Ram Gupta : The government should stay out of the technology sector

Personal chat assistant app Haptik appointed Silicon Valley veteran Ram Gupta to its board of directors this month. Ram is an industry veteran with over 25 years of technology and operational experience and has been instrumental in the growth of over 10 companies in India and the Silicon Valley.

Business Insider wrote to him, requesting an email interaction. Here’s a copy, take a read.

1. What led you to join Haptik's Board of Directors?
Haptik is a very unique company. Up until now, internet has been about finding and buying things. But, the consumer has to do all the work themselves. Haptik, fundamentally changes the game. Rather than the consumer using the internet to find things, Haptik DOES the things that the consumer wants to get done. This changes everything. Today the consumer “googles it”. Tomorrow the consumer will “Haptik it”.

2. What are the challenges in technological innovation India is facing?
None. That is a thing of the past. Now we have thousands of young entrepreneurs in India who are creating innovations every day.

3. What can the government do to ensure the ‘Digital India’ campaign succeeds?
Government should stay out of it. Millions of people in India have cell phones and it has nothing to do with the government. And the more phones people buy, the more digital India will be.

4. More than 60% Indians have no access to the Internet. How can the government ensure internet is easily available?
Government should stay out of it. Governments in most countries including India slow down things. Let the private sector deal with it.

5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing?
There are only advantages of cloud technologies. The customer does not have to deal with the pain of deploying and maintaining software. All the disadvantages of the cloud technology are just bad perceptions. There is no real disadvantage of cloud.

6. Do you see unique technological trends that Indian companies are driving?
Indian companies are driving the innovation in mobile usage like no other country in the world.

7. What can the Indian government do to encourage innovation in India?
Once again, the government should stay out it. The innovation is already happening at a tremendous pace. In the first six months of this year over 380 startups were funded in India and the government had nothing to do with it.

8. What can Indian tech companies do to ensure that the startup culture persists?
The tech companies in India are fast approaching a bubble. And like all bubbles, this one will burst too. Only the companies that actually do something very useful will survive. So, the tech companies have to build a culture that will take the good with the bad. There is a real risk that, that the whole culture crashes since the Indian tech boom has not been through a real bust.

9. How can the government solve bureaucratic hurdles for budding startups?
I do not know how to answer this. May be you should ask the Prime Minister.

10. Top leadership lessons you’ve learnt from your experience with startups.
FAST.
Focus: on solving one problem really well rather than trying to do many things
Accountability: Hold yourself and your team accountable to clearly articulated objectives
Speed: Move fast. Every day you lose, somebody else gains on you
Team: Your most important asset is your people. Hire and retain the best talent

Image credit: Indiatimes