Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry, who aims to put Tata among the top 10 globally on innovation, created the role of a Group Chief Technology Officer in Tata Sons and in 2014 roped inGopichand Katragadda from GE to lead innovations at the $103 billion conglomerate. Under Mr. Katragadda’s leadership, and a new consortium model of technology delivery, Tata Group companies published more than 7,000 patents in the last two years, with the innovations poised to help the group reap a windfall of more than $1 billion per annum. In an interview to Piyush Pandey, Mr. Katragadda talks about some of the innovations and their impact. Edited excerpts:
What mandate did Mr. Mistry give you when you came on board in 2014?
So, it doesn’t happen in a very simple way that, you know, here is your mandate, go and do it. It’s an effort which includes Cyrus, which includes the CEOs of the different companies and fellow CTOs. But along the road somewhere, Mr. Mistry did make a statement that we would like to be among the top 10 innovative companies globally. So, we pick that up and make it the mandate for ourselves. It takes a lot of effort but we will get there.
What kind of technological innovations are you working on now?
We actually have done some. We have taken a few of the Group companies together and built a factory safety wearable which is the first in the world, and launched it with Tata Steel with their crane operators. We are collecting data at this point of time and making it more sturdy and we will expand that product into other factory operators at Tata Steel first and then go beyond Tata Steel into other Tata Group companies like Tata Motors, Tata Chemicals and Tata Power and then go beyond Tata companies. On factory floor then going to truck drivers, then going to mining and that would be one of the areas where I would like to see a quick action which we did at the Group level.
The other area where we have brought in technology is agriculture. We have used drones for pesticides spraying. The goal is precision agriculture to reduce the amount of pesticides use, reduce the amount of water use, reduce amount of time taken and also remove the manual aspect because it’s not safe. Again we have piloted it; we would like to in a short while hand it over to the market facing company which is Rallis, and create a service around it.
Two other areas that we are working on which will take some time are fuel cells and factory and fleet analytics. So, we will take some more time to get some outcome there but we are along the way.
What are the key challenges ahead of Tata Group when it comes to technological innovations?
So for any company or group which is as large as the Tata Group, the key challenge is to maintain the course where we are successful. For example, one big success is TCS. So we need to maintain the course and at the same time we need to be thinking about disrupting ourselves. And that is the challenge for any large group or any large company. Our own products and services the way we are delivering today need not be successful tomorrow. So I give the example of IT services. TCS has done a great job in preparing for the future, where IT services will be automated, so you don't need the number of people to do the things they are doing today, in terms of delivering IT services. They will be doing entirely different things.
How are you addressing these challenges?
One aspect is individual companies having sufficient investment in their R&D so as a group we are close to 2.5 per cent. And there are pockets which are above 4 per cent, and there are pockets where we would like to see more happening. At the Group level, we are leveraging the synergies between these multiple companies and creating opportunities at the intersection of technologies and then creating new collaborations which are only possible by bringing multiple companies together and going to universities or going to external companies. At the Group level we have an ability to attract in a much more effective way, with these collaborations.
Do you think R&D spend of 2.5 per cent of revenues is good by global standards?
No, we need to do better by global standards but by Indian standards it is extremely good. So 1 per cent is R&D spend overall in India as percentage of GDP, if I am right, and of that 0.7 per cent comes from the government, and only 0.3 per cent comes from companies. So from India’s standpoint we are doing well. Global average would be around 4 per cent. So we would like to aspire to be there. At the same time the caveat is that all the companies within the Tata fold need not be companies which would benefit from R&D. There are companies like Trent, which is a consumer facing organization, where R&D at a level of 4 per cent might not be required.
What benefits or cost savings do you foresee from your R&D spend?
Savings would be for IT if you are looking at innovation. More than savings, I think it is about making money, it is about making profits; creating differentiated products so that we can improve our bottom line is the goal. Last two years we are setting the ground as we go forward. But you can see that the companies which have invested in R&D over a period of time have shown better bottom lines.
So in innovation, you know, the windows which I talk about are 0 to 3 years, and each company needs to look at that.
For Group level collaborations to achieve that in 3 to 5 years.
Five plus years we need to go outside and that’s where university collaborations come in. So the two year window that we are talking about is just setting the ground.
I hope that by next year we will start seeing some output from the Group level activities, but what I am also saying is that you are already seeing the fact that a company like TCS or Tata Motors is showing the results of the innovation.
What kind of collaborations are you looking at with leading academic institutions?
We observe what is the technology trend and how it can impact the Tata business and how we can position ourselves for making it an opportunity rather than keeping it as a risk. So, the collaboration with IIT Madras in the area of advanced materials, graphene is only a starting point because materials are going to play a very important role in all the activities that we are in today and we will be in tomorrow as well.
The collaboration with Harvard is in the area of advanced robotics and sensors and deep learning. With Yale we are looking at leveraging vast amounts of data in a manner, which is also cognisant about the privacy of the people of whom the data is talking about. At the Royal Society, United Kingdom, we are doing fellowships rather than research grants and it is being run out of the Brand and Communications Office.
