Technology's impact on business tansformation: Insights from Vinod Bhat, CIO, Vistara Airlines

Vinod Bhat, Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Ethics Counsellor, Vistara Airlines (Tata SIA Airlines Limited), sheds light on the transformative power of technology in the business landscape. In today's dynamic environment, technology has become an integral catalyst for change, revolutionizing the way companies operate and interact with customers. Bhat highlights how Vistara Airlines has harnessed technology to enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and optimize resource allocation. Through digitalization and innovative solutions, Vistara has been able to offer personalized services, efficient booking systems, and data-driven decision-making. Bhat's insights underscore the crucial role of technology in driving business transformation, encouraging adaptability, and fostering a competitive edge in an ever-evolving marketplace.

DQ: How do you see technology shaping the future of businesses in India?

Vinod Bhat: Technology is currently evolving at a rapid pace across industries including travel and aviation. This digital revolution is witnessing remarkable advancements, embracing cutting-edge digital solutions and AI-driven innovations to optimize operations and elevate customer experiences. The aviation sector is at the forefront of some of these transformations. Presently, from the end customer perspective, touchless/contactless and immersive experiences have emerged as vital imperatives in aviation. Passengers are encountering an array of automated services and self-service technologies that redefine air travel. Biometric technologies, IoT, RFID, and Blockchain are a few advanced use cases across the aviation value chain, enabling seamless e-boarding, self-baggage drops, smart baggage tracking and smart kiosks. Notably, facial recognition biometrics have supplanted traditional boarding passes, ushering in a truly seamless and touchless journey. Smart kiosks, along with the introduction of DigiYatra - a significant technology intervention, are already fortifying airports with biometric capabilities, providing complete touchless customer experience, wherein face becomes the boarding pass. 

Simultaneously, technologies like Metaverse, 5G and Edge Computing are going to drive substantial changes in airline operations. IoT-enabled sensors help optimize predictive maintenance, while Blockchain has good use case for enhancing security and streamlining supply chains. The aviation sector relies on the power of AI, ML, and Big Data to make data-driven decisions. AI algorithms optimize existing flight routes, create new routes, and help build fuel efficiency, while ML analyzes data for predictive maintenance, crew scheduling, hyper-personalization for customers and so on. 

While challenges pertaining to data privacy and workforce upskilling remain, the aviation industry's future appears promising as technology integration advances. Presently, air travel is becoming safer, more efficient, and enjoyable for passengers, paving the way for a sustainable and digitally-driven future. The aviation industry is at the vanguard of this technological evolution, reshaping the landscape of businesses in India and setting new standards of excellence in customer-centric travel experiences. 

DQ: The technology landscape is ever-evolving. How do you strike a balance between adopting new technologies and ensuring the stability and reliability of existing systems?

Vinod Bhat: Vistara has established a strategic approach that embraces continuous innovation while safeguarding the core systems' stability. Vistara was born on cloud and has been investing in digital technologies infrastructure since inception. These investments are purpose-driven and have helped the brand achieve its business and technology objectives. Last 2-3 years, Vistara’s digital acceleration has further picked-up pace, that has ensured customer safety and convenience, employee connectivity and productivity from anywhere, regulatory compliances and opening of new airport stations in the shortest-possible time.

Vistara's strategy involves gradual integration and testing of new technologies, conducting pilot projects, and proof of concepts to assess feasibility and potential impacts. It continually collaborates with reliable technology partners to ensure ongoing support and expertise during integration. By leveraging technology and artificial intelligence, Vistara has strengthened various processes, from passenger identification to predictive maintenance, contributing to a seamless travel experience. Vistara's vision for the future involves a data-driven aviation sector, leveraging AI/ML and exploring technologies like biometrics, IoT, 5G, edge computing, AR/VR, Metaverse, and Digital Twins. These innovations will further improve customer experience, operational efficiency, and sustainability while the airline continues to develop big data solutions and a "NextGen Connected eCommerce Ecosystem" for personalized customer content and specific requirements. Furthermore, Vistara places a strong emphasis on training and upskilling its workforce to effectively utilize and maintain new technologies.

Vistara showcases a proactive and balanced approach to adopting new technologies through its Digital Center of Excellence, while ensuring the reliability of existing systems. By embracing innovation and staying responsive to industry trends, Vistara aims to remain at the forefront of the aviation industry's digital transformation while delivering an exceptional customer experience. 

DQ: As far as the latest technological trends are concerned, how do you continuously evaluate and integrate cutting-edge technologies into your business processes?

