75% of management is from India: Oracle CEO

MUMBAI: Safra Catz, global CEO of the $40-billion software major Oracle Corporation, which has nearly 30% of its employees in India, is enthused by the policies of the Modi government and sees its investments accelerating here. Catz, who addressed a Nasscom summit in Mumbai on Wednesday on her maiden visit to the country, is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi later in the week and announce a fresh strategic intent for the country.
In an exclusive interview with TOI, Catz said it was Modi’s speech at Silicon Valley recently that made her realize the potential of Digital India. Catz, who has overseen about 100 M&A deals worth several billions, believes a little bit of marketing can help bring more women into the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) space. Considered among the highest paid women leaders globally, her advice to aspiring women professionals is, “Keep working, don’t give up and don’t take it personally.” Excerpts:
Oracle has been in India for more than 25 years now and has seen several business cycles playing out as also different governments. What are the differences in policies of the new government under Narendra Modi that stand out?
When I heard PM Modi speak (at Silicon Valley in October), I understood the passion, the vision and the massive opportunity for improvement and the fact that technology was going to enable a more prosperous India and actually a more prosperous planet. I knew I had to come to India to both see the Prime Minister and talk with him and just immerse myself in the whole ecosystem.
Sometimes, the symbolism of the CEO coming just gets everybody even more focused on the mission. I am incredibly impressed. Where else do you have both vision that is so deep and broad and such a powerful intellectual base of educated people?
You spoke about symbolism. Emerging markets contribute a substantial amount to global corporations now and India is one of the most important growth markets. But there is a feeling that Larry Ellison (Oracle founder) has only paid attention to India from a distance...
It was actually Larry Ellison who saw the potential of intellectual ability in India very early and it was Larry who said, ‘I don’t just want to put a back office, I want the whole life cycle of products, not just the end but the beginning, the design, the built, the maintain and the enhance — all in India.’ It was Larry himself who said India was the more fertile opportunity for us for real expansion and that’s why we have been so successful here.
Are Indian companies adapting to cloud at a faster pace than global?
Since there is no long, old invested legacy, they are much more willing to take that jump to the future than others. In India, all of a sudden a new technology has come in without the big upfront investment. When you read into Digital India, the only way to actually enable it is through the cloud. In most cases, the government lags. In this case, the government is leading with example. Our cloud business has been growing very quickly and India, for us, is a terrific opportunity.
How well are Indian managers doing in the Oracle global system?
Many of our senior folks are Indians today (Bangalore-born Thomas Kurian was just appointed president). You look through an entire management team across the world and you realize three quarters is from India — and all parts of India by the way, not just one area.
You were a late entrant in cloud, but quickly caught up with SAP…
The only thing new about cloud is the name, because Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy (Sun founder) talked about it two decades ago. After we bought PeopleSoft, we rewrote all of our product line including the database for the cloud. We didn’t call it cloud — our fusion applications were called SaaS (software as a service). We were working on it before the name had even caught on. SAP has a long way to go. Let me know when they have got manufacturing in the cloud, financials in the cloud, CRM in the cloud — wake me up when they have.
When will Oracle overtake SAP?
We have already overtaken SAP in cloud. When we acquired PeopleSoft, SAP was six times our size. Now SAP in most markets is not even as big as us. We have some announcements coming up later. Our investments will continue and we will accelerate.
The technology industry is lagging behind in diversity. What steps has Oracle taken to ensure they bring more women into STEM?
Looking at diversity at the end of the supply chain is really not very helpful. Actually what you need to do is to do it at the beginning. We have a programme that educates girls in high school, but we actually went ahead and built a high school on design and technology on our campus where we built programmes for girls only. Here we focus on technology and STEM education. Wearable technology, for instance, has fashion and technology. I know I can’t boil the whole ocean but I can do one cup at a time.
Are companies under a lot of pressure to maintain the diversity quotient? You are credited with a view that women don’t take to math and science easily. Is that true?
I can’t love math more than I love math because I like to have the right answer. The president of Harvey Mudd College, California, which is a science-focused school, said she had figured out that by just renaming some of these courses made them more enticing for women. She doubled the number of women. So I think the solution lies in a little bit of marketing.
How do you see the future of technology evolving and what role would Oracle play in the next 5-10 years?
There are two things going on simultaneously. First is the move to the cloud. The difference between us and everybody else is that we have multiple dimensions. First of all, we have infrastructure as a service, which Amazon has; we have platform as a service, which Microsoft has; we have software as a service; we have applications. Nobody has everything except us. We also have data as a service. Additionally, the other very enormous trend is the internet of things.
This is really enormous amount of data coming out of equipment and sensors and clicks. The kind of tools that we have built over the years are set up to handle that data. The fact that these two trends are hitting simultaneously is, frankly, why we come to work every day, because the opportunity for us is just perfect.