 "Tech Mahindra logo")
Tech Mahindra, the country’s fifth-largest information technology services and solutions entity, announced the setting up of ‘Makers Lab’, envisaged as a laboratory for innovation within the company. Makers Lab will have 40-50 people, chosen to identify problem areas in its divisions or at the client's end and arrive at solutions. The initiative, it says, was begun a year before, with the official launch on Thursday.
“A year or two back, the discussion, when it came to digital, was on dev-ops and automation. We felt there was much more to be done around IoT (internet of things), augmented reality and visual reality, and other such techs. We started by creating proof of concepts on certain technology and then showcasing it to customers,” said Nikhil Malhotra, head of Makers Lab.
Makers Lab has, in the period since it began, come out with three platforms. These are Entellio, a chatbot-based platform; XRetail, a platform similar to Amazon Go and that uses sensors, artificial intelligence, robotics and augmented reality (AR) for the retail sector; and a platform for internet videos (IVP).
“Among these, we already have some aspect of XRetail being used by a large retail player in Latin America. We also believe in using many of our innovations before we showcase these to customers. We will roll out Entellio within Tech Mahindra for the HR (personnel) department soon. And, the IVP will be taken to the European market,” said Malhotra.
Adding: “We have started changing Tech Mahindra. We have had 200 visits in a year, by both internal and external executives. The idea is before a new technology brings disruption for us, can we as a company create start-ups to disrupt?”
This initiative is aimed at boosting the effort to expand its digital revenues. At present, digital contribution to revenue is 35 per cent; the target is 50 per cent by 2020.
Malhotra says of the 40-50 people in Makers, 10 are dedicated to research & development. The rest work at commercialising these innovations or making it part of some of the platforms.
The announcement also coincides with the company's third Mission Innovation programme that taps into its eco-system of employees and customers to come up with ideas that can later be used to solve problems.
"This is the third year of Mission Innovation and the theme this year was "Digit All' that focused on technologies like AR and VR, as we saw two-three used cases being launched in the market. This includes Microsoft's HoloLens and Samsung Gear," said Atul Kunwar, president and CTO, Tech Mahindra.
Close to 14,000-15,000 people would have contributed to this two-day event from across the centres of Tech Mahindra. Kunwar explains that the idea is to come up with solutions that can have implementation into existing business case. "Even those who come up with an idea, they need to validate it by getting customer sponsorship. This can be in the manner of people support or a validation that when the solutions get developed the customer will implement it," added Kunwar.
In the last few years, several such ideas have emerged as platforms. One such platform is IRMS which is being used by a large US-based insurance firm. "In US insurance firm to come up with an insurance figure depends a lot on historic data. One of the ideas was to use a drone to capture visuals of a property from different angles to come to an amount. This gave the insurance firm a better way of evaluating a property. Today this solution is being used by a firm in the US," said Kunwar.
