Tidal Waves and Undertows – Guest Blog

Carol Realini, CEO of Obopay, Inc. and a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, is blogging from the India Economic Summit, held in New Delhi 14-16 November 2010.

by Carol Realini (@carolrealini)

My attendance at WEF events is fairly recent since it is tied to Obopay being awarded a Technology Pioneer in 2010. But I am no stranger to global industry and development gatherings. With each gathering I ponder as I depart the key takeaways.

The Tidal Wave – Growth

The excitement at WEF was contagious. The main takeaway was enthusiastic optimism after listening to India leadership articulate their vision for India. Most extremely optimistic and some, for example Raghunath A. Mashelkar, inspirational.

India growth and outlook is breathtaking; 8.8% growth, fast growing middle class, building and infrastructure expansion, inclusive growth agenda to bring more benefit to 700 Million needy residents. Notable are foreign and domestic capital for investment, mobile broadband rollout, return of the Indian x-pat, general strength of the human capital in IT sector, expansion of strong Indian players into other emerging markets, and strategic public/private initiatives like Universal ID, AADHAAR.

All of the above deserve a dedicated blog. The Universal ID  AADHAAR  is one of my favorites because it is a game changer for financial inclusion. My company, Obopay offers mobile banking in India in conjunction with partner’s Yes Bank, Nokia, and BSNL. We have collectively made tremendous progress along with others like us in India – but we all struggle with enrollment of new first time bank users. When someone signs up for a service like ours – we are required to authenticate that we “know our customer”.

Today, Obopay enrolls people on three continents in 4 countries and counting into its mobile money service. But in India this is especially challenging because of the absence of a reliable identification method. Many of these users, especially the ones with the most unfilled financial needs; have to come back multiple times to provide necessary documentation so we can open an account. In the US we have social security numbers and drivers licenses with pictures, in Kenya we have National picture IDs. In India, no standard picture id or numbering system exists. It makes it tough but especially problematic for 700 M lower class India’s to provide adequate documentation.

AADHAAR  will give everyone in India a high tech form of ID – number and biometrics. This will be a breakthrough for many things, but especially valuable to financial inclusion as it rols out this year.  The rollout starts now with aggressive targets – 200 Million UID’s to those who need it the most within 24 months.

The Undertow – Full participation for Women

“Talent has no age, no passport, no gender, no color – but opportunity does”

Despite all the positives, growth prospects, inclusive growth initiatives, there are two areas where I left Delhi less enthusiastic about than when I arrived; a) Women and b) bias for centralized problem solving.  Since I am no expert on the latter topic, I bring it up here and hope others will blog or comment. But I am an expert on women in the workforce and leadership…so here I go — Don’t read the rest of this blog if you don’t want to know what I really think. 

The panel on Women was a big disappointment despite the fact that it was entertaining. Comments and questions individually were all ok. But, the conversation showed that India is definitely in a denial stage that they have a problem. And they do have a huge problem.

Women are disadvantaged on many fronts; being beaten at home by their husbands is common and culturally accepted, families discouraging women from having careers once they have children, corporate cultures that are toxic to women in general and especially toxic to women in leadership positions, lack of proper board level representation in Indian companies. I could go on and on, but it is really not my place – this is an Indian problem and it needs Indian people to solve it. What is discouraging is that at a gathering of prestigious leaders and thinkers the conversation sugar coated everything – even the obvious tough issues that needed to surface.

Some participants at the session tried to advance the conversation, but the pull to the “everything’s fine” tone was clear. One voice did stand out and impress; Suresh Vaswani of Wipro. He was honest that corporations including Wipro have a problem. Others acknowledged it also but Vaswani differentiated himself  by articulating what Wipro was doing about it – and he outlined a multi-dimensional approach which made sense and looked to women at Wipro for their leadership in implementing the programs. I wish him and the women of Wipro success and hope they achieve their goals. And I hope others follow their lead.

Women are half the human capital of India. My recommendation for WEF is next year – have a report available so the facts are clear making it tougher to sugar coat. Then have a panel of all women – and make sure they are encouraged to speak frankly.  A more focused panel with participants that represent the face of Women’s empowerment in India would go a long way to being representative of the great strides and challenges that women are experiencing in all walks of life in India – both public and private.