Harish Mehta, Mumbai (2026)

05/08/2026

At the Bombay Chamber's AI for Viksit Bharat Summit, I shared a conviction I have held for a while. AI is no longer a curiosity sitting in a lab. It is getting ingrained into the corporate world, into how serious businesses are being run and designed. What was heartening was seeing a room full of CXOs treat it with exactly that seriousness.

A few of the ideas I shared at the event:

- The country that invents a technology is not always the one that benefits most from it. India did not invent the microprocessor or the internet, yet we built the world's largest technology services industry. With AI, adoption and reinvention will matter far more than invention.

- Most companies are asking how AI can make them ten percent more efficient. But the better question is this. If AI had existed the day you founded your company, would you have built it the way it stands today? That question moves you from automation to reinvention.

- If AI only helps you reject a loan faster, that is automation. If it helps a deserving entrepreneur secure one in seconds using entirely new data, that is transformation. The difference is not the technology. It is the imagination.

- Within the next decade, every knowledge worker and every entrepreneur will have an AI teammate. The question is not whether that future arrives. It is whether your organisation is ready when it does.

India's own path, to my mind, rests on three pillars. AI in India, building sovereign strength in computing, research and talent. AI for India, where its benefits diffuse across 1.4Bn+ of us, as it helps solve some of our greatest challenges across education, health and livelihoods. And AI from India, which holds two opportunities. One, combining open-source and leading closed models to build scalable solutions for India's scale and complexity. Two, our IT services industry, with its decades of implementation, integration and domain expertise, serving clients worldwide as it has for years, now supercharged by AI.

When I imagine Viksit Bharat in 2047, I do not picture a handful of giant companies lighting up the country like searchlights. I picture millions of Indians, empowered first by IT and now by AI, start-ups and entrepreneurs, academics and farmers, artists and skilled workers, becoming the fireflies that can rise and light up the sky. That, to me, is India becoming Sone Ki Chidiya 2.0.

Glad to see institutions like BCC going beyond advocacy and into building AI-ready leaders and AI-ready organisations. More institutions must adapt NASSCOM’s collaborative, ecosystem-first way of working to grow Indian ecosystems across industries. Grateful to the Bombay Chamber of Commerce (BCC) for the invitation & for building a room where industry, startups and academia could think together.

27/07/2026

"If India could do it, so can we." I heard a version of that sentence more than once in Cape Town, and it is the reason this trip mattered.

The occasion was the launch of The Maverick Effect in Africa, followed by a fireside chat with A.J. Patel (Founder, TiE). I shared the story the book tells, of how a handful of software entrepreneurs came together in the late 1980s to build nasscom, and with it, an industry the world did not expect from India. Competitors who came together to build a neutral platform where the rule was simple: collaborate and compete, no personal agenda, keep the nation first.

What surprised people was that in the late seventies I was one of the "nuts" who left the US, gave up a good job, and tore up my green card. That card is often seen as a gateway to the land of milk and honey. Betting on your own soil rarely looked reasonable at the time.

And for many in the room, it was the first time hearing the Indian IT story in full, and the response was an urgent question. Can we build something like this for Africa? That question is the whole point.

The story of Indian IT was never meant to be read as mere history. It is closer to a blueprint, whose formulas can be repeated. Create your own neutral body. Let entrepreneurs collaborate at the peak of their careers. Solve the industry's problems together while keeping your country first. And this time Africa has an advantage we did not have. To work with a proven flywheel that changed the fortunes of a behemoth like India.

The panel discussion only deepened this. Africa has the youth, the ambition, and the appetite. What it takes now is what we needed then: trust, patience, and the willingness of competitors across industries to sit at one table for a larger cause.

Grateful to the organisers at the , , (Chairman, BIDCO), , the city of Cape Town, and everyone who made these conversations possible. If the story helps even a few people in Africa believe the industries they dream of are within reach, it will have done its work.

, , , ,

22/07/2026

Africa is the youngest continent on earth. Home to 1.5 billion+ people, most of them young, it may well need the biggest jobs mission the world has ever attempted.

