Tech Mahindra’s RISE mantra

From industry forums to corporate gatherings and sessions with the academia, the question that I am often asked is how Tech Mahindra undertook the journey from being a “captive Mahindra British Telecom” to a full-fledged global digital transformation player today, and a leader in the 5G space. My answer has always been consistent – there was no magic wand!

It was a vision and persistent pursuit of realizing that vision, which has been the hallmark of our success. What has been more important is the ability to constantly re-imagine the future and re-invent ourselves to stay a preferred partner to our clients in shaping the new digital order.

Tipping point
Tech Mahindra’s growth journey over last decade, or so, has been nothing short of an adventure - daring, yet fulfilling. Our joint venture with British Telecom set the foundation for our foray into the exciting telecom space, and continues to be a deep and evolving partnership.

Since 2004, Tech Mahindra came on its own as an entity, and marked a new era in Tech Mahindra’s business approach. Since then, we have only grown wider in terms of the industries we serve globally, across the telecom and enterprise spaces.

Exploring green-shoots and overcoming challenges
Between 2004-2006, there was yet another milestone when Tech Mahindra went public with one of the largest public offerings and was listed on bourses, in the otherwise adverse market conditions. We have been a company, which has always turned crisis into opportunities.

Come 2008, the global financial crisis had dealt a blow to the industry and the overall economy. We scripted a yet another historical chapter in 2009, and acquired the fraud-stricken erstwhile Satyam, which gave us the much-needed scale, entry into new markets and a diversified portfolio across verticals like logistics and transport, financial services, retail, life sciences and infrastructure management for non-telecom clients. We were now a holistic IT services player.

While on one hand, we got the opportunity to scale up our business, we were also faced with many existential issues, which included - sustaining profits in a highly competitive market, keeping pace with the evolving technology and business models, introduction of new portfolios and faster time to market. The focus was on creating reliable and optimized networks, improving customer experience and customer retention.

It is in this context that the Rise tenets of the Mahindra Group, and Tech Mahindra kept us on course - accepting no limits, thinking alternatively, and driving positive change in everything we do!

Finding inspiration and synergies within
Today, with over 946 global customers, including Fortune 500 companies, revenues worth USD 4.9 billion and presence across 90 countries, Tech Mahindra represents the connected world, offering innovative and customer-centric information technology experiences, to its customers.

Tech Mahindra’s steady growth over the years has been possible due to our collective, daring vision to invest in innovative startups to offer cutting-edge solution to our client base and smart acquisitions to build a global digital footprint in digital space like Pininfarina, The BIO Agency, Mad*Pow, BORN Group, to name a few.

The parallel I draw in my mind all the time, is, how our journey mirrors the evolution witnessed by the Indian telecom industry, from the age of 2G, 3G, and 4G, and to now 5G, and en-route 6G. Were on a mission to build a connected world of equal access and opportunities to all, and continue to grow from strength to strength from 2G to now 5G and beyond.

When the country was trying to understand the potential of mobile technology through 2G and exploring the possibilities in 3G, telecom firms were looking at their network to extend services beyond simple vanilla voice.

Applications like tele-medicine and business process outsourcing were seeking speed and robust network capabilities. It was in tune with our blue ocean strategy, that we adopted when decided to become an IT telecom services company.

For us, we saw an ocean of opportunities in the telecom vertical, which has now morphed into a ‘horizontal’ powering the entire industry with the onset of 5G. Our Board was courageous and willing to take the plunge into the unknown. It was a calculated strategy to develop alternative business opportunities and build a positive mindset amongst the employees. Our customers were presenting us with new challenges to help them create new business opportunities both at the retail and enterprise level. For us, it was also an avenue to improve the revenue stream.

All through, Tech Mahindra’s core purpose of challenging conventional thinking has been our North Star, which helped us in delivering a true digital transformation experience to our customers by combining our telecom pedigree and enterprise experience.

Future roadmap
We are well were aware of the disruption technology can create, especially, when its potential is harnessed for improvement of human life and environmental sustainability. The true potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can be harnessed only with the help of 5G. We understand the scale required to service customers in this new paradigm.

The skill sets required are different and only those companies that invest in skill enhancement and ability to create new business opportunities will add huge value to the their stakeholders.

As part of the company’s TechMNxt charter, Tech Mahindra is investing heavily in these new age technologies and reskilling its workforce to meet the challenges and demands of these emerging trends in the future.

With the right strategy in place, we have steadily grown over the last many years. We have been focusing on strategic deal wins in digital space to expand and future proof our portfolio. We are focusing on cross vertical expertise and are investing in new age start-ups that are looking at new concepts and newer ways off achieving growth. 5G for enterprise is a huge focus area.

As part of our digital umbrella, we are targeting a 50 per cent revenue share from digital business, betting big on next generation technologies like 5G, blockchain, AI, cybersecurity, Internet of Things, among others.

Change is the only constant and we will continue to prepare ourselves by leveraging our technology capabilities and operational experience to successfully transform according to the changing market dynamics and demands of the disrupting ecosystem.The objective is to remain competitive in an ever-evolving information technology and digital market space. For this, we continue to adhere to the RISE tenets that have been our guiding force.

- CP Gurnani

- The author is MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra.