Technology is the word. In the wake of India
being in the cusp of a digital revolution,
the role of the company secretaries
(CS) has gained immense criticality. It is
one profession through which one can
contribute more towards the society than
any other profession.

This upcoming dynamism in the role of
the CS was well explained in the words of
Rajesh Sharma, Government Nominee,
Council member ICSI. He said: “The CS
are the closest to the whole hierarchy of
the top management. We are the key
managerial persons amongst the board
of directors. We sense for the corporate
structure and therefore we are very important.”

Dynamics of the business are changing
very fast. It is a complete consumer driven
economy where consumer is the
king. Talking on these lines, Pramod Mulani
– Head, Product and Digital Initiative
Division, NSDCL, said: “The future pans
out to be that of fierce competition. This
will be followed by regulatory changes
and then profitability pressure will be taking
over leaving us into a complex technology
landscape where the role of CS
will come into picture.”

In this scenario, encouraging the secretaries
across the demography, Sharma
said that they were the positive professionals
as their growth means the growth
of the economy, growth of companies and
growth of the nation as a whole. “A lawyer
prospers when there is more crime and
thus cases; a doctor prospers when there
is more illness but a CS prospers when
there is growth and development. So, we
are the positive professionals,” he added.

A profession that started with just
1400, today has over 50,000 professionals
in the country and over 75,000 if we
consider across the globe and many are
in the process to become one. This is a
unique profession, said Paroon Chadha,
Co-founder & CEO of Passageways.

CS is a profession that fuels the journey
of this digital transformation. A transformation
that when converted to numbers
reflects that there will be 520 million
smart phone users by 2020 and close to
$500 billion payments will flow electronically
by 2020.

Dynamic social media changes are
changing relationships. As per the predictions,
there would be as many as 200 billion
apps by 2020.

Tracing history we find that it took 38
years for radio to percolate down social
threads and 14 years for television but if
we look at the recent past, iphones did it
in 3 years, Instagram in two years and the
game Angry bird reached millions in just
35 days. So from decades it has become
days.