Connect2010 has come to an end. Hundreds of people have worked behind the scenes to make this event a grand success.

Though we may not be able to name each one of them, we would like to thank each of them for their help and involvement.

We also thank all delegates, sponsors and government agencies for their inputs.

The social media team, which handles this blog, has put in lots of efforts during past 2 days. Excerpts from the talk of almost every speaker has been captured and published as a blog post. Though the event is over, you can still read all the notes/summary right here on the blog, at your convenient time and location.

If you’ve been following our updates on the blog/facebook or twitter, do let us know how was it. Any suggestions to improve and mistakes if any. We’re waiting to hear from you.

We’ve also recorded numerous podcasts, which will be made live asap (videos are being edited as I write this)

Instant updates were also shared on facebook and twitter, reaching out to virtually unlimited number of users..

We took numerous photos and have made them available online live within a few minutes. View CII Connect Photos on flickr Some of these photos may not be as good as a professional click, but they serve the purpose of capturing and conveying a moment instantly. Once we get the photos taken by official photographer, they’ll be shared too…

We’ll continue to bring the post event coverage. Do stay tuned.

Thanks

Here’re a few key points from the speech given by Mr MK Stalin, Deputy CM, Govt of Tamil Nadu

• This 10th edition is jointly organized by CII, Govt of TN and Govt of India. Looking at the objectives of Connect,
• I’m quite impressed with the sessions and would like to call all of them as High Octane. I’d like to specially thank S Mahalingam
• India is fastest growing and 4th largest IT market as per recent McKenzie study. It’ll be many years before China can overtake India
• Indian IT industry has played a key role in putting India on the global map. Revenues have increased to 73.1 billion US$ from 69.8 in 2008-09
• Not long ago, Chennai was perceived as conservative city, Chennai has transformed as San Jose of India
• With one new company is coming to Chennai in every 2 days
• IT export from Chennai was 161 crore in 1996-97 and has increased to 36000 crores in 2009-10
• IT export from Coimbatore was 50 crore in 2004-05, last year it was 370 crores
• Worldbank’s only back office outside US is in Chennai
• TN was first to form IT policy. Siruseri and Tidel IT parks were vision of Chief Minister Karunanidhi
• TN CM spoke to Govt of India because of which SEZ concession has been extended…

Chennai was obvious choice. Govt is very supportive. We’ve 2 facilities here and we’re looking for 3rd one

– S Gopalakrishan, Infosys

S Gopalakrishan was asked why Infosys Chose Chennai as a hub…

Here’s what Kris replied…

One of the reasons why Infosys selected Chennai as a hub was they wanted to start a hub where rapid growth could be achieved as IT industry as such was growing rapidly and Infosys as a company wanted to keep pace with the Industry.

Tamil Nadu Government was very supportive.

Tier II and III cities are also important in taking the indutry to the interior of country, but the growth level is less compared to cities

Gopalakrishnan on Chennai

• Chennai can be a place that can has rapid growth, as a knowledge city, existing companies and employees should become a magnet
• Challenge is how can we make Land at an affordable rate
• Chennai can take up new innovation and  new business like cloud computing and mobile computing
• Best way to continue interaction is to create clusters
• Why not create an eco system for IT and Automobile sector?

S Gopalakrishnan is also the chairman of CII southern region

Mr Gopal Srinivasan, Chairman & MD, TVS  Caital Funds Ltd

• Entrepreneurs  are freedom fighters – win economic war
• 12% of private equity cheques come to  Tamil Nadu in 2010
• People moved from outside Tamil Nadu have added value to the state

Mr. TC Meenakshi Sundaram, MD, IDG Ventures India

• Many fantastic entrepreneurs from Tamil Nadu
• Most characteristics for entrepreneurs there for south Indians
• Risk apetite and how ambitious are the important traits to be developed
• Most people don’t become entrepreneurs because of comfort level and settled  life style and work life balance
• Tamil Nadu – one of the most urbanized state
• High no of Engineering graduates, many IT firms
• Tamil Nadu IT exports second largest
• Are we creating disruptive technology or are we following
• There are engineers but not scientist – not enough disruptive ideas
• Technology is means and not end.  Solve existing problem to create value.
• Niche markets are very small

Mr. Leo Puri, MD, Warburg Pincus

• Outsiders look at Tamil Nadu – closed and conservative, sometimes overstated
• Noth Indians more risk taking – something to do with culture
• Friction that comes with growth
• Socio political leadership can be more encouraging in south India
• Government needs to go out and be willing to source capital
• Prioritizing entrepreneurship in Andhra
• Tamil Nadu looks at  Engineering IT textile only
• New gen entrepreneurs doing things different. Eg  Shriram finance
• View India/world as market

“The need of the hour today in healthcare is innovation and these innovations must be Indian,” said Dr. Sunil Shroff, Managing Trustee, Mohan Foundation. Dr Sunil was the third panellist in the key panel discussion on Innovation.
Dr Sunil runs a foundation called the Mohan Foundation which is an NGO which tries to improve the process of organ donation in transplant surgeries in the Indian healthcare industry. He talked about how in India nowadays there has been increasing incidents of diabetes and hypertension. Incidentally, there are a hundred million people in India who are pre diabetic, 8% of our population has hyper tension, and 80 million people have tested hepatitis positive.

Dr Sunil went on to expand on the true mission of the Mohan Foundation. Normally in the case of accidental deaths, the patient usually dies when the heart goes kaput. However, in the case of many road accidents, many of the victims result in brain death( when the brain dies, but the rest of the organs, for example, the heart, lungs, kidneys will still be functional). When a victim dies of brain death, the rest of the organs can be used to help other victims who need organs for a transplant surgery. Therefore, even if one victim dies due to brain death, multiple people can get helped in different situations.

The Mohan foundation has offices in Chennai, Hyderbad and all over India. “Since we’ve started this initiative in 1997, we have actually signed an MoU with the Government of Tamilnadu and placed counsellors in government hospitals and out of 29 brain death cases in 2010, we have managed to convince the familes of the victims and succeeded in obtaining the organs from 21 of these cases,” said Dr Sunil.

The most important part of his speech is how he kept stressing that organ donation is true altruism, there is no money exchanged and especially in India there is a lot of stigma against organ donation with worries of the body being ‘defiled’ after death. However, just getting this concept ingrained into the general public, the Mohan Foundation can take care of the demand for organs and also tae away the commercial meaning of organs.