Generative AI gained ground in Indian IT in 2023. The year saw a slew of companies introducing the technology through language models of all sizes. While the rest rushed to jump on the bandwagon, some companies are taking their time to add the technology to their products and services. One of them is HCLSoftware, which believes that the use of generative AI should be pragmatic.
The software production arm of the IT veteran HCLTech is primarily balancing the technology with the cost that customers need to pay with the value that appears. “We don’t want Gen AI just to put it in front of the customer. We want them to benefit from the technology by using the products,” declared Kalyan Kumar, HCLSoftware’s Chief Product Officer, in an interview with AIM.
The executive was joined by the company’s Chief Revenue Officer, Rajiv Shesh, who said, “We balance it [generative AI] with the cost that the customers need to pay, and the value will appear.”
“We are engaging with language models in several ways across our technology, and we’ve been working with these models for much longer than the emergence of the current discussion of the state. Every product line has an embedded AI capability,” Shesh elaborated.
A prime example is HCL Unica, a software for multichannel marketing. In 2019, HCL acquired Unica, a platform developed by Yuchun Lee in 1992 that provides AI-driven assistance today.
“We founded Unica focused on marketing to help organisations provide offerings so targeted that it doesn’t feel like selling or marketing but a service to the customer,” said Lee, who also joined the interview alongside Shesh and Kumar.
He further elaborated that a high level of computation is required to handle this concept. “I think going forward, this is really about how HCL can take that concept and deliver the capability at an unheard-of scale,” he said.
Providing Customers an Experience
The software leader fulfils their customers’ business requirements through two extreme approaches. Shesh, who joined HCL in 1997, elaborated that “one is absolute standardised software. Second is that you sit across from a customer, get needed specifications, and start building it from scratch.”
“Instead of waiting for years for that software to come in the next series software, we make it available to expedite and speed up the capability of the software they deploy. At the same time, keep the risks at cost manageable,” he explained how the company foundationally engages with its customers.
Additionally, Kumar highlighted, “We can do things very differently because we have the engineering scale not to think like a traditional software company that everyone should fit into a business slice.” Across 132 countries, HCLSoftware has more than a thousand business partners. “You can pick any timezone starting from the International Date Line. We have customers north to south from the Arctic and Antarctic. We are the only software company built out of engineering services heritage,” he gladly boasted.
HCLSoftware intends to help customers extract value from their investments. “The core principle of our business is that our software should get used,” added Shesh. He further said that HCLSoftware has generated the bulk of its business by providing new capabilities to its clients.
The organisation’s goal is to keep customers abreast of everything new in technology. “This whole process is connected so that we understand that the technology is being created based on what the customer is seeking from us,” Shesh explained.
“That cycle is going on,” the industry veteran said, reflecting on