesh Wadhwa:

Every new boat that replaces human jobs creates some level of inequality in society. How do you think companies that make robots can help in bridging this divide? And how has your company attacking this issue?

 

Rajeev Karwal:

Probably we have to kind of step back, dis-engage ourselves, detach ourselves from our current problems in the economy et cetera and then think. And let's not talk about India. Let's talk about say Germany. Or Vietnam or maybe  China or any other low-cost economy. If Germany which has an aging population. Germany which has salary levels which are extremely high. Germany where today respect for life is much higher than many other countries. If this country has to get back its competitiveness, how will it do? How will it get back its competitiveness? It has to invest in robots today. When it invests in robots today it will take care of its own population. It will create more jobs. It will probably be able to take in more immigrants in its economy to serve not just its own people but also making supply products to the world. The ultimate decision-making skills with human beings. If China has to preserve it competitiveness today, and China is ahead of India but still there is a huge the amount of poverty. There is an income disparity between China and Germany. So China has to understand that today it has to invest in robotics so that tomorrow somebody else should not be able to steal its power of manufacturing and supply chain across the globe. And China is doing it. If India has to create the place for itself across the globe.

If we as a country emerge as a supplier of products across the globe, we get back our global competitiveness. We will create a much bigger growth. There will be a different kind of job openings or opportunities which will come in the economy. We have to reinvent our education. Look at it like this that, in the IT field there are so many people who can't speak good English but are able to play with Photoshop. With CorelDRAW. They're able to do say programming languages et cetera in HTML or Python or whatever they're able to do.

Without even understanding proper English and they are contributing to the globe. you don't with their low-cost rates. In terms of supplying and global companies are outsourcing this job to the Indians. So did IT take away work or did it create a new set of people? Who is competing with the best and bringing jobs to the Indians? Same way Robotic technology will also require programming at the backend and more and more languages that becomes easier. So we should not fear technology. We should not fear advancement. It's an idea whose time has come. If you don't do it somebody else in the world will do it.