Vinod Bhat: As Vistara, we lay a strong emphasis on continuously evaluating and integrating modern technologies into our business processes. To achieve this, we have established a robust digital center of excellence that actively explores emerging technologies and develops innovative solutions to address key business challenges. By staying ahead of technological changes in the aviation industry, we ensure that we can leverage the most relevant advancements to enhance customer experience, operational efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.

We have adopted paperless operations, reducing the environmental impact and contributing to a greener future. Additionally, we are actively exploring the Internet of Things (IoT) for various use cases, to create a safer and more efficient travel experience for our passengers.  Looking ahead, we are excited about exploring the potential of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies for crew and maintenance staff training, as we believe it will significantly improve workforce efficiency and effectiveness. The possibilities of Metaverse and Digital Twins also excite me personally, as they hold the potential to further enhance customer experience, maintenance capabilities while also reducing operational cost. Furthermore, we understand the impact of recent developments in the 5G network on the aviation industry. Leveraging 5G technology, along with Edge Computing, will play a critical role in validating passenger identities and implementing biometric-based boarding processes. Moreover, the integration of 5G-powered thermal scanners at airport edges will enable real-time data analysis, enhancing security and safety measures for our passengers.

As the global aviation industry commits to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, we are dedicated to investing in technologies that optimize fuel costs and reduce our carbon footprint. For instance, we are digitalising several processes with the objective to reduce the use of paper thereby managing the weight of the aircraft and save fuel. We partnered with Ultramain ELB systems to introduce an E-tech logbook solution (currently in the airborne stage) in order to go paperless in our operations. We also use E-Tugs or Electric Power Tuggers for day-to-day maintenance task logistics runs to minimise emissions across several other operations. Our flight management tasks are performed using an electronic Flight Bag, which helps us keep all documentation in electronic format. Vistara also recently became the first Indian airline to implement Aerowash, an automated aircraft exterior washing and cleaning solution introduced by AeroTech Support Services Pvt. Ltd. This innovative approach allows us to save resources, prevent structural damage and enhance fuel efficiency by reducing aerodynamic drag. Vistara also regularly promotes e-waste management for electronic waste. 

DQ: What should an enterprise’s strategy be when it comes to cloud computing to enhance scalability and flexibility?

Vinod Bhat: Vistara was born on cloud. Cloud strategy should be multidimensional, leveraging a multi-cloud environment for better flexibility and scalability for a successful enterprise. Automation and real-time data syncing enable resource optimization, while seamless transitions between cloud platforms bring agility to the IT ecosystem, enhancing stability and resilience with robust disaster recovery capabilities.

Cost optimization is a key advantage of this approach, as organizations can dynamically scale resources based on market demand, reducing unnecessary expenses. Security is prioritized, with cloud service providers handling infrastructure security, while internal teams continually adapt to changing security requirements.

Customer experience is crucial, with a focus on hyper-personalization and tailored solutions. Monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) ensures that the cloud strategy aligns with business objectives. Vistara serves as an example of successful implementation, further enhancing cloud security by rationalizing tools and implementing the right controls, with a focus on zero trust (ZTNA) and secure access service edge (SASE). From the start, Vistara recognized cloud computing's importance in launching new workloads cost-efficiently. The cloud's resilience during the pandemic and its demand-based infrastructure provided scalability to navigate market conditions smoothly. 

Vistara runs nearly all workloads on a multi-cloud environment, which includes digital workloads, enterprise applications, infrastructure and security workloads for security operations centers (SOCs), network operations centers (NOCs), and CyberSOC.

DQ: Looking ahead, what are the top priorities for you as far as technology is concerned in driving the company's future growth and success?

Vinod Bhat: At Vistara, our utmost priority is to create a seamless and highly personalized experience for our customers throughout their journey. To achieve this, we are making significant digital investments in Cyber, Data, Personalized Marketing, Customer Support and Information Security Infrastructure. This includes implementing cutting-edge tools like XDR, SIEM, SOAR, PAM, IGL, and other advanced technologies to ensure the highest level of security for our operations and customer data. Furthermore, we are actively investing in various web, mobile, and social digital technologies to revolutionize the way our customers travel. Our commitment to state-of-the-art infrastructure and technology guarantees a frictionless travel experience for our customers in the years to come. We also lay strong focus on digitization and digitalization of processes around Engineering, Safety, Flight Operations, Ground Services, Commercial and Corporate systems. 

As we continue to grow our fleet and network, we focus on automating more processes, streamline operations and increase efficiency across different departments. By doing so, we can effectively support our growth trajectory and deliver enhanced business value to our customers and stakeholders.