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Mahindra Group Bets Big on Cloud for Agility and Customer Centricity

Mohit Kapoor, Group CTO, Mahindra Group, Outlines the Digital Vision
Mohit Kapoor, group CTO, Mahindra Group

Anand Mahindra, MD and vice chairman of Mahindra Group, had a vision for the company, which he termed '3C: customer-centric corporation.' "When IT does not work, I do not have to have any clamor. It is the customers who react adversely. My role is to amplify customers' concerns. Rest everything falls in place," Mahindra said.

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Today, the company is brimming with similar sentiments. "We are entirely driven by higher customer centricity. Technology is all about how we make customer interactions more responsive, valuable, simple, joyful and frictionless," says Mohit Kapoor, group CTO, Mahindra Group - a diversified, multinational conglomerate with a market capital of $16.4 billion working across 11 sectors and 22 industries in 100 countries.

Having businesses across sectors like automotive, finance, hospitality, real estate, agriculture, fintech, mobility, technology services and used cars, Mahindra Group has created a smart vision for tech infusion in unique ways. The companies under it are segregated into three categories:

  • Core (Legacy): Automotive, agri, finance;
  • Growth: Logistics, real estate, hospitality, solar energy, mobility;
  • Digital/Futuristic: Financial lending, fintech, agri-tech, auto-tech.

Technology in the core business will be used for creating process efficiencies, reducing friction, and improving brick-and-mortar businesses and making them digitally native. In the growth business, technology will drive innovation and be the game changer. In the context of growth business, Kapoor mentions Horizon 2 innovation, a type of incremental innovation. It happens gradually by changing existing products or technologies to create new markets or applying external technology in new ways. Mahindra Group is also entering into new businesses, which are entirely digital. Here, technology itself is business. By making technology platforms, the company will create monetizable assets, which will either become part of a larger ecosystem or can even be a direct-to-market offering. "These are revenues we never had on our balance sheets," says Mohit.

Another important moving technology target mission for Mahindra Group is Mahindra Digital Engine (MDE). Large and complex technology projects are difficult to carry out in-house. There is a need to collaborate and co-create these projects with the help of large tech players, hyperscalers and even niche startups. Besides business benefits, MDE is solely driven by the mission to have a larger impact on the community, planet and people.

MDE has three focus areas: 

  1. Data center of excellence: This focuses on data engineering, data science and business analytics. The core aim is to build data skill sets for the future;
  2. Cloud engineering: This focuses on creating cloud-native, customer-centric applications both for frontend and backend. In Mahindra, cloud is one of the top priorities that will contribute immensely to its growth story. For the core business, cloud becomes critical in terms of resiliency, availability, security and customer experience;
  3. New digital technologies: This focuses on experimentation and proofing innovative technologies like 5G, IoT, Industry 4.0, automation, AI, digital twins, augmented and virtual realities, blockchain, and Web 3.0. These technologies will help the group redefine its business models in the near term.

As a part of the transformation, the entire organization decided to move the SAP workload to a secure and managed cloud environment. This not only ensures a higher application-level SLA, but also reduces technical debt considerably. Moving to the cloud will result in a shortened time to market, faster bottom-line development, improved business function productivity, and a decreased risk of non-compliance.

"All this is pivoting around software engineering and customer centricity, helping transform frontend to backend across all three categories - the core, growth and digital. MDE cuts across all the three as the underlying core," says Kapoor.

The future is competitive, and Mahindra Group is gearing up with a futuristic stack of technology. Whether it is a connected car, electric stack for three-wheelers, or automobiles with Level 2 autonomy, all are connected to AWS Cloud. The smart tractors are connected to Google Cloud.

There is extensive use of Google Analytics 360, Customer Data Platform and blockchain, which are components of cloud platform, for the company's growth businesses.

Further, the company is making use of drone technology effectively.  "Drones are being used in the factories and warehouses for inventory management. The finished cars are parked over 40 acres of land. For humans, it takes both time and effort to find where a particular make and model is parked to be picked up. A drone can give the positioning on a micro grid very easily. That drone data gives logistics a sure shot edge," says Kapoor.

Besides customer and employee journey, another vast area of focus for Mahindra Group is the supply chain. The technology team is tirelessly working on creating a digital supply chain both for in-bound and out-bound functions. "A fully customer-driven supply chain is what we want to achieve. We build what people are buying, and we buy what must be built," says Mohit.


About the Author

Rahul Neel Mani

Rahul Neel Mani

Founding Director of Grey Head Media and Vice President of Community Engagement and Editorial, ISMG

Neel Mani is responsible for building and nurturing communities in both technology and security domains for various ISMG brands. He has more than 25 years of experience in B2B technology and telecom journalism and has worked in various leadership editorial roles in the past, including incubating and successfully running Grey Head Media for 11 years. Prior to starting Grey Head Media, he worked with 9.9 Media, IDG India and Indian Express.




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