Communiqué 18 – SITM’s flagship event with fresh insights on the Telecom industry

SITM’s flagship event, Communiqué 18, has reached the heights of success and unmatched valour this year. At SITM, we believe in leveraging the academic knowledge provided by the curriculum with market exposure. Each year the essence of the latest disruptions are captured and a theme is formulated encompassing all the trends of the year which impact the Telecom sector. The theme for this year being Establishing New Synergies: Together Towards Tomorrow. The 8th International Telecom Seminar witnessed and envisaged the company of stalwarts from the industry like:

• Edwin Moses, Group VP, Oracle
• Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI
• Bipin Pradeep Kumar, Co-Founder, Gaia, Smart Cities

as Chief Guests and many more eminent and proficient personalities like:

• Ashutosh Kumar, Business Head, Rivigo
• Shakeeb Naim, Senior Research Manager, MarketsandMarkets
• Sachin Sharma, Talent Acquisition, Sunlife Financials
• Manoj Prasad, VP-HR, RIL
• Arnab Chatterjee, VP, [24]7.ai
• Rakhi Deshpande, Talent Acquisition Leader, Xoriant
• Mohan Sitharam, CHRO, Subex
• Himanshu Goel, MD, Syniverse
• Utpal Chakraborty, Head of AI, Yes Bank
• Yasesh Shah, VP, BARC India

and others from the industry.

The Panel Discussions and Keynote sessions mainly revolved around the following topics –

With the blurring of disparity between the physical and the digital world, the concept of gig economy is on an exponential rise today and invaded diversified sectors of IT, HR, telecom etc. Organizations all over the world are increasingly tending towards hiring independent contractors and freelancers with the revolutionary digital era reigning supreme, instead of full time employees, with the gig economy undermining the traditional economy of full-timers. Herein, a study by Intuit predicted that by 2020, 40 percent of American workers would be independent contractors. The pros of the gig economy are manifold, a few being that it’s domain specific, promotes to build loyal customer base and strong reputation, one creates their own schedules in work and mobility. On the other hand, they are low on benefits and security and are liable to drastic changes. Practically, the idea of gig economy overlaps with the sharing economy as increasingly people are shifting towards freelancing.

With AI, ML and Deep Learning evolving and taking over the world at a brilliant speed, with new synergies evolving and engulfing the globe namely with BFSI, Fintech, Analytics, Cyber security, Data security new domains are being reinvented which are contributing towards the deepening data chasm. Along with this the concepts of GDPR, Blockchain, Bitcoin, predictive data analysis etc. are being coined. Security being the new buzz word in the era of Revolution 4.0, Analytics is being empowered day by day with the revolutionary changes being adopted in all sectors of the ICT industry.

The Labyrinth circumscribing the entire world today is IoT with its diversified opportunities facilitating every sector in the nooks and corners of the globe. The building blocks of this maze include – IoT industry and its various applications, cloud in IoT, gateways, processors, sensors and controllers involved in it and are providing the common language and platform for the plethora of applications to communicate with each other. The main agenda being: devices communicating data, securely with the Internet of Things platform, which in turn integrates data from several devices and applies analytics to send over the most valuable of data to the applications that addresses industry specific needs hence serving the purpose and pursuit of value addition to the consumer intensified/driven industry.

For last 20 years, continuous technical transformation and information waves have driven high growth in the telecom industry. However, an age with saturated telecom penetration is coming, and the industry is facing a brand new situation altogether. Top 5 disruptions that will drive the most change in telecommunications by 2020 are: Integration with content service providers, IoT, Mobility, Market saturation, security, OEMs, Social media and e-commerce. Along with that, in the Indian scenario, the convergence is taking place with the mergers and acquisitions that will be a part of reality sooner, yet the aim being maximization of profit in this highly intensified capital driven telecom contours.

We are extremely overwhelmed by the responses we have got from the students all across Pune attending the seminar and we are ever grateful to our sponsors who have supported us in our journey specially Campus Times, Dalal Street Investment Journal, Souled Store,       Mc Donalds, Classmate, Union Bank, United Colors of Benetton, Maharaja Wada, Treasures Corporate Gifting, Nine2Five, Naturals Aqua, Pop Mak, Sukhi Aatma, Food Bucket and Aaryavar. We cordially extend our gratitude to all who contributed in making Communiqué 18 a grand success.