Social Selling Defines Success of Innovation, says Prasanth Nair

KOCHI:
Social selling, which is the right kind of communication with the public, is very crucial in the introduction of newer technology in society, said Prasanth Nair here on Wednesday.

“Whenever you come up with a major innovation, unless you don’t bring people on board, it won’t yield the desired result. A bit of imagination makes things happen on larger scale,” said Prasanth Nair, who is the Deputy Secretary, Government of India, and founder, Compassionate Keralam, while participating in a panel discussion on “Designing A Technology Infrastructure for the Future” on the concluding day of the two-day Cera #Design Kerala Summit at Bolgatty Island.

Citing the issue of students in Kozhikode with private bus operators, who objected to them getting into the bus, he said: “We came up with an interesting technology solution. Albeit we could take it to the social platform, unfortunately, we couldn’t sell it among the bus owners. It was disappointing and we have to take efforts to avoid this in future as the entire effort is wasted.”

Dr Saji Gopinath, CEO, Kerala Startup Mission, who was the moderator of the panel discussion, said newer technology creates jobs and new way of thoughts. “Technology alone is not complete. We require the second aspect of the newer technology which is where we move from a world where conventional systems are actually being changed into newer systems. There is a huge concept of freelancing at crowd-sourcing, which is actually inbuilt in the newer technology world.”

He noted that it is also important how we actually tap the power of people at large to solve social and economic problems.

Suhas Gopinath, Founder and CEO, Globals Inc., said Kerala should be the first state in the world to set up disaster management incubator. “Much more important that startups and designers could be encouraged to build technology solutions to stave off disasters. Kerala can set up a platform to encourage startups to focus on disaster management.”

Johnson. K. Jose, President, FEDServ and former Head of IT, Federal Bank, said there are multiple platforms available in the bank to enable one to verify a customer through Aadhaar channel and collect fund from a particular customer. He added that they also provide interfaces to any of the applications.

The state government organised Cera #Design Kerala Summit as part of India’s largest design festival, ‘Kochi Design Week’, seeking to leverage path-breaking design solutions in rebuilding the flood-ravaged Kerala. The two-day event, attended by leading design luminaries, architects and decision-makers from around the world, concluded on Wednesday.
It was helmed by the Department of Information Technology, Government of Kerala.