If Mukeshbhai can talk Blockchain, why can't you ? Digital Transformation

"Who Said Elephants Can't Dance" - an amazing book by Louis Gerstner talking about the turn-around at IBM. IBM at that time was one of the largest organizations but with rapid changes happening, it was important to adopt the change. Gerstner not only came up with the centralized global teams or about investing in cutting edge technologies in terms of Horizons - H1, H2, H3 - If you're in the IT Industry, I'm sure you would have come across this. Today IBM is still going strong, thanks to the transformation they undertook few decades ago.

Last week, Reliance Industries conducted their Annual General Meeting with the chairman Mukesh Ambani taking the lead. Like always, Reliance has posted so fantastic numbers in terms of the EBITDA margins - thanks to Reliance Retail. Along with that Mukeshbhai also announced a string of deals starting with Saudi Aramco investing about US $15Bn in Reliance Petrochemicals arm that will help the company reduce their debt. He even went on to say that Reliance would become a zero-debt company in 18 months ! 

If Mukeshbhai can talk Blockchain, so can you. Courtesy: NewsState

Reliance - Blockchain, Mixed Reality & Cloud

However, the most exciting things was when Mukeshbhai talked about Blockchain, Mixed Reality and Cloud Computing. He also had Satya Nadella on the video conference to talk about the Jio-Microsoft deal. On the blockchain front, Jio plans to create India's largest network with over 10,000 nodes to decentralize content distribution. He went on to say that the future is all about immersive experience for customers - his son even demonstrated MR Headset Holoboard during the AGM. Lastly, he also spoke about their partnership with Microsoft Azure to help SMB more productive.

With all this, there's one question that comes to my mind "If Mukeshbhai can talk Blockchain, why can't you ?"

Reliance has been (is) a petrochemical company, however they have understood that to stay in the game, going digital is the way forward. And this was quite evident when they had announced Jio, they promised 4G network across India with more emphasis on data. What happened next was Idea merging with Vodafone and Airtel bleeding with their losses. And now Mukeshbhai is taking the leap with blockchain, Mixed Reality and Cloud. It clearly shows that he (or his advisers) are serious about Digital Transformation. 

Digital Transformation is not an easy task, especially for an organization of this size. They have embraced technology and are moving with it. And they are setting a perfect example of a successful digital transformation journey. Many companies should look up to them on the way they have embraced the change. Today, every company wants to be called a Digital Company. Like DBS bank changed the way banking works, they transformed their core services and digitized banking services for customers. From being "World's Best Bank" they went on to become a Future-Ready organization.

With so much inspiration around, what are the reasons stopping organizations to take on the digital journey ? Why do still feel that organization might not be ready to adopt the change ? Mention your views in the comments below.