Tata Sons CTO sets the agenda for tech innovation

Tata Sons Group Chief Technology Officer Gopichand Katragadda, who took charge eight months ago to position the group among the top-10 technologically-innovative companies globally, has identified areas that would be his priorities.

Food and energy security, consumer durables, and factory and fleet analytics are the areas on which Katragadda will be focusing on. Other than these, he has identified a few companies and created a team that will be working along with these firms.

“We have started operations in Bangalore with engineers from various Tata companies as well as people whom I have brought on board. My group will act as catalyst and along with group teams we will develop new technologies that will impact India and global markets,” Katragadda added. As of now, he has a 10-member team, which will be scaled up later. But he does not envisage this group to have more than 50 people.

Katragadda has already begun his work. For instance, in area of energy security and fuel cell, Tata Group companies like Tata Power, Tata Motors and Tata Chemical have been identified. “For factory safety wearable we are working with Tata Steel, TCS and Titan. We are working on precision agriculture area with Rallis, TCS and some external partners,” he said.



Before being handpicked by Cyrus Mistry for this role, Katragadda was heading GE’s India Technology Centre in Bengaluru. As the group CTO he reports directly to the chairman and will be playing a pivotal role in the transformation of the group where technologies can impact 100-million people and have the potential of generating $100-million profit.

Katragadda said each project will be tracked for a period of three years. “We do expect some projects not to make into market pilots at the end of three years. It is in the nature of making bets,” he added.