AITC Chennai : Deep-dive into learning, innovating and newer ideas

Hours ahead of the 2-day Amazon India Tech Conference (AITC) 2019, we spoke with some of the leaders of technology, products and other devices at Amazon to get an overview of the event, the overall vibe and what they expect from this hotbed session of innovation and ideas. Discussing about the outcome of an event of this scale, Palanidaran Chidambaram (PubX & YJ, Content and Quality), said, “Events such as these bring about a ton of learning! With so many leaders from various teams, I expect to take their learnings and apply to the customer challenges we solve day to day. I also expect to form lasting relationships and great networking.”

On speaking about the relevance of the tagline, Palani was quick to respond that, “We constantly innovate and invent on behalf of our customers. A critical aspect for innovation is diverse opinions and learning from existing patterns and solutions. AITC provides a great opportunity to fast track this through the various interactions with PEs, senior leaders, and fellow engineers.” According to Kulasekharan, Sridhar from the RBS team, “I see the event as a spark that will enable the participants to innovate on behalf of the customer and build solutions that are futuristic and remains relevant for a long period of time. Many a times we build solutions for solving today’s problem and miss out (not account for) on the innovation opportunity that will be more relevant in the future.”

Talking about voice assisted technology, Alexa, Sriram Devanathan from Kindle Content, Digital Book Store said, “We are always looking to raise the bar even higher and to innovate new experiences. A great example is our shopping website - it’s already the biggest and easiest to use but we are inventing ways to make it even easier by bringing voice enabled shopping via Alexa.”

With lots of learning in line, the key take away from the event would be to expect new ideas emerging from cross pollination and synergies across teams. Another important outcome of the event is to understand the insights that will enable one to innovate on behalf of the customer solving for futuristic problems and learning from leaders common pitfalls that one should watch out for.

While most leaders shared a common vibe about the conference – they all resonated with the fact that this high participative event is about unbridled sharing, learning and innovating, and they can’t wait to have this started.