Hitachi Vantara Bets Big on India: Partner-Driven Growth Strategy

In an exclusive interview with Dataquest, Hemant Tiwari, Managing Director and Vice President, India and SAARC Region, Hitachi Vantara, delves into the company’s strategic focus on the Indian market. Tiwari discusses Hitachi Vantara's robust partner ecosystem, its expansion plans, and the transformative role of AI in driving business growth and innovation.

This Q&A provides valuable insights into Hitachi Vantara's approach to capturing the Indian market's potential and its vision for the future.

Excerpts:

Let's start with your collaboration programs with Indian partners. Could you elaborate on the nature of these programs?

We have several collaboration programs with Indian partners. First, we have enablement programs where we create a community of technical resources within partners. We call it the Partner Tech Community (P-TECH), where we train and certify partner technical solutions consultants. We hold annual training sessions in centralized locations, bringing together around 35-40 partner technical resources for training and certification. This continuous re-skilling is crucial as the tech industry evolves rapidly.

Can you give an example of a specific partner and the kind of collaboration you have with them?

Certainly. For instance, Hitachi Systems is one of our significant partners. They are a system integration company, and we work closely with them on various programs. We have distributors like Ryan Tech who undergo all necessary certifications and also deliver services. We support our partners through marketing funds, logistics, and content support to help them create demand.

How do you approach the Indian market, and how is it different from other geographies?

India is extremely diverse culturally and geographically. Our business model is partner-centric, and we focus on seven metro cities while expanding into Class B and C cities through our partner ecosystem. We support partners with resources and enablement programs, placing Hitachi-funded resources within partner organizations to cover these cities. Our approach involves working directly with very large customers like top banks and fulfilling their needs through our partners.

What strategies and types of partnerships have been successful, and what challenges have you faced?

About five or six years ago, we weren't growing our business in India. In 2018, we developed a focused strategy to build a partner ecosystem, acquiring new large accounts and expanding our presence in the government sector. We aim to double our revenue in three years by protecting our existing customer base, expanding our portfolio, and pursuing new segments like telecom and manufacturing. We also focus on enhancing relationships with large system integrators like Wipro, TCS, and Tech Mahindra.

How has the advent of Generative AI impacted your operations and strategic priorities in India?

Generative AI has revolutionized how we help customers maximize their data. AI models require vast amounts of data, and the advent of high-speed GPUs has enabled us to process this data efficiently. We focus on data solutions, partnering with GPU providers like NVIDIA. Internally, we use AI in our sales and marketing engines to provide insights to our salespeople and in product engineering to design superior products. AI algorithms optimize our storage products in customer environments and predictively detect faults.

How has the use of AI internally changed your operations or manpower requirements?

AI has automated many processes, particularly in product optimization and fault detection, enhancing our operational efficiency. It has not significantly reduced manpower but has allowed us to reallocate resources to more strategic and innovative areas. Our goal is to continuously improve our products and customer experiences through AI-driven insights and optimizations.

Could you elaborate on the key customer segments you are targeting in the Indian market?

Banking and financial services are very strong for us, and we will retain focus there. In addition, we also have a strong presence in IT/ITes companies. We have been focusing on government, both state and central, and will continue to do so. We are also looking at manufacturing, telecom, and the commercial market. These are the areas we are focusing on.

Considering India's 'Make in India' initiative and the rise of Industry 4.0, what specific solutions and services are you offering?

Industry 4.0 is all about digitization, which means creating databases and handling data. As a data-specific company, we have solutions to address this. Our Pentaho platform helps onboard data, apply metadata, and prepare it for analysis. It also includes an analytics engine and a visualization engine. Industry 4.0 is a huge opportunity, especially with the rise of AI and generative AI. We offer solutions to help customers run AI projects, including hybrid cloud and generative AI portfolios like Hitachi IQ.

Are there any plans for manufacturing storage systems locally?

Building storage systems requires significant investments and careful planning. Currently, none of our competitors are manufacturing storage systems in India. We are aware of the government's requirements and will develop a strategy to comply, possibly within the next two to three years.