Hello and welcome to the special broadcast right here on CNBC TV18. The world of technology has changed dramatically over the last 48 months. What we've seen in terms of data, in terms of storage, it's become front and center. The fact that data is the new oil, it's become almost cliche to say that, but it only demonstrates how front and center data is to the modern reality across sectors. And one company that's been providing solutions towards data storage, management and security has been NetApp. They've been doing it for 33 years. They're looking at penetrating the Indian market even further using it as a hub. And to tell us more about it is in fact the man who leads the company NetApp, and the fact that he's from India only gives us more color. Mr. Kurian, thank you so much for talking to us. It's a pleasure connecting with you every time you're visiting here. The latest quarterly earnings were quite impressive, having beaten the market's expectations as well. So firstly, congratulations on that. I just want to draw from your target that you'd set yourself a couple of years back. You'd said you want annual revenues of $10 billion. This time the guidance that you've given is just shy of 7 billion. Give us a sense, what does this trajectory towards $10 billion look like? And what's driving this growth for you? What's driving this demand for you?
I think fundamentally it's the increased importance of data in delivering business outcomes for our clients. We have always maintained that data is the foundation of intelligence in terms of understanding your stakeholders, being able to deliver better business value. And I think with more and more powerful tools like AI tools, you can analyze data and bring insight from it in more and more sophisticated ways. And we are adding value to our platform to do so. Advanced security mechanisms, advanced data processing and transformation mechanisms, so that it's really simple to use these advanced analytic tools with the wealth of data on our platform. I think the second is to bring that to more clients in more ways. We are accelerating our participation in new client organizations. We have reached the number one position in India for example in our industry and so we can penetrate more accounts not only here but in other parts of the world through more ways. We work with the big cloud providers, both US hyperscalers as well as domestic cloud providers, to make our technology easily consumable.
You said last time 5 years is when you want India to become the largest market. Are we nearing that? Are we still in line for meeting that 5-year target?
Yes, if we stay on the trajectory and continue to accelerate, yeah, we should be very close to that target.
Fantastic. Let's talk more about India. When you talk of greater penetration, you talked about NetApp being the largest provider here. What are some of these areas that are driving demand for you? Specific sectors, specific industries that are driving this momentum for you? Or is it not just the private sector? Is it also the public sector? Can you give us some guidance on how this demand picture looks like for you from India?
Yeah, I think we have built from the base of the large enterprise, meaning the big financial services institutions. We now have expanded our footprint not only in a broad range of large enterprises but a very fast growing sort of what we call the corporate segment. These are enterprises that may not be the largest 30 or 40 in India but still are materially large. And then we have a growing public sector business. It's smaller than our private business but we are starting out again from the federal government and adding on some of the larger state governments. So feel good about the progress. Lots of opportunity.
Mr. Kurian, one aspect that I also want to get your thoughts on has been the push that we're seeing from large AI companies looking at greater penetration here. In fact, in just the days leading up to your visit, interesting announcements: OpenAI announcing free access to ChatGPT Go, Gemini announcing a partnership with a leading telecom provider Reliance Jio, again providing users there with free access. In the days prior, we've seen Perplexity tie up with another telecom major Bharti to allow again free access. Can you give us an understanding of this penetration that they're looking for using this free access, using the deep pockets that they have? What exactly does this then translate into? Is it a push for greater data? Is it a push for more usage? What do we make of this push coming in from large AI companies?
I think the primary objective is to encourage adoption. The idea of a premium model where it's free for a period of time to encourage trial has been prevalent for a long time. Apple did that with educational institutions in the United States where you can get the future professionals to learn to use your technology and then ultimately become fans of it and promote it as you go through your work life. And I think it's a way for a broad population like the large Indian population to learn how to use these tools.
While we're on the subject, very recently we'd also seen the US Fed cut rates by 25 basis points. What does that do? There's already a lot of momentum towards AI capex. Now we also have the US Fed supporting that by way of rate cuts. What momentum, what shape do you see this trajectory taking in terms of greater investments towards AI? Does that in any way perhaps exaggerate fears of a bubble? Again, references being made to the dotcom bubble.
I think with regard to the rate cuts, they are to stimulate the broader economy. I think if you look at the economic indicators, GDP growth beyond the AI set of investments has actually been pretty low, about 50 basis points. And so I think the rate cuts are to stimulate the broader economy.
Let's get in a word on some of the other challenges that we're talking about. Jobs is something that we're actively talking about especially here in India as well. Very recently we've seen job cuts at Amazon. I think they let go of about 14,000 people. We've seen at Microsoft as well, 4,000, 4,000 at Salesforce. You yourself earlier this year had to let go of a few people. Back home here in TCS, we've seen about 12,000 people in the latest quarter being asked to leave. Is there this conversation, while we're seeing conversations of course about greater productivity, do we also now need to have a conversation on what the very real impact could be on the ground and especially at workers, at coders, at the bottom of the pyramid?
