IBM global chief bets big on India biz
NEW DELHI: The 110-year-old International Business Machines (IBM) is once again reinventing itself under the leadership of India-born Arvind Krishna as its chairman and CEO with a razorsharp focus on consulting and software, even as it continues investing in cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and quantum computing.
India appears to be playing a big part in this story. “Globally, 70% of IBM’s revenue will now come from software and consulting. The India market revenue is expected to mirror the global trajectory,” Krishna told a select media gathering.
While IBM does not share growth figures for India separately, Krishna shared that Asia “did really well” in the third quarter, “and India was a big piece of that”. “We feel good about our business in India. We have a good footprint with financial services and telecom, in government, in industrial sector, among many others,” he added.
Krishna, who was on his first official visit to India after taking charge of IBM, met finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Union minister of state for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar and railways and telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on November 18 to explore how his company could assist the government in implementing the ‘Gati Shakti’ master plan for multi-modal connectivity across the nation. Gati Shakti is described as “...essentially a digital platform to bring 16 ministries including railways and roadways together for integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects.”
“I was very enthused with the speed at which they’re (the government) willing to make decisions and rightly so we feel good about our business in India,” Krishan said.
To be sure, in the last six months, IBM has expanded in tier 2 cities in India and accelerated hiring. Krishna, however, did not share any India hiring numbers. IBM recently launched Software Labs development centres in Kerala, and Gujarat. “We will be setting up new centres but I cannot share anything specific at this point of time,” he said. IBM also launched a Client Innovation Center (CIC), specializing in design, software engineering and analytics, in Mysuru. The company also set up a new Consulting Business Process Operations centres at Hyderabad in Telangana.
IBM’s India labs, too, are “closely aligned” with the global IBM strategy “and pioneering work from these labs is integrated into IBM products, solutions and services”. The core innovation and technology work for the IBM POWER10 processor, for instance, was designed in India by IBM Systems Development Labs. Further, IBM Research Labs in India is advancing Watson’s ability “to understand natural language processing, building trust and transparency and confidence in business predictions as well as helping businesses automate and scale AI”. “Our software labs also collaborate with our technology ecosystem to co-create solutions for clients and industry,” said Krishna.