Reimagining Indian IT

To maintain its share in the economy, the sector will have to reinvent its revenue model and technological capabilities.

- Harichandan Arakali

LAST NOVEMBER, TATA Consultancy Services (TCS), the $19-billion IT company that is larger than its next two Indian rivals combined, announced an expansion of its seven-year-old relationship with Rolls-Royce: The British jet engine-maker was taking a larger bet on its Indian IT supplier, giving TCS not only much more work, but also much higher-value work. “This would include innovation and collaboration,” TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan said at a November press conference in Bengaluru.

The aim was, he added, “to build a collaborative, open platform based ecosystem where Rolls-Royce significantly amplifies the value it delivers to its customers”. Rolls-Royce, following its ‘digital first’ strategy, would be using a TCS platform called ‘Connected Universe’, which had been four years in the making at the Mumbai-headquartered company’s innovation labs. The platform, as TCS describes it, is an orchestra of multiple technologies that work in tandem to help businesses easily develop, deploy, and administer Internet-of-Things software applications such as web apps, real-time analytics, and batch analytics.

This stronger association was an exercise in tapping “the most extraordinary ecosystem”, said Ben Story, Rolls-Royce’s strategy and marketing director. “We work with TCS today on perfecting the digital twin.” TCS would help build virtual models—digital twins—of Rolls-Royce products, which could then be used for everything, from predicting problems with products under development, to preventive fixes and overhauls of mature products, such as aircraft turbines.