Dr Gopichand Katragadda, the first-ever chief technology officer (CTO) of the Tata group, was head of engineering and R&D for GE in India, when the opportunity to work with the Tatas came up. “I thought this would be a sweet spot: The opportunity to work with a new leader at the helm of the Tata group at a time when the country has elected a new leader with a development agenda and hence the subsequent ability to move faster on innovation and technology,” he tells Sangeeta Menon in this interview where he talks about the excitement and challenges ahead.
This is the first time ever that the Tata group has appointed a CTO. What does the role entail?
It is a new role with some ambiguity, but broadly there are three key areas of focus:
One, to leverage synergies amongst Tata companies to create path-breaking solutions for the market place. For example, the market need to find better ways to use coal is of interest to Tata Power, Tata Chemicals, and Tata Steel. The Group Technology Office (GTO) will facilitate a development programme with the best resources from each of these companies. Broad areas of synergy programmes include energy security, food security, hi-tech consumer products and data analytics applications.
The second focus involves strengthening delivery on technical programmes which are unique to each company. Getting better at intellectual property (IP) generation, protection and management would be an example. Other examples include processes for new technology and product introduction. The group has just concluded a training programme on technology road mapping for company CTOs. Going forward, each company will include technology road mapping in their strategic planning. Also, the GTO is launching a leadership programme on innovation.
Thirdly, we will engage with universities and other collaborators through investments at the group level and through Tata Industries, to support and create new technologies of the future.
Could you tell us more about the initial synergy programmes?
Energy security, specifically better use of coal, is one such area. The world will continue to be a big user of coal, especially in emerging markets, to provide for the basic aspirations of the growing population. Since the conventional use of coal is environmentally taxing, our research will aim to lower emissions. Fuel cells and solar energy would be other areas of interest. Food security is another focus area. Tata companies have a presence in businesses ranging from seeds to beverages. Over the next three decades, the world’s population will grow by another two billion. Our current farming practices will not be able to support this growth. The GTO’s interests include precision farming to optimise agricultural practices. Bringing advances in technology into consumer products is another area of exploration. With the ability to put advanced medical monitoring on a wrist, the wearable is going beyond the smart watch. Also, an automotive is now a super computer on wheels. The GTO’s interest is to leverage technology to provide for consumers’ convenience and delight.
Data analytics and big data will also have many takers within the group: for example, retail companies will be analysing customer information; companies such as Tata Steel would be using big data analytics to optimise the output of their steel plants; Tata Power would be interested in a smart grid that enables optimisation of power transmission and distribution. The GTO will support selection of platforms and the development of new tools for big data analytics.
Are we looking at a huge interest in research and development at the Tata group?
Some of the companies currently have significant R&D programmes including Tata Motors and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). However, in many group companies, the investment in technology is minimal and can grow. I would like to see the investment in R&D grow to at least 1 percent (of revenues) in industrial and technology companies (Tata Motors is already above 3 percent). We could also look at a 70-20-10 model, with 70 percent R&D being market pulled, 20 percent technology pushed, and 10 percent left to the demands of the year.
In your opinion, how mature is the Tata group in terms of technology?
Across the group there is a sense that we are innovative and this has also been ratified by the Boston Consulting Group, which has placed us among the world’s top 50 innovative companies. I would attribute this largely to business model innovation and the group’s ability to take risks such as the Nano. We need to however up the ante with technology. There are pockets of technology excellence that we should be proud of. For example, Titan has invested in technology development for making Titan Edge the world’s slimmest watch and has won the Red Dot design award. Tata Steel is working on technologies to reduce costs and CO2 emissions towards creating the future of steel. But there are also significant leaps that we can take in many areas. Across the $100 billion group we have approximately 1,800 patents — the benchmark is much higher. Technology differentiated innovation is where we will see the next movement within the Tata group.
What do you think of the way the Indian tech story has evolved?
Indians are some of the best technologists outside of India, and we see many Indians leading global tech companies. We have a good talent pool in India as well, but as a nation we fail to maximise this because the market is not moving at the speed required to drive innovation. To start with, our electricity power sector is stagnant; whereas we need to have surplus power to be innovative. Surplus power is the fundamental currency of innovation. So while we have an innovative talent pool, we need to enable them with the appropriate infrastructure. To create an innovation-based economy, we need to fix fundamental infrastructure problems.
Another aspect of India’s innovation and tech challenge — and this is cultural in nature — is that despite being rich in ideas, we lack an action-oriented, hands-on approach: right from education, where we are theoretically focused, to the workplace, where we are happier producing ideas in front of a computer. We need to feel the steel and the grease — that’s the only way we can get further along the innovation value chain.
What trends do you expect on the technology front in the years ahead?
In a nutshell, the focus will be on technology driving profitable growth, in an environmentally responsible manner. The future is about understanding the trends in emerging sciences and materials, which will go through filters of advanced strategies such as manufacturing, digital and energy to meet either an existing need which has not been fully met or a new one which has not been fully articulated. Examples of emerging sciences include genomics (the understanding of the human DNA), connectomics (the understanding of our nervous system), Chaos Theory (the math of detecting small change), social computing (the math of social behaviour), and machine intelligence (the ability of machines to understand). These are among the areas which will contribute to the future ages of man.
Examples of emerging materials include graphene, metal organic frameworks, meta materials, rare earth materials, and ceramic matrix composites, to name a few. New material development is a slow process and we still need to squeeze out applications from materials discovered in the last 25-50 years.
With this much science, we should do better at predicting tsunamis and natural disasters, which we are going to see more of unless we reverse the carbon footprint at a global level. Other emerging areas of need include near-zero carbon energy, wireless power, disease prediction and prevention, augmented reality, precision farming, and connected machines. At the GTO, we will keep a watch on all these trends and look at new investments either in internal efforts or for external collaborations, with an eye on enabling profitable growth.
via www.tata.com