Tholons aims to be an Accenture

New Delhi, Feb. 12: Retail inflation fell to a

19-month low of 2.05 per cent in January due to fall in prices of food articles, mainly fruit and vegetables, coupled with easing of fuel cost, according to government data.

The consumer price index (CPI)-based retail inflation was revised downwards for the preceding month December to 2.11 per cent from the earlier estimate of 2.19 per cent, data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

In the year-ago month, January 2018, the retail inflation was at 5.07 per cent.

Fruits, vegetables and eggs continued to witness deflationary trend during January this year, with their prices declining 4.18 per cent,

13.32 per cent and 2.44 per cent, respectively, according to CSO.

The rate of price rise in the ‘fuel and light’ category was 2.20 per cent in January 2019, compared with 4.54 per cent in December 2018.

The overall food inflation during the latest month remained in the negative zone at (-) 2.17 per cent. It was (-) 2.51 per cent in December

2018. Tholons Digital, a global leader in digital strategy and transformation consulting, founded by Avinash Vashishtha, former chairman and geography managing director for Accenture India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, is all set for a game-changing action in the global IT marketplace. The company says it will emerge as another Accenture and will have $1 billion in revenues by 2022.

“The year 2019 is a game changing year for us. We are building an Accenture kind of business model. We want to be a unicorn in the next three years. Tholons provides digital (AI) transformation solutions, designs customised platforms/products and hosts, implements, manages and maintains everything for the clients,’’ said Vashishtha in an exclusive interaction with Financial Chronicle.

The traditional outsourcing is almost dead. Twenty years ago, it was about moving work and tech onshore and human workers offshore. Today, the opportunity is moving from human workers to digital workers (bots). That means, intelligent automation is going to impact the existing business models of Indian IT/ITES sector, he said.

“Under this changed market scenario, global firms like Accenture are offering end to end transformation, including strateg\y, consulting, digital solutions, implementation and systems integration. The likes of IBM focus on implementation and digital capability, but sadly Indian companies have only implementation capabilities (the commoditisaton of digital) at this point of time and as a result they are yet to get mandate for digital transformation from global customers,’’ he commented.

Tholons that started in Bangalore as an offshore consulting and advisory firm a decade ago has now evolved into a full-fledged digital transformation and strategic consulting partner for corporates and works with Fortune 500 and global 2000 clients across North America, the US, Europe, Australia, Singapore and the UAE.

So far the IT industry has been supporting and maintaining big applications (Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, SalesForce, etc) of clients but these applications are rapidly changing and becoming numerous, with a new breed of small and boutique companies coming out with hundreds of new applications that are driven by deep technology, said Vashistha, who was once responsible for Accenture’s strategic direction, growth and development in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.