HYDERABAD: Sindhu Gangadharan, the managing director of SAP Labs India, is one of the high profile persons in the German enterprise software company as she oversees the operations in one of fastest growing economies like India. She also heads SAP Labs’ customer innovation services at global level.
Present in India for the last 26 years, SAP Labs India operates the company’s largest R&D hub its headquarters and employs 40 per cent of its global R&D workforce spread over five locations in India — Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Gurgaon. The company has more than 15,600 employees in India.
Gangadharan expects India to be a growth centre for SAP Labs and reveals the company’s insights on various topics during an interview with
Deccan Chronicle. Excerpts:
Q. Why is SAP Labs bullish about India?
One, the growth of India as a digital nation is on the rise over the last decade or so and this makes it extremely attractive for a multinational company like ours.
Two, it has phenomenal talent that SAP Labs can tap into, especially given that India for us is also a location where a big part of our IP creation happens when it comes to business AI. It has been a phenomenal ride for us in India and it continues to be a phenomenal ride.
Q. How do you think artificial intelligence would impact a product company like yours?
The world's large customers across industries rely on SAP Labs to help them run, which makes it a very interesting proposition for us to leverage the power of AI to also transform these business processes. So as a product company like us, it's really about leveraging AI to make sure we transform these companies — whether small or large — run at their best. This is why a big part of our investment was made in business AI. And a big part of it is happening here in India.
Q. But when one thinks about SAP Labs, there's a perception that it is meant only for the large companies.
If you just look at the nature of our business, we are helping the world's largest businesses run at their best. About 99 of the top 100 companies in the world run on SAP Labs and 97 of the top greenest companies in the world run on SAP Labs. 80 per cent of our half a million customers worldwide are SME customers. We have the power to transform those business processes using AI.
Q. You said that a lot of SMBs are using SAP Labs. So how did SAP Labs help small businesses to transform their businesses? The fact that 80 per cent of our half a million customers fall into the SME category is a true testament to the fact that the customers understand what SAP Labs stands for. But we want half a million companies to grow even further.
There's huge value for the small and mid sized businesses to automate and accelerate their business with AI because we really help in making sure that whatever we are building in our core is relevant for their business. It's reliable and also what we call responsible AI.
Q. What percentage of your staff is currently focused on AI, especially in India?A big part. Besides the core technology teams, pretty much every part of our organisation. So in that sense, literally every part of the organisation is involved in infusing AI into the core processes. We're also doing a lot of reskilling of our existing employee base to make sure that everybody in the organisation has skills in the latest and greatest technologies.Q. What kind of trend are you seeing or demand coming from the customers?
Pretty much in every conversation that I'm having with customers there is one common thread — they want to innovate and completely transform their business models. They want to know how they are able to get their services to their customers in different ways and also want to know how they could leverage or automate their business. They also want to move to the cloud because it allows them to scale and expand to new geographies. AI in general looks at new ways in which they work with their customers. Q. You have plans to expand your facility in Bengaluru. So any such plans for Hyderabad centre?
Hyderabad is a very important growth location for us. We will soon establish SAP Labs as an entity in Hyderabad. Now we are operating at an SEZ and we would soon be moving into an STPI for better flexibility.
So we're definitely going to increase our investment in Hyderabad, which is an absolutely pivotal market for labs. It's a very prominent hub for us from an innovation and a talent point of view, especially the deep skilling talent pool that we can tap into. So we are looking at 2025 to shift to an STPI.
Q. The Telangana government is planning to set up a Skilling University in Hyderabad. Are you willing to be a part of it?
We have strong collaboration with the Edu Net Foundation to promote upskilling in Telangana. In fact, in March, we announced the expansion into Telangana through our CSR programme Code Unnati. We are upskilling several thousands of students and also faculty members, because we think the talent that comes out of the universities are trained by the faculty. The idea is to make sure that engineering students in the underprivileged areas are upskilled and face the selection based on merit. So, I always support strong collaboration between the government, and corporations like us, academia and society.