The Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi organized
Confluence’16, the annual Finance & Marketing Conclave on September 17, 2016. The second session post lunch was based on the theme “
Financial Disruptions: Charting the Road Ahead”.The panel chair was
Dr. Shveta Singh and the panellists for the session were:
- Mr. Lalit Malik, Chief Financial Officer, Dabur India Ltd.
- Mr. Vivek Agarwal, Chief Financial Officer and Whole Time Director, Jindal Realty
- Mr. Amit Sukhija, Lead, Banking and Capital Markets, KPMG
- Mr. Nitin Gupta, Associate Director, BMR Advisors
- Mr. Anil Saxena, Group Chief Financial Officer, Religare Enterprises Ltd.
The panel chair, Dr. Shveta Singh laid the foundation for the interaction by bringing to light the glowing reality of financial disruptions and the importance of good corporate governance tools to deal with this. The conclave embarked thereafter with introductory talks by the eminent panellists, led by Mr. Vivek Agarwal presenting examples of ways in which disruptions have not had much effect on India as expected. To stress on his opinion, Mr. Vivek Agarwal cited instances of good conditions of monsoon this year followed by high production, seventh pay commission, improvement in imports and introduction of GST.
Further, Mr. Lalit Malik conversed about the volatility, complexity and the interlinking of the world. He stressed on the fact that we are not living in isolation and therefore, anything that happens in the world is bound to affect us in some way or the other and one of the examples is the extremely fast pace of technological disruptions. In financial terms, with technology and social media’s aid, government is supporting the fiscal changes. Digital wallet, digital locker, authentication using Aadhar cards, conversion of basic banking activities to online platforms, automation of income tax, internal financial data becoming paperless due to shift to cloud have made things easier but at the same time have resulted in abundance of data and the capacity to adjust to it is the real challenge. Moreover, government is taking steps in generating a friendly environment by financial inclusions and corporate needs to bank and capitalize on this.
Mr. Amit Sukhija, on the other hand, shed light on the importance of being disruptive in order to succeed. Disruption in the financial sector is backed by change and innovation in technology. Since finance is the most integrated sector, any disruption will have an enormous impact especially on this sector. Citing numerous examples like Mobikwik, Uber, Airbnb, PayPal, and Patanjali, Mr. Amit Sukhija focused on creating a disruption. One major disruption in the financial space is the emergence of large numbers of fintech start-ups in the recent past and the pace at which such disruptions are happening. He went ahead to suggest the concept of fintech becoming irrelevant in the next four years.
Carrying the discussion forward, Mr. Nitin Gupta introduced the audience to the tremendous changes taking place by comparing the computing power required at the time of the first mission to moon with that of a Smartphone today. Such a wave of disruption is progressing with fintechs starting from media, moving to music, retail and then to aggregators. In such cases, there is always one winner and the rest have to either consolidate or merge in order to stay in the competition. Currently, due to poor connectivity in India, in order to move from cash to cashless, it is necessary to come up with fantastic models like unification of financial transactions and increasing the mobile wallet users to keep the entire population on the same page.
Similarly, Mr. Anil Saxena also mentioned various disruptions that have taken place such as the establishment of National Stock Exchange in 1990s being the first financial disruption. According to him, the most efficient and cost-effective solutions formulated to meet day-to-day problems are being termed as disruptions. One example that he quoted was the traditional thought of opening new branches being the perfect solution to increase profitability and revenues. However, this was unsuccessful due to the easily accessible and affordable options available. Technology provides the base for disruption and disruption in itself is not actually done by someone but triggered due to the existing needs. Therefore, financial disruption is nothing to be worried about; rather it makes processes faster and easily accessible. Organizations need to adjust around it and change accordingly.
The interaction further proceeded by opening the floor for questions and the audience bringing up a wide range of questions on various issues like Reliance Jio’s impact on financial sector, role of RBI in shielding organizations from financial disruptions, the freedom within the realms of Indian democracy to take financial decisions and so on. The panellists diligently provided their views on these aspects. Overall, the session was very interactive and enriching for the students.
The students of DMS, IIT Delhi extend their heartfelt gratitude to the entire panel for taking their time out and sharing their valuable views.