Embracing Technology - Junaid Khan (CEO Air Blue)

Junaid Khan praises Siraj sahib on the excellent topics and subject raised by him and these subjects are thought provoking for all people. The subject is extremely critical for the leadership in Islamabad and corporate world. However, some of these points are forgotten not only in bureaucracy but even on the corporate sector. The conflict of interest is losing its impact in all areas. 

Technology seems very small item and small subject. Technology presentation cannot be complete without Microsoft. He mentions Mario Andretti said If everything seems under control then that means we are not going fast enough. That is certainly true for technology. It’s all about speed and connectivity. The world will realize by 2020 that there will be 50 billion devices connected and over 5 billion internet users will be in the world. That’s more than 2/3 of world’s population actually connected. 90% of the new cars estimated will be using internet one way or the other. One billion internet users will actually be using one form or the other voice activated assistance like Siri or lexa Athena or any of such technologies. One internet user will have 10 internet devices. That’s how interconnected the world is going to be. And for business it means that it is estimated $19 trillion of profit will be generated by technology related companies. One business which is in infancy which is the grown technology is estimated to be $100 billion worth of industry in just two years and the key usage of this industry will be on delivery side. And currently largest Delivery Company UPS is not using drone technology. The company using it is Amazon. They are the one to be the largest user of drone technology for delivering the products to the homes of the consumers. Amazon only 20 years ago decided to challenge $25 trillion retail industry. And in 20 years they have managed to become the largest retailers in the world without having any stores. Walmart which is the largest retailer is today valued at $250 billion. The worth of Amazon is three Walmart’s, $750 billion.

Another fascinating story is Airbnb. Three people started it not more than 10 years ago in San Francisco. There first customers were actually rented their place on a single air mattress. From there they decided to challenge $500 billion hotel industry and today they stand at $40 billion and the largest hotel chain in the world. Intercontinental group is worth 20 billion. But not owing a single hotel, Airbnb is valued twice as much as intercontinental.

Netflix has transformed the video industry. When it started, video industry was wothn100 billion. 

Today Netflix alone is $150 billion. And we know uber and careem locally challenged taxi industry. Uber today is worth $40 billion. All these company use technology to introduce services that are better, simpler and more friendly to the consumers. Therefore, every industry will be impacted by technology. Disruption is not new. The difference is the pace of disruption the pace of change is fast. There are three main reasons why the pace has picked up at such a high pace. One is the processing power. Every 18 months the processing power doubles and now a days it will be much faster. To give a perspective, each one of us is carrying device in our pockets whose processing power is more than the computers that landed on Apollo 11 on the moon. The same device has more storage capacity than the same computers. That generation used that kind of limited processing power and storage power to land on the moon. And we use this tremendous processing power for whtsApp, Instagram, YouTube etc.  They all are going to be obsolete. No one even remembers the cassettes or those type of music devices any more. CDs were hot items in 80s and 90s. Everything will be obsolete. So we see within our own lifetime technologies are been created are born and they are dying. We need to focus on grand children and our grandchildren will no know any of these technologies. This is how technology is moving at speed and we have to move with it.

In terms of new technologies that are coming up and will disrupt all the industries in next 10 years, the artificial intelligence which is actually focusing on analyzing the tremendous amount of data we have right now, the predictive technology is going to change how all the equipment are operated. Even when you sit in a car, the car should tell you which route you should take. Shopping pattern are different. Even on google if you search something the next minutes it gives you things it anticipate you want to see. This will change. In 5 to 7 years yow will see driverless cars. By 2025, there will be 10% of cars driverless. The huge industry which is insurance industry has to change drastically because 90% of the road accident that happen are due to human error. So if we have driverless car then 90% of accidents goes down. No accidents no insurance.

The voice activated assistance, all users will have 24/7 virtual assistance with them. Two other technologies that are going to change the earth is block chain. It’s not only the bit coin and or digital currency part but the security element of block chain change how every secured transaction actually happen. Real estate foe example takes any type of fraud away. Similarly, nano technology will change how actually all manufacturing is looked at. In next 10 years cures coming foe diseases like cancer, diabetes and others. Nano technology will change fashion industry. Bullet proof clothing coming out. Today can buy bullet proof suit for $200,000.

A report published where they rank to 50 countries based on innovation and surprisingly south East Asia Middle East and Africa are not there, no innovation. On one hand it’s disappointing but on other hand there is a lot of opportunity for business leaders, for governments to use technology and change status of these countries from 3^rd world to 1^st world countries.  If we use technologies we can change the fortune. Technology is solution to transform this country and society.

Shammy sky walker of star wars said you cannot stop change any more than you can stop sun from setting. Change is happening at very fast pace. We must work with it, move with it, adopt it, and embrace it. Because if we don’t we all will be forgotten. Let’s embrace it, accept it and try and transform the society.

In the end, just want to tell how air blue have changed the aviation industry in Pakistan but also how are we being relevant.

Thank you