Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, HFS Research[00:21]
Welcome. I’m Joel Martin, executive research leader with HFS Research. Recently, I completed our High-Tech Horizons for 2024 report. In that report, we looked at 17 different providers, looking at their ability to deliver domain functional value, break down silos, and then build out complete solutions for ecosystems of partners in the high-tech space. High tech is really an exciting space because it really brings the most out of the partnership. You have fast-growing, innovative companies working with like partners to enable them — their software, their networks, and their go-to-markets. And what we really looked for was new ideas, vouched for and validated by both partners as well as the customers. And so from a high-tech services perspective, we had a small group that actually made it to our market leaders, Horizon 3 level, and one of those was Tech Mahindra. And joining me today from Tech Mahindra is Harshul Asnani, the president of Tech Mahindra’s technology, media, and entertainment business. Thanks for joining me, Harshul. It’s good to see you again.
Harshul Asnani — President, Technology, Media and Entertainment Business, Tech Mahindra[01:25]
Thanks for having me, Joel.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, HFS Research[01:25]
Well, it’s great. It’s great to see you, and I’m really excited about this. I mean, Tech Mahindra is, one would say, pretty unique in this space. You’re born out of this space. A lot of what you’ve done at Tech Mahindra over — what is it, 40, 50 years now — has been to practice what you preach, work with your customers to enable them in ways to grow, and really bring the passion of your people, your leadership, your culture that’s so aligned with this space. Some of the things that I heard that really made me excited about this conversation, and why I was so excited when you guys made Horizon 3, was that advocacy with customers, your willingness to really get into the weeds, understand their business, understand their growth aspirations, the challenges they go through modernizing their systems as high-tech companies who are constantly having to evolve, and how they bring in inorganic growth and new systems into their business. So tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into this, and why do your customers seek out Tech Mahindra to help them with their biggest problems?
Harshul Asnani — President, Technology, Media and Entertainment Business, Tech Mahindra[02:28]
No, thanks, thanks, Joel, again for having me. As you said, I’m the president of the technology, media and entertainment business for Tech Mahindra. I’ve been in the company for 10 years. In the last 7 years, I’ve been providing leadership to our tech, media and entertainment business. So very interesting times for us. In today’s rapid technological changes when it comes to technology and business transformation imperatives, enterprises unfortunately have to pick between one of two choices — scale or speed — and this duality has now morphed into the need for driving scale at speed, and enterprises are looking for partners who can really help them in the transformation journey at speed and bringing agility at scale. So we believe that at Tech Mahindra we are today very uniquely positioned. We are large enough today to be resourceful. At the same time, we are small enough to be flexible and nimble, to be able to deliver the right business and technology outcomes at the speed that is needed in today’s fast-changing world. So scale and speed is our promise to our customers, and that’s also the tagline of the company, and that’s the reason we remain a trusted partner to our customers.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, HFS Research[03:41]
No, that’s great. And especially in this high-tech space, I mean, it’s a different space than working with banks, manufacturers, retail companies. What differentiates yourselves, and really getting into it? I’ve already said you were kind of born in this space, but what are the key differentiators you’ve built out over the past 10 years you’ve been there?
Harshul Asnani — President, Technology, Media and Entertainment Business, Tech Mahindra[04:01]
Sure, so our differentiations are broadly on 4 aspects when it comes to our tech, media and entertainment business. First, tailored end-to-end technology solutions, which also includes proximity of our network of labs that we have in Silicon Valley, in Seattle, and other locations to our customers, and that also allows for real-time interaction, co-innovation with our customers, rapid prototyping, and deploying those new delivery models and engaging in skin-in-the-game kind of commercial constructs with our customers. Second, I would say is our ability to drive an ecosystem play for our customers, playing the role of a true systems integrator. We don’t just provide technology services but also bring the holistic best-of-breed solutions to our clients’ needs, along with a rich ecosystem of partners that we will bring over a period of time. Third, I would say, and that’s very unique to the tech industry, as you rightly said, is our ability to drive 360-degree relationships with our customers. Today, if you look at my customer roster, more than 60% of our technology customers have 360-degree partnerships with Tech Mahindra. Which essentially means that we’re not just their suppliers, we also are go-to-market partners with them, and oftentimes we are their customers as well, so this makes our relationship truly strategic and sticky. And last but not the least, I would say is talent. People are our biggest assets and our biggest differentiator, with 150,000 proud tech mighties, as we call them. We have a culture of performance centricity, of integrity, of entrepreneurship, and I would say a culture that fosters camaraderie and teamwork, and we are very proud of how we have been able to upskill our people, cross-skill our people on new technologies, and train our top-quality, world-class talent at scale to support our customer needs.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, HFS Research[05:53]
One thing that stood out to me, and I totally agree with you, people are what’s critical, but you’re also giving your people tools that help them make a difference. One of those examples was Sandstorm. Tell me a little bit more about that and why that’s important to Tech Mahindra.
