India is the foundation of our innovation agenda: Marc B Lautenbach

Interview with president & CEO, Pitney Bowes Inc

For $3.6-billion Pitney Bowes Inc, which develops shipping and mailing solutions and powers e-commerce across borders, India houses the largest research & development (R&D) and customer support facilities, based out of Noida and Pune. In a recent visit to India, Marc B Lautenbach, president and chief executive officer of the global technology company, tells Sudipto Dey that in its next stage of engagement with the country, it wants to facilitate e-commerce companies to tap the opportunities offered by in-bound and out-bound cross-border business. Edited excerpts:

How has the India market changed over the years for Pitney Bowes?

When we started in India seven years ago, the conversation was around R&D. So, India is the largest development organisation in the world for Pitney Bowes. In terms of head count, we have around 700 in Noida, and another 100 in sales.

The second reason why India is important for us is our partners Wipro and Accenture. They execute much of the work out of India. Development and business process outsourcing are the pivot points for our overall innovation agenda. We may have invested half-a- billion dollars in India – that is lot of money by our standard – and the stakes are high for us. We are trying to transform the company through innovations. And, much of the innovation is rooted in a global framework in India.

The third opportunity in front of us is that India is a huge top-line revenue opportunity. It is a market, which has certain degree of complexity to it. But, if you talk to the entrepreneurs, see the ingenuity and energy around what they are doing, you can only be optimistic about this market and the country.

Does that mean headcounts and investments in India will go up?

We are just scratching the surface on what we can do in India. I feel the power of places like India is magnified by partnering with organisations from around the world. I tend not to have a monolithic view of ‘Made in a particular country’ (tag). It is about how collectively we bring our capabilities around the world to add value to India. I believe in competitive advantage.

When you combine that with capabilities from around the world, that is when the magic happens. Certainly, India would be a big piece of many of the developing projects.

Globally, Pitney Bowes as a company is going through a turnaround. How important is India in that scheme of things?

It is tremendously important. The way we are going to transform the company is through innovation. And, India is the foundation of our innovation agenda. That is happening not only through the products we develop, but also in some of the work we are doing with our partners, like Accenture.

We are fundamentally re-engineering our business processes. The magnitude of these projects is measured in hundreds of millions of dollar of economic value to our company. We are leveraging our global assets to drive value for clients, shareholders, employees, and communities.