Multi ethnicity and excellence @ Insilico

I'd like to talk about our industry, the semiconductor industry in Bangalore, and especially our company Insilico. When it comes to the overall multi-ethnicity and cosmopolitanism nature of the entire IT industry, of which we're a part, there's nothing astounding about our particular industry, nevertheless, it does represent the very essence of what a hi-tech industry should be. I personally feel that one of the reasons why our industry, no doubt one of the most hi-tech ones in the world - we design the electronic chips that go into the latest phones, tablets and other sophisticated electronic gadgets -, has attained its present stature is its perfectly cosmopolitan nature.

Digressing a bit, I'd like to quote historian Ramachandra Guha from his magnum opus 'India after Gandhi'. While talking about the connection between cosmopolitanism and excellence in films, he has given the example of Sholay, perhaps the most successful movie made in India. He writes, 'Its director (Ramesh Sippy) was Sindhi, while its lyricist (Anand Bakshi) and one male lead (Dharmendra) were Punjabi. Other male leads were from Uttar Pradesh (Amitabh Bachchan), Gujarat (Sanjeev Kumar) and North West Frontier Province (Amjad Khan) respectively. Another (Danny) who was dropped at the last moment, was from Sikkim. Of the two female leads, one (Hema Malini) was a Tamil, the other (Jaya Bhaduri) a Bengali domiciled in Madhya Pradesh. The music director (RD Burman) was a Bengali - from Tripura.'

I feel Ramachandra Guha used this as a representation to make a point that excellence is directly linked to multi ethnicity and cosmopolitanism. Bombay became Bombay because people from all over the country settled there. It couldn't have been what it's now had it been just a native hole of Mumbaikars. The same is applicable to our hi-tech industry, which has attained its stature only because people from all over India have come and joined it. No other city attracted so many people from all over India and that's why Bangalore has become the Silicon Valley of India.

To take the example of our company, it's co-founded by four of us - myself, a Bengali domiciled in Bangalore for the past twenty one years, Parag Bhatnagar, hailing from Pilani, Rajasthan, Minakshi Sharma, a Haryanvi from Kurukshetra and Syed Imran Ali, who has connections with both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The four directors Shishir Sharan Rai, Priyank Shukla, Uttam Panda and Pankaj Verma, hail from Bihar, UP, Orissa and Haryana and the HR is from Orissa. Among our 100+ people in India we've representation from almost all the states, except for some of the North Eastern states. We actually have people from everywhere, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Assam to Ahmadabad.

We are very particular about maintaining the cosmopolitanism and multi-ethnic nature of our company. And the interesting thing is that we don't have to put any extra effort to do it. We just hire the best people from the best of the colleges and we never go by any prejudice. The last thing we could think about Insilico is the tag that it's a Marathi or a South Indian or a North Indian company.

There's a reason why the IITs are among the best colleges in India. It's perhaps because no other college attracts so many people from across the country. No other college can claim to be so much cosmopolitan. The reason why Stanford or MIT are even better places is perhaps they attract people from round the world, which no Indian college can do. So the bottom line is that if we want to excel in any area we have to look out beyond the local region and attract people from every where. A multi ethnic and cosmopolitan atmosphere opens up the minds of people, broadens the thoughts and intellect and help create a climate conducive of growth and excellence.