Design Technology with People and Scale in Mind

You trained as a chartered accountant, yet today you lead IT functions at large enterprises. What prompted that transition, and how has it shaped your perspective as a CIO?

It wasn’t glamour, it was pragmatism. Early on, I saw how much time technology could save, and I kept asking, what will this free up? What will this save? We used FoxPro and Clipper in audit, which involved large printouts, manual vouching, and repetitive work. I would explain a rule to the FoxPro programmers and ask, “If you write this logic, can you do this for me?” After furious coding, what once took two or three days by hand could be done in half a day. I remember thinking: I’d gained two and a half days. That efficiency and personal productivity gain fascinated me. If I combined finance domain knowledge with technology, I realised I could unlock greater value. That practical realisation nudged me towards technology and set the tone for everything that followed.

What have been the career-defining milestones that shaped your transition?

When I moved from finance into consulting and technology, I began to see the other side of the table — how software is sold versus how it is actually used. One uncomfortable fact stood out: on average, organisations use 30 to 50 per cent of what an ERP can deliver. That gap bothered me. Implementing systems is one thing; ensuring people use them effectively and extract business value is another. So I shifted my focus from deployment to value realisation. My job became closing that ERP-usage gap — not only rolling out systems but making sure they change behaviour and produce measurable outcomes.

You’ve led digital rollouts across multiple countries. How do you align such a diverse set of stakeholders?

Start with the individual. Stakeholders aren’t abstractions; they are people with KPIs, pain points and daily routines. My first question to every stakeholder is: What’s in it for me? You get traction if you can articulate the personal benefit — freeing someone from endless spreadsheets, automating a tedious task, or improving their metrics. We also use pilots and data. At Huhtamaki, we piloted a business-excellence application in India for two years, captured pre- and post-digitisation metrics, and used those numbers to persuade other countries. Pair complex data with the “what’s-in-it-for-me” narrative and turn resistance into collaboration.

At Polycab, your digital work coincided with significant revenue growth. What role did IT play?

I won’t claim IT alone caused the revenue jump, but it provided a foundation that allowed the business to scale. We digitised ERP and CRM and layered roughly seven to eight additional domain processes, including taxation workflows and compliance tracking. Removing transactional drag gives leaders bandwidth to focus on core growth. When decision-makers have reliable, timely data, they can make faster and better choices.

Is there a universal blueprint for enterprise IT, or must solutions be bespoke?

It’s a mix. Enabling functions such as HR, finance, and administration lend themselves to standardisation, while core revenue-driving functions like manufacturing and sales need tailoring to local market realities. My guiding principle is to think 10 years ahead: design systems for the scale you expect and keep the customer and employee as yardsticks. Retrofitting processes into technology is a common cause of low adoption, so design with growth in mind to prevent that.

How should organisations judge whether a technology investment will be business-impactful rather than a costly experiment?

Start with a clear business problem. If there is no pain point, what delta will the technology deliver? The yardsticks are straightforward for service functions: improved customer experience, lower cost-to-serve or faster turnaround. Translate those benefits into additional capacity — more work with the same workforce — and convert that delta into rupee value. That is your ROI and payback. If you can’t quantify it in these terms, rethink the investment.

You were an early adopter of hyper-converged infrastructure in 2013. How did you decide to take that risk?

We had a measurable problem: slow, unreliable design workstations. Cloud was nascent then. A team member found hyper-converged infrastructure; we researched it, involved an OEM contact who was an ex-CIO, and modelled the rupee benefit. The vendor’s price was about 25 per cent higher, so I had to show the payback in plain rupees. Management agreed based on the numbers, and the investment paid off. Lesson: validate with domain experts, quantify benefits, and make disciplined, numbers-based decisions.

The terms digitisation and digital transformation are often used interchangeably. Can you give a practical way to distinguish them and a short example of each?

Digitisation automates what exists; digital transformation changes the way you work using technology. I once saw a records office move the paper form online but keep the same five approval stages, so customers still printed, signed and submitted. Nothing improved. Transformation asks: Are these steps necessary? Can we cut bottlenecks, set service-level agreements (SLAs) and go paperless to convert a seven-day turnaround into seven hours?

For aspiring leaders who must balance innovation with operational reliability, what practical rules do you give your teams to keep both on track?

Time allocation matters. We follow a practical split: dedicate roughly 10 per cent of time and resources to experimentation and 90 per cent to business-as-usual. Innovation must solve a genuine business problem or create a unique advantage. If it does, invest; if not, don’t chase the shiny thing.

When you develop IT talent into future business leaders, which behaviours and mindsets do you actively try to cultivate?

Two things: empathy and business sense. Technologists often fall in love with tools, but leaders must think business first. Empathy helps you understand user pain and design solutions they will actually use. I also expect ownership and autonomy within a guarded framework that ensures alignment with business objectives.

You are an avid sports fan. Many readers are interested in practical leadership lessons from sport. Can you describe parallels between a high-performing sports team and a high-functioning technology team, and give one concrete practice you borrow from sports to build team performance?

Plenty. Take cricket: an 11-member squad with complementary roles. A manager may have a strategy, but players often have different execution styles. The manager’s job is to create the framework and let players operate within it. In tech teams, complementary skills, mutual support and autonomy produce winning outcomes.

Finally, what is the one practical piece of advice you would give students and young leaders about building careers at the intersection of business and technology?

Design technology with people and scale in mind. Think 10 years ahead. Keep the customer and employee as your yardsticks. Measure outcomes, tie adoption to tangible benefits, and always ask: what’s in it for the individual and what’s in it for the organisation? Empathy matters as much as execution and innovation.