Digital leaders: Corporate India’s latest recruits

Corporate India is aggressively searching for digital leaders or ‘chief digital officers’ (CDO) to drive digital transformation.

Earlier this month, Tata Sons Ltd appointed Aarthi Subramanian as the CDO of the whole group. Nipun Mehrotra, the CDO of IBM India and South Asia since January 2017, is one of the first few CDOs of the global tech giant in its global offices, outside US. Mehrotra works closely with client CEOs, startup founders, and other executives to help them understand the impact of new age technologies like IoT, data analytics, cloud and artificial intelligence and how to collaborate with IBM and our ecosystem more efficiently.

In India, consumer facing businesses like IT, financial services, retail, travel, ecommerce and hospitality are aggressively searching for digital leaders but the CDO’s role can be very different for different sectors.

While fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies have CDOs who looks at demand creation through digital channels versus more traditional channels like the offline sales channels, the IT industry is looking at CDOs to build their brand in the digital space, and digital media firms are hiring CDOs to reach customers, a medium that’s exploding because of mobile phones and internet, said Shailja Dutt, founder and chairperson of executive search firm Stellar Search, who has hired about five CDOs in the last one year.

Explains Dutt: “Almost all large diversified Indian business houses definitely have a CDO because they are looking at the overall strategy, how their brand & organisations need to be represented across digital medium.”

Defining the roles and responsibilities, finding the right talent to fill CDO positions makes this one of the toughest searches at present, according to headhunters.

“Most companies require significant intervention to help define what this role actually means in the context of their own needs, and each situation results in a different ask from the candidate and the ensuing search strategy,” said Sonal Agrawal, managing partner at executive search firm Accord India.

Several companies are hiring a CDO despite having a chief technology officer (CTO) whose role would typically include running the company’s IT infrastructure. “Companies have very different expectations from both the roles but I am seeing priority to have leader (CDO) first and then CTO and in general most of these companies call CIO/Head of IT which will end up reporting to CDO,” said Ashish Sanganeria, partner at executive search firm Longhouse Consulting.

The CDO’s role is more strategic than that of a CTO. “A CDO is someone who is expected to understand the strategic nuances of a business and then understands how digital technologies can be leveraged to transform the company,” said CK Guruprasad, a consultant with executive search firm Spencer Stuart.

However, headhunters are looking for candidates with a background in technology consulting, or those who have worked in similar businesses , or young CTOs who have driven a technological shift in a traditional firm in the past are preferred for this role.