IBM's India expectations never stop to amaze me: Shanker Annaswamy, MD IBM India

QUALITIES OF GOOD LEADER – ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLE  SHANKER ANNASWAMY

            When Shanker Annaswamy took over as the managing director of IBM India in 2004, the company was at something of an inflection point. It had just signed its landmark deal with Bharti and acquired business process outsourcing firm Daksh. With Annaswamy at the helm, IBM India is now the largest IT services provider in the domestic market, emerging as the company's biggest global delivery centre outside the US and has grown to become the largest multinational company in India in terms of headcount. 

The 55-year-old Annaswamy, the first IBM India managing director with a non-IT background, tells Shruti Sabharwal and Pankaj Mishra about the company's successes in India and the challenges ahead as the technology major gets ready to celebrate its 100th year on June 16. 


Looking back, what are the top things you have achieved at IBM India? And to what extent have you been able to replicate them globally? 


There are four or five things that IBM has done in India that have made an impact here and around the world. We are a few days away from celebrating our hundredth year and one of the reasons we are excited is that we really feel that IBM has contributed to the changes and growth in the world. India plays a key role and one of the most important things we have done here is business model innovation. In 1992, the corporation returned to India and in 1999, it became a wholly owned subsidiary. Around 2004, Bharti chose a global company like IBM to say why don't we partner you. You not only take care of the IT and integration but partner with us, bet on our growth and share our success. From six million subscribers, we now have 130 million subscribers. It is not a simple model where you are cutting costs; it's about innovation, continuous expansion of value-added services and creating a services delivery platform. So, we took this model global by taking it to Africa. Africa is the next big opportunity and the same client said can we partner and go to Africa. Now Bharti and IBM together is a best practice across the world. So, I would like to put that as number one. 


The second thing that stands out happened more or less around the same period. The corporation saw there was an opportunity in a very entrepreneurial company that was raring to go. The Daksh acquisition is also a best practice. IBM did not apply the standard processes of integrating the company immediately after the acquisition. They let it integrate slowly and so all the uniqueness of the company remains. Today, the biggest companies are served by Daksh. So, if the first example was of business model innovation, this is about how the talent of India can be integrated with an IBM kind of a powerhouse. This became the engine of the process services industry for IBM. It put India in the spotlight. 

The third thing is enabling companies through the service oriented architecture framework. For instance Tata Sky came to us saying we have so many applications but how do we take it to the market and we said we will integrate all your applications and help you offer this as service instead of a product. Now they can offer you English literature, sports, active games etc as a service. It helped them to move to a million customers in their first year. We have done that with Airtel's self-service portal and also at BSNL. At the Indian Ocean Research Institute, service-oriented architecture was used to create libraries of tsunami prediction models. These are best practices; some of them go to other countries. 


The fourth aspect, and that really stands out, is our employees. When tsunami hit the coast someone came to me and said we can help. Within a few weeks, these people had designed a crisis management tool with another partner which has now been taken to countries like Sri Lanka. It has also been deployed for earthquakes. The last is an innovation called spoken web. It is the power of leveraging the mobile web capability and roping in the low-cost telephone holders. It is about connecting these people through voice and create a spoken web and then business can be done. 


Five years from now, what are some of the parameters you would like to be measured against? What are the next set of goals? 


While we can't put a number to it, we have a very aggressive vision. In the market we address, 70% is services and here we are number one. We are twice as large as the next nearest competitor as per IDC data. We want to continue to be the leader in services and we have chosen four big areas. Telecom is one such area we can look at value-added services, Wimax, 2G and 3G services. The next is banking. The core banking wave is over and now it is about giving our clients the complete visual and data-based information on how they can manage their business. Public sector and government is another sector where we need to selectively expand. 


And then we are focused on geographic expansion. Infrastructure is also a focus area. This is the plan and we have put together a number for where we want to be. I think a time will come when industries like media and retail will be the next big opportunity. It may not be a big-size opportunity -- it could be in service-oriented architecture or in industry frameworks. We should be able to do better than competition on transformational projects because we can do strategic outsourcing and we have consulting capability too. 


What should keep leaders in the industry awake at night? What are some of the challenges facing India as an outsourcing destination? 


The first and foremost would be integrity. As you grow bigger, integrity and values are important. Your ability to bring in people and help them imbibe the company's values, while not diluting your own, is the number one thing to keep in mind. 

The second is that a growth market offers huge opportunities and you need the ability to visualise, differentiate and deliver. The focus on clients becomes very important. As you grow bigger you can distance yourself from the clients and that should not happen. You have to have relentless focus on client success. The third thing is that you have to innovate locally, you have to do something special for the emerging markets and then you will be successful. 


Many of your rivals are now aggressively looking to tap into the Indian IT market. IBM has a first-mover advantage but do you see this as challenge? 


IBM's growth market strategy is not an India strategy alone. This growth markets unit is creating capabilities that result in growth markets being handled in a completely different way. We feel we have an advantage which we are consolidating with our growth markets unit. We are also building technical capabilities. We do things specifically for growth markets. I think there is plenty for everyone and we will continue to grow. 


When you go to your head office, what are the expectations from India and how has this changed over the year? 


In 2004, our chairman gave us a challenge that in systems and technology business, we should be number one. Then in 2005, he said become number one overall -- Now we are number one. Now, they are asking how can you replicate you success in other industries and how can we support this. It is not a secret that India is an important market globally. There is tremendous involvement of IBM Corporation in IBM India. Expectation from India is very high. It never stops to amaze me. 

Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/interviews/ibms-india-expectations-never-stop-to-amaze-me-shanker-annaswamy-md-ibm-india/articleshow/8755203.cms