Put India and Africa side by side and you are looking at more than a third of humanity. Two vast, young populations, and one question underneath almost every conversation at the 6th India Africa Entrepreneurship and Investment Forum this week: where will the work come from?

What you read about Africa from a distance and what you experience on the ground are not the same thing. Being here rearranges that picture quickly. The energy, the ambition, the pace of the founders building here, all of it runs ahead of the perception most of us hold from afar.

The appetite to trade, to invest, to build together is real, and the opportunity is genuine. But the measure that matters most for both regions is not the size of the deals. It is how many livelihoods they create. India built millions of technology jobs over three decades, often learning as we went. Africa does not have to start from scratch. It can build on India’s experience, learn from our wins and mistakes, and with the right focus, even move faster than we did. If we keep job creation at the centre of what India and Africa build together, prosperity has a way of following.

None of this is simple of course. Africa is many nations. Getting them to move in the same direction, and to summon the political will for it, is a real challenge that India knows well. We are many states, many languages, many interests, and still we found a way to move together when it mattered. What made it possible was the vision of a cause larger than any one of us, to do it for India's greater good. Africa's greater good can be that same glue.

Grateful to the organizers and to everyone working to turn this shared potential into something lasting.

, , , , , , nasscom,

20/07/2026

Some places make you slow down and simply look.
Cape Town is certainly one of them.

Clean streets, an unhurried pace, a coastline that keeps pulling your eye back to it between one conversation and the next. For a few days I found myself doing less talking and more noticing.

I was here for the 6th India Africa Entrepreneurship and Investment Forum, and I will write about that separately. But the city leaves its own wonderful impression. There is something to be said for a place that welcomes you as though it has all the time in the world.

Grateful to our hosts for the warmth, and to Cape Town for the reminder that the setting irrevocably shapes even the most serious conversations.

25/06/2026

India and Africa have walked remarkably similar roads. Forex crises, patchy infrastructure, the long shadow of colonial history, and a young population impatient to get on with it.

What turned India's fortunes was its IT industry, built by competitors who chose to collaborate. It rewrote how the world saw us and opened opportunities at a scale few thought possible. We did not get there alone. We did it on trust, and by building institutions that outlived any one of us.

What makes the road ahead compelling is how naturally our strengths meet.

Africa holds the critical minerals India's renewable energy ambitions increasingly rely on. India can help build the digital public infrastructure that transforms education, healthcare and payments. And startups on both continents can find larger organisations willing to incubate their ideas. Complementary strengths, one shared purpose.

I felt that spirit in Hamburg at the Hanseatic India Colloquium, where India and Germany met as partners rather than rivals. And again giving the keynote at Tech Peak Nepal, where a young IT community struck me as ready to set off a Maverick Effect of its own. It is what draws me to Cape Town this July for the sixth India Africa Entrepreneurship and Investment Forum.

I will be carrying one story in particular. How a handful of fierce competitors built NASSCOM, turned rivalry into co-creation, and in doing so helped change the fortunes of India itself. What India learned the hard way, we can now share. And I’m sure we have much to learn in return.

See you in Cape Town.

nasscom

17/06/2026

A framework built to lead. Now protected to last.
The Maverick Effect framework is now officially copyrighted.

The Maverick Effect began as a book about how India's IT industry was built. It became a subject of case studies at Harvard Business School and ISB, as well as an award instituted by the IMC Chamber of Commerce. Today I can share that The Maverick Effect has been worked into something more structured: a documented and independently validated framework, now registered under the Copyright Act.

The thinking behind this was simple. When an idea travels into classrooms and boardrooms, it tends to get simplified, reshaped, and its essence is sometimes lost. Putting the framework on record keeps the core intact, so what gets taught is the actual thinking, not a watered down version of it.

It also changes how the work is received. A book often invites readers to agree or disagree with the author's views. A validated framework gives universities and associations something firmer to engage with, to adapt, and teach. That is the difference between sharing a memory and handing over a tool.

