March 25, 2010
Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore
 

“We live in a world without borders and boundaries as a result of the mobile revolution. A world restricted only by your imagination — the world of the wireless and mobile.”
 

Amrita’s Prashant R. Nair, Vice-Chairman, Information Technology at the Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore was quoting Sunil Mittal, the founder of Bharati Telecom, as he chaired a session on Enablers for Growth – Next Frontiers in Coimbatore.
 

The session, part of CII Connect 2010, was organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry on March 5. These events, organized now for over a decade in various Indian cities, are considered among the leading IT-related events in India.
 

Eminent speakers at this event included Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO, Infosys; Mr. Subrato Bagchi, Co-Founder, Mindtree; Mr. P.W.C. Davidar, IT Secretary, Government of Tamil Nadu and Dr. Santhosh Babu, MD, Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu.
 

Amrita’s Prashant Nair was the only speaker from academia.
 

“Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can change the business landscape. All of us Google for our information needs. We all know the 4 Ps of marketing, ie Place, Price, Product and Promotion. Well Google has only one P i.e. Product.”
 

“How could one explain Google then from this point of view? That’s the power of ICT and how all the business models and rules can be rewritten. We are going to examine the next frontiers of ICT and how they can enable growth.”
 

“A recent Nielsen survey found 70% of the world’s online population hooked onto sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn etc. With 400 million users, if Facebook was a country; it would be the 8th most populated country in the world ahead of Russia.”
 

“Last year, we witnessed CNN versus Ashton Kutcher on Twitter on who could reach 1 million friends. Twitter expects to have a billion users by the year 2013. The average user has 130 followers. The potential for enterprises to tap into these networks for marketing is huge.”
 

In addition to chairing the session, Mr. Prashant Nair also moderated a panel discussion where speakers from Microsoft, Nokia, Zoho and Social20:20 deliberated on cutting-edge technologies like Cloud Computing, Social Networks and Mobile Applications.
 

In the past, Mr. Prashant Nair was also invited to serve as a panel member of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at CII Coimbatore Zone.