BANGALORE, INDIA DIRECT

2021-03-27

"Engineers, Entrepreneurs and Entertainment"

Hello Ashwin, what’s up?

Hey Annika, I am fine, thank you.

Bangalore is called “the Silicon Valley of India” – please tell us what’s so special about your city!

Engineers, Entrepreneurs and Entertainment

Bangalore is all the above packed into one and more. Bangalore is the preferred destination for the best technical minds in the country who come here due to the plethora of exciting options in the IT industry, the plush infrastructure and the great lifestyle it offers.

"Almost every day, Bangalore witnesses the launch of new tech startups"

In fact, in the 2020 survey conducted by an agency in London, Bangalore was ranked the Fastest growing global Tech hubs for VC Investments. There are over 67 000 tech companies in Bangalore. The city provides the perfect ecosystem for entrepreneurship and innovation – creating lots of opportunities for tech investors and companies to do business and dip in the rich pool of talent that it attracts.

Almost every day, Bangalore witnesses the launch of new tech startups as the city provides the best breeding ground for startups and innovative products. The tech savvy and quality conscious diverse population have a keen eye for a new product and provide a tremendous amount of early adoption in the city, which helps companies to fine-tune products and offerings.

Technology aside, the city boasts of its rich culture and is filled with open minded people. There is a huge unity and hospitality among the citizens of Bangalore and that is the reason they welcome every tourist with an open heart. Being the cosmo city and the IT center, pub culture dominates a lot with an enchanting nightlife. The city also provides a wide range of cuisines from across the world as well as the delicacies from different parts of India.

You work as a technology architect, what do your customers ask for?

My role as an Enterprise Technical Architect involves a rich variety of intellectual and practical considerations with a supreme focus on empathy at all levels and I love that about my job.

The Technical Architect/Manager’s role is critical as it sits at the intersection of business, technology, and leadership. It offers a huge leverage to create a meaningful long-term impact, and more so in the case of technology driven domains like Ecommerce and Supply chain where I have spent the major part of my career.

I strive to contribute in creating a purpose driven culture to make the tech folks understand the importance of the impact technology has in the business outcome of our customers and to the entire ecosystem at large, and encourage them to imagine a better future for everyone.

"Ecommerce has seen an innovation like never before with the COVID-19"

This role gives me an opportunity to coach and build teams around that philosophy to provide unique technical solutions that are aligned with the business goals and respects the core values of the customer's brand.

Ecommerce has seen an innovation like never before with the COVID-19 situation making every brand out there to relook at their strategy to engage with their customers. The brands realized the importance of not losing a customer even if it meant engaging with them across multiple channels and understanding the expectation of their customers through all digital means.

They want to derive data driven decisions by analyzing the information from across multiple touch points and model their online strategy around customer’s expectations. They require their solution partners to be extremely agile and develop the speed to meet the end customer’s expectation consistently.

The focus remains on increasing the top line revenue for the business but at the same time maintaining the sanity of the bottom line by managing an efficient supply chain, optimizing business workflows and order fulfillment processes and thereby improving the margins.

"always be in the learning mode and have an eye on the latest technology"

Another focus area for our clients is to look at the operation at scale. With the extreme online adoption by the end customers we are looking at the volumes to the tune of millions of transactions in the online store and the focus is on providing each end customer an exclusive hyper-personalized experience with the best performance metrics.

The selection of tech stack and design decisions become critical to meet those standards. The expectation to come up with the best technical solution makes you always be in the learning mode and have an eye on the latest technology in your domain and understand which one suits a client’s particular need.

"It is of immense pride to see the impact they have made on global brands like IKEA, NOKIA, Ericsson"

The number of Indian citizens in Sweden is increasing because of their IT-skills – please tell us about your work experience in Finland!

Indian techies have managed to mark their stamp in the Scandinavian region over the last decade. It is of immense pride to see the impact they have made on global brands like IKEA, NOKIA, Ericsson, STOCKMANN Group, to name a few.

The region is extremely quality conscious and appreciates good, honest work ethics and hence it gives the Indian technical folks the perfect canvas to showcase their talent.

I did spend almost a year in Helsinki, Finland back in the early days of my career and had an amazing affair working with the team over there. It was an extremely enriching experience to contribute to the online journey of our clients as eCommerce was just beginning to blossom in the region.

Apart from work, the region has an eternal calmness weaved in the air and it is almost surreal to see the people go about their lives in a peaceful manner, be it the harsh winters or the 20 hours daylight summers.

The people are independent, polite and mostly keep to themselves. The lifestyle is laid back and hardworking at the same time. There was initially a challenge to “break the ice” (no pun intended) but once the bonding was done they turned out to be very close and respected the culture the Indians brought to the region. The camaraderie has improved over the years and it is no surprise the number of Indians migrating to the Nordic countries have increased multifold and are forming a core part of the workforce in every sector.

Thank you so much Ashwin, do say hello to Bangalore from us!

Visit Ashwin Anand on Linkedin.

TEXT: ANNIKA WÅLINDER & ASHWIN ANAND

PHOTO: World Trade Center, Bangalore, free download unsplash.com, Syed Ali

DIRECTLY FROM BANGALORE, INDIA