The aim now is to put that tool to work. To help students see how an industry was really built, and to give associations a starting point when they want to organise, speak in one industry voice, and grow the pie.

The story was written.
The framework is validated.
The building is what comes next.

22/05/2026

The publishing world has lost one of its finest.

had a gift that is rarer than it sounds. He could hold a manuscript and see what others missed. Not the obvious, not the safe bet. The story that needed to be told.

When he read at HarperCollins India, he grasped its significance immediately and backed it with firm conviction. That kind of editorial courage is what separates a good publisher from a great one.

He shaped quietly, championed privately, and trusted where others hesitated. Indian publishing is enriched forever by what he gave it.

My deepest condolences to his family, his colleagues, and the many authors whose voices he helped carry into the world.

20/05/2026

turned 75 last Friday, and what a celebration it was! Elegant, warm, and deeply personal.

As his family sang his favourite songs, 'Saathi Haath Badhana,' 'Kisi Ki Muskurahaton Pe Ho Nisar,' 'Baar Baar Din Yeh Aaye,' their warmth filled the entire room. Every group, every corner, every conversation seemed to carry its own private chapter with Ashank.

Ashank, you were there when we were laying the foundations of nasscom, brick by brick, with no guarantee it would hold. You showed up at every meeting, every retreat. You were the conscience keeper we all needed, and the room showed it. That is a rare and beautiful thing.

As India enters the AI era, we once again need builders who think beyond themselves and leaders who put the ecosystem ahead of personal gain. India must ensure AI becomes a force for entrepreneurship and job creation at scale, not just productivity gains.

Wishing you many more years of health, friendship, music, and joy.

Baar baar din yeh aaye, my friend.

, , , , ,

18/05/2026

"In the long run, what differentiates institutions isn't the elegance of their technology stack.
It's the strength of their cultural stack."

That line, from 's fireside chat at the NASSCOM GCC Summit 2026, is one worth sitting with.

What made his conversation with Rajesh Nambiar compelling was that Deepak Parekh has spent decades building institutions through some of India's most defining moments. That experience was present in every word.

The core argument was about what makes institutions last through volatility, disruption, and reinvention. Not technology or scale, but culture, trust, governance, and the quality of human judgment under pressure.

On India's GCC journey, one observation rang particularly true. That our centres did not simply execute global processes. Over time, they began exceeding their briefs, improving what they were handed rather than just delivering it. That shift, from doing things cheaper to doing things that matter, is the real story of how India moved up the value chain.

And on why bodies like nasscom matter, the point was equally sharp. Platforms where the industry addresses headwinds and tailwinds together, rather than working in silos, are themselves a source of longevity. That institutional thinking does not age.

A session that left a lot to think about. Kudos to you 🙂

,, , , , , , , , ,

15/05/2026

For years, the GCC story was about capability and delivery. What is changing now is authorship. India is not just participating in global enterprise. It’s writing the next chapter.

At the 16th NASSCOM GCC Summit 2026, that was the unmistakable energy in the room.

from JP Morgan framed it precisely: let the Indian GCC become a microcosm of the parent company. Not a support arm. A microcosm. That is the leap being architected.

Today's GCCs bring talent, domain expertise, and frugal innovation capacity that no other geography can match at this scale. Add lower costs and the Indian market itself as a live testbed for solutions that travel globally, and you have the foundation of a genuine global innovation hub.

The Digital Public Infrastructure story reinforces this. Inclusion achieved at scale is not just a social outcome. It is proof of what India-built systems can deliver for the world.

The ambition now is also to grow global CXOs from Indian soil. That is the natural next step for an ecosystem that has already proved its depth.

None of this happens without the architects. NASSCOM, Government, industry, and every stakeholder who held conviction through the difficult years. A special congratulations to , , and the entire NASSCOM team for a summit that matched the ambition of the moment.

, , , ,

Harish Mehta

05/08/2026

27/07/2026

22/07/2026

20/07/2026

25/06/2026

17/06/2026

22/05/2026

20/05/2026

18/05/2026

15/05/2026

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