Harshul Asnani — President, Technology, Media and Entertainment Business, Tech Mahindra[05:53]
Yeah, so broadly speaking, by its very nature, the tech industry is disruptive and it is constantly innovating, and we are doing our bit to support their innovation process with a slew of creative IP-based solutions, from AI conversation analytic solutions to cloud migration tools to LLM engineering. And the case in point you referred to about Sandstorm, which is our innovative remote network monitoring and smart devices assurance solution — Tech Mahindra has invested, as I said, in multiple labs across the US and in India, and also Europe, where we are bringing 24/7 support to our customers when they are doing the product launches and service launches. And usually during these launches, there’s a lot of confidentiality that is involved before a product is launched. So the solution that we have developed, which we call Sandstorm, is essentially putting a lab in a box. This box gets shipped to our customers’ design centers. The product gets connected to the box, which in turn gets connected to the larger lab ecosystem that we have. So instead of customers shipping their product to our labs, we ship the lab closer to the product. We developed this solution around COVID when logistics of shipping those products was getting harder and it was becoming very challenging, but post-pandemic we have evolved the solution not just to address the logistics and confidentiality aspects but also to bring in the speed and scale at which our customers can now innovate on new products. So this is just one example of the kind of things we do as a company.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, HFS Research[07:54]
So tell me, let’s pull this together. You’ve got great people, you’ve got a culture that fits so nicely with the high-tech space. You’ve got great tools. Tell me about an outcome or an experience that you were just exceptionally proud of that made you really go, man, that was a great experience for us and for our customer.
Harshul Asnani — President, Technology, Media and Entertainment Business, Tech Mahindra[07:54]
So let me put it this way, let me put it differently. The way we measure our positive outcomes as a company is broadly on three parameters. A, are we able to simplify our customers’ business, which means are we able to streamline, bring efficiency, bring in productivity to their business? Are we able to take cost out? And many times, are we able to do what we call a self-funded transformation at scale and with the execution wherewithal that’s needed to drive scale and speed? Second parameter is, are we able to modernize their business — are we able to drive the transformation and help them change with the times, and are we able to bring the level of thought leadership and capabilities, solutions, capacity and partnerships to bear? And lastly, and probably the most important, is, are we able to really move the needle on revenue for our customers? Can we make them grow? Can we monetize the solutions? Can we create a customer experience solution, for example, for them, which can help them to say garner more market share or can help improve their NPS or customer satisfaction scores? Today, most of our customers, as I said, are in the 360-degree outcomes with us, so it’s our ability to drive this whole relationship in a manner which is moving the needle, not just for us but for them, both from a cost standpoint as well as from a revenue standpoint. Those are the outcomes that we drive, and we see those examples almost every day with most of our large hyperscaler or semiconductor companies that we serve.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, HFS Research[09:49]
So, I love the lab in the box. I mean, bringing that kind of innovation — we hear a lot about labs, garages, but it requires the customer to go away to go to them, so I really loved it, and that was one of the big feeders into where we put you in Horizon 3: that willingness to bring your innovation right onto the customer premises so they can get more of their own employees involved in it, capture their ideas, and cultivate those ideas. But tell me this: any other innovations that are kind of on your radar right now? I mean, everybody talks about GenAI, and GenAI is a big thing, but what are some real practical innovations that you’re looking forward to that you feel are really gonna wow the marketplace?
Harshul Asnani — President, Technology, Media and Entertainment Business, Tech Mahindra[10:15]
Yeah, well, see, innovation is an ongoing thing. It’s a process, and as an organization, I believe innovation is in our DNA. And we think of innovation in two ways. One is co-innovation, how it is tailored to our customer context and at times along with a partner ecosystem, with Tech Mahindra at the center as an SI, and this is usually what moves the needle for us and for our customers. From semiconductors to SaaS companies to hyperscalers, we are engaged today, as I said, in rapid prototyping and product launches and platformization of the business, and often monetizing this also for our customers, but this is where the real value of Tech Mahindra kicks in. We are also, by the way, to your point, creating foundational LLMs. We’re creating sovereign LLMs, if you will, to address very niche regional languages — 37 dialects of the Hindi language in India. We have created an LLM in a very thrifty and cost-effective manner, which has been getting rave reviews all over. We’re doing something very similar for the Bahasa language in Indonesia. So this is a very unique model that we have developed for creating sovereign LLMs, and we are partnering with some of the top names in the valley, including Nvidia and others, to develop these. And also when it comes to innovation on a more industrialized level, we are building creative IPs and platforms for industry cloud, for example. We have launched Auto Cloud, we have launched Manufacturing Cloud, we’ve launched Engineering Cloud with our customers and partners, from all the innovation labs that I talked about. We also have a network of what we call makers labs that works on new-age technologies including quantum computing and how we can get ready for what’s coming in the future. So innovation is everywhere, across every service line that we have. There are innovation parameters that we monitor and govern on a very regular basis. So we do it in two ways: one is co-innovation with the customers, and also at a more industrialized level where we work on platforms and IPs with our service lines.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, HFS Research[12:50]
Wow, thanks a lot for that, Harshul. You know, to wrap it up, what I love about the experience that I’ve had working with Tech Mahindra and learning about your business and talking to your customers and your partners is I’ve consistently seen the actualization of your services and the ability to drive those business outcomes, whether they’re technology-led or business-requested, so you pull through those capabilities. The second is breaking down those silos, looking for ways to help your customers by bringing those innovation labs into their office, breaking down the silos, cross-innovation within the company that you can both foster, learn from, and contribute to. And then thirdly, as you said early on, how do you then turn that into your go-to-market? How do you collaborate with Tech Mahindra to think about how a high-tech company is delivering its services to the industries they serve? And it’s that ecosystem mindset that had us feel so good and really recognize you guys as a Horizon 3 market leader in this space. So thank you. Keep up the great work, and I look forward to the next time we meet up in person.
Harshul Asnani — President, Technology, Media and Entertainment Business, Tech Mahindra[12:50]
Absolutely. No, thank you again for having me, Joel. It was wonderful talking to you.