Yeah, I think our view is that AI doesn't replace a human. A human that's powered with AI will replace a human that's not capable of using AI. I think that each of those institutions has their own prerogatives. Our own view is that we are actually trying to deliver more value for clients with the same employees by giving them AI tools. So we're trying to innovate at a faster pace. We're trying to serve clients with a better customer experience. We're trying to move our back office to being more agile and responsive in the way we serve clients. And so our view is, at least in our company, there aren't massive job losses or anything like that. It's adjusting the mix of the workforce with the AI powered enterprise.
One more challenge is global uncertainty. Increasingly because of the nature of conflict, we're increasingly seeing an amount of, if I may use the word, nationalism of technology, where whether that's rare earth, semiconductors, data, cloud, supply chains, and all of these aspects, there's an inward push coming in from large markets, large countries. Is that a trend that worries you when you look at providing solutions to customers, clients spread across the world?
I think it makes it more complex when you have different countries having different technology standards or different predilections for how they consume technology. It certainly makes the economies of scale and specialization that has driven global industry and has driven productivity growth more challenged, because now you have different countries operating with different scale and so it's hard to harmonize across all of them. In those transitions, the larger countries and the larger players always have an advantage because they already have reached scale or they have large populations like India does, where it's a large market. But you worry about what happens to the smaller countries and the less advantaged populations.
Sure. While we're on the subject, in terms of different regulations across different countries, India is in the process of coming out with its data protection framework. We're yet to see the light of day. So we don't quite have a clear picture of what that may look like. Is there a concern on data localization norms? The reason I ask that is because anyhow India has very limited capacity for local cloud storage, which is about 1 GW. So a mandate from the government to ask for the data to be stored here with not enough data storage capacity here, does that present issues for you?
It's a topic that we have dealt with across the globe, sort of data sovereignty, privacy, the proper classification and governance of data. What we have done with organizations across the globe is help them meet those requirements while being able to take advantage of all the innovation in the big cloud providers. I think that that is a balance you want to get right because if you implement controls in a way that doesn't allow you to innovate, it will actually in the longer term harm domestic institutions. We feel good about our ability to do so. We've seen that across the globe where we've been able to get that balance for our clients and for public sector organizations just right. I was in Europe recently and we are working with some of the governments there to help them implement advanced data sovereignty practices but allow them to use innovation from across the globe so that they can bring citizen services, improve national security, strengthen cyber defense and so on.
Just a couple more questions, Mr. Kurian. I just want to also get your thoughts on some of the policy decisions that have been taken by the US administration on H1B visa. If this policy does in fact come to stay that we are looking at $100,000 for every H1B visa, what does that do again in terms of sourcing talent? I ask this especially in context of Indian workers who have aspirations of working for the US tech industry in the United States. Now do we have a situation where they move back here, the companies gravitate towards countries such as India to source for talent?
Listen, we have been in India now for a very long time, 21 years. And so we have always believed in going to where the talent is. We have development centers. I was in Australia right before I came to India. We have an engineering group there. We have a group here. We have a group in Philippines. We have a group in Israel, in Ireland. So, lots of different parts of the globe. And key to success in an industry like ours is to have the best technical talent because they innovate on behalf of our clients. In terms of the US talent pool, there have been some positive steps for providing continued access to H-1Bs, for example, for college students graduating from universities in the US. And so we're hopeful that there'll be a more progressive perspective, especially for high-skilled global talent.
That's fantastic advice, Mr. Kurian. We'd like to thank you for the time that you've shared with us. It's a lovely conversation as always, like in 2023, now in 2025. And just as back in 2023 when you had given indications of what the road ahead may look like, we're hoping some of those things come to pass. We'll of course look to connect with you soon on your next travel to India. Thank you once again.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Hello and welcome to this special broadcast right here on CNBC TV18. Now I'm going to take a name of a few projects. Tell me if it strikes a bell. The Delhi Metro. The Terminal 2 at the Bengaluru airport. Burj Khalifa. The Shah Rukh Khan star movie Jawan, the mammoth hit that we saw recently. Chhava. The legendary game Call of Duty. The one common denominator across all of these different projects is the company San Francisco based Autodesk. The company provides tools for imagining and building solutions across the spectrum of all the projects that we mentioned, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's manufacturing or media and entertainment. Autodesk is increasingly now looking at India as a part of the APAC region to focus more on it. The company calls India a strategic market. To learn more about the company, about the vision, is with us the global CEO, Mr. Andrew Anagnost. Mr. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us, being a part of this conversation. India, you've called it a strategic market as far as the APAC region is concerned. Give us more depth on it. Why is it a strategic market? What is your vision here for the India market?
