‘Forget software and hardware; think algorithms’

Gopichand Katragadda has been with the Tata Group for less than two years. But he’s created a platform for innovation that is helping the group create technologies that are capable of earning $100 million a year in profit without making significant additional expenditure on R&D. Katragadda, who serves on the board of six Tata Group companies including TCS and Tata Elxsi, spoke to BusinessLine about how he created the Global Technology and Innovation Office (GTIO).

How have you structured the GTIO?

We get requests from (Tata Group) companies to help with their innovation drives. Under the first banner we look at how to make individual companies more innovative and this activity has to be driven by the CEO of the company. We run a programme called Innovation Edge for CEOs and the idea is that at the end of the workshop, we will identify a select few disruptive areas of focus and innovations and then track them for three years until they are delivered.

The other platform we have is Innovista, which brings together companies in order to help them showcase their innovations. Another similar platform that we have is Innoverse that allows individual companies to put open the challenges that they are facing — to either inside their company or within the Tata Group or to the external world. The other aspect of encouraging individual companies and their innovations is also facilitating external collaborations with universities. We went with a group of CTOs to universities globally and in India. During the first year of my tenure we visited universities in the US. A subset of this will convert into collaborations.

How big is your team?

Including the deputed people who are working on our programmes, I do not anticipate the team will be more than 50 people. The goal will be always to deliver within that set of people. The important thing is that within this 50, less than half will be the people hired by Tata Sons. More than half of the team will be the team deputed from other organisations and hence they have a reach into their own extensive engineering team. The model will be to create a very flexible working structure with a few people from Tata Sons and a lot of folks deputed from each of the companies. They in turn reach out to not only their current engineering teams but the historic IP that they bring into this fold. So we are able to stitch it together in a manner which makes a huge difference.

Each one of the four programmes — including wearables, drones for pesticide spraying, factory and fleet, and the energy area around Graphene and fuel cells — has teams of about 10 people. Also, 10 people each work on the administrative roles such as university relationships.

How are you leveraging technology companies like TCS and Tata Elxsi for building new technologies?

TCS and Tata Elxsi are part of pretty much all our programmes because of the kind of work and abilities that they bring. TCS on the software side and Tata Elxsi on the embedded side of things bring their strengths in the wearables, drone and factory and fleet area programmes.

In fuel cells and Graphene, it is more of Tata Motors and Tata Steel and materials companies.

Before joining the company, what was the conversation you had with Cyrus Mistry and what really drove you towards joining the Tata Group?

The conversations revolved around Tata Group being a group of independent companies — so it would be a challenge to think about a technology function at the group level. So we bounced around thoughts on how this would work. We agreed that clarity will come only when we engage and work some of the thoughts rather than purely base them on a pre-determined structure. The reason I was drawn to join is the opportunity to work with Cyrus and make a difference in what I believe is the most admired company globally.

Companies are talking about the merging of software and hardware. How important will software be for companies in future?

At this point of time, you need to talk about algorithms. So rather than think about software or hardware, you think about any company that has made it big, it has made it big around an algorithm. If it is Google, it is around search, if it is Facebook, it is around social interactions and the ability to rank those interactions. If it is Uber, it is an algorithm that’ll allow you to aggregate. So rather than thinking about software or hardware, both are going to be used but to make an algorithm real is what it is.

If you are thinking about software and hardware, I think you are outdated. You need to be thinking about algorithms. What is the algorithm that you will create to differentiate from the rest of the bag? Algorithm is a method for which there is an input and an output. But what you pick as input and output is where the magic is.

What are the technologies you’re most excited about?

Today, an area of interest for me is the intersection of biology, materials and computing. It is the most exciting area, I think, from an ability to contribute to human health and comfort. While you might think that genomics and connectomics (study of human nervous system) will only make a difference in understanding human biology and hence human health, it even has applications in energy. For example, you can re-programme algae to produce more hydrogen and that hydrogen can be used as fuel.

Similarly, deep learning is an example of bringing knowledge of connectomics into computation. Also, Graphene (a new material) can be used to deliver drugs into particular organs and tissues in a targeted manner. It will be the age of biology in the near future but biology along with materials and computing is what’s going to make it exciting.

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