DG: You're about to step down as CEO of Infosys. Normally when a CEO steps down, people often ask him to look back and see where he's been. Look forward for us, though. What do you see coming up for Infosys in the next five years? What services are you most excited about that Infosys might provide?

NN: We believe that we can offer classic technology services, we can offer classic BPO services, we can offer knowledge processing services -- for example we work with a large bank and do fixed income research for them from here -- or we can create infrastructure tracking services… So I think it's really up to our ability to imagine what can be done that's limiting here. And it's important to imagine looking at the trends. It's to be able to say, the way technology is moving today, five years from now this will be so powerful or this will be so cheap or this will be so fast. And therefore is there something that we can do five years from now using the power of this which we cannot do today.

DG: You know, we used to be told, when people talked about offshoring, that the things that couldn't be offshored were face-to-face services. And then I visited a company here in India that's providing tutoring services to kids all over the world and in the United States face-to-face over the Internet. So which is it? Are we going to see face-to-face services, more face-to-face services delivered from India?

NN: I think the term to use is, I wouldn't say face-to-face, I would say things that require a physical presence. I mean, I don't think you're going to trust a cardiac operation remotely. You want the surgeon to be next to you to do it. You know, a lot of retail services are physical. You can't have a haircut done remotely. And there's a lot of things which are just...are not fungible, not really doable over a wire. But the act of tutoring, is I think, can be done on a wire because it's ultimately about teaching and so forth. And the other thing which is happening is also because of the bandwith going up is that the quality of video conferencing is going up… Because earlier the problem was that we felt we ultimately had to meet people because we want to look them in their eyes and establish that connection. And we are actually getting to a point where we can establish that kind of rapport and connection over the network. So things that earlier required close collaboration are now also becoming possible.

DG: Are you starting to see this in your own business? Because you are collaborating to design new products here, right?

NN: Yes, so these kind of things make it more and more possible to create a sense of being next to the person that you're talking to. And you know certainly in a lot of creative areas, that's important. You know suppose you're sitting and brainstorming about the next car or the next whatever, device, then if three of you are here and two of you are somewhere else, you want to get a sense that we're all in the same room. So those kind of things are becoming better and better.

DG: So how big is the opportunity for a company like this going forward?

NN: It's big. I mean, today we're talking about India has IT and BPO services, this whole category of knowledge services, and about $30 billion, and the expectation is that it will double to $60 billion in the next three, four years. So that gives you a sense of the scale of the opportunity.

DG: What’s the one area of your business that you are most excited about?

NN: I think the ability to offer software as a service…because today the whole movement in technology is… think of the internet as this gigantic cloud where you just plug in and you get what you want. And that's going to make technology access more useful and more available. And therefore the thing for us is to think of, dream of services we can offer of that nature. So I think that kind of thing is the very exciting thing we have looking forward.

DG: What about offering more business to consumer services?

NN: We as a firm have typically been a business to business company. Our customers are really large global corporations. We have 500 of the world's largest corporations as clients. So we have not been a consumer company. But you know, in business it's never good to say never. So you know, I don't know what will happen five years from now.

DG: Since I've been here I've heard two things about India. On the one hand, I hear limitless pool of very talented, good people. On the other hand, I hear talent shortage, salaries going up, not enough people. Which is it?

NN: It’s both. And I think it all depends on the prism through which you're looking at this because look at it in terms of graduates or people who have engineering skills. The numbers have gone up and today we're talking about half a million engineering graduates. That's a pretty big number by any global standard. But then there's the whole issue of how good is the quality. How elevated is the education they would have got. Have they been exposed to the latest technology, has the curriculum been appropriate to today's needs? Then you find that you have to dig into that.

DG: How many have the relevant skills?

NN: If you take one metric, it's how many we hire. In a given year, we get 1.4 million applications, and we hire about 25,000. That gives you a sense of -- but then of course, we are in a, in some sense, a privileged position because we are such a strong brand in India, we're seen as the best employer, we're seen as the company of choice, so we can pick sort of the best and the brightest. But that just gives you an idea of the numbers… I think the way to look at it, it is definitely the world's -- one of the world's -- largest pools of young, technology-trained, English-speaking talent. No question about it. At the same time, given the scale at which the industry is growing, we have to keep making investments on getting more people and getting better quality people.

DG: When do you hit a constraint?

NN: I think there's enough runway for some more years.

DG: So all this talk we hear of a talent shortage?

NN: I think there will always be talent pressure of some kind because the demands will be large. People will not have the right skills, people will not have the right training, so on and so forth. But I think these are all structural issues. They're problems that can be solved. Structurally we have the numbers.

DG: You were quoted a lot in the book The World is Flat, but I have to say, coming here to India, the world doesn't look very flat to me. You have extremely poor people, you have illiterate people, you also have very highly educated people. How relevant is what's happening here at Infosys to the rest of the population here in India?

NN: Obviously I think we all know that it's not really flat in that sense and I think the metaphor was used by Tom Friedman to demonstrate how we are leveling it through technology on a global basis. So I think we all know that. I think the way to look at it is…this industry has created an opening. It has created an opportunity. It has created momentum. And the way to see it is, there is something which this country got very serendipitously. It was not by a great plan of anybody. It just happened that a lot of things came together to create this enormous opportunity. And this can be, in a sense, the locomotive, the engine that can pull everything else. And that's the way to look at it. Not that there's this gap, but the fact that this is the instrument by which, if we do the right things, do the right policies, educate enough people, create the right infrastructure, create the right economy. Then you can use this to pull the whole train. Now, if you don't do the right things, just the engine goes ahead and the rest of the, the bogies stay on the platform, then you've not got it. So I think the key thing is to use this as an instrument to drive larger change.

DG: You're going to be stepping down as CEO of Infosys, you'll still be very active in the company, but you also have interests in philanthropy, in seeing that India moves forward. What are you going to do to work on these issues of making sure that everybody gets the chance to be on the train?

NN: Let me say that I'll be fully active in the company and I'll be doing a lot of things for the company like key client relationships, global brand-building, thought leadership, and so on. So there's a lot of stuff I'll do. But also you know I'm also passionate about this other thing which is you know how do make sure all the compartments get attached to the train. And there I think I'll work closely on urban renewal. I think urban renewal and urbanization is a very critical element of job creation in this country… They're all things I do because I believe that we need to somehow extend this whole opportunity to much larger number of people.

DG: Some of the business leaders I've spoken with and the policy analysts who follow India say that they've seen India get ready to take off before. But it just doesn't move that fast. It gets to the runway, but then it doesn't take off, it doesn't move quickly. What do you see?

NN: That's true. But I think a variety of things have happened, which has put India in the take-off mode. And that's fairly clear. I mean, whether it's the economy is growing, whether it's the rise of entrepreneurial companies, the free economy, the open society, which is now becoming more and more obvious, the English language skills, the demographic benefits. You know there's a whole slew of things, which indicate that this is for real, this is not a mirage… Having said that, can we declare victory? Obviously not. Because while you're able to get the growth, the growth is going to lead to income inequality, it's going to increase the stress between those who are successful and those who are not, and therefore if you don't address those inequality issues, this could get…slowed down, or even be brought down because of that. So I think the way to look at it is, it's certainly taken off, but there's a lot more to be done to keep it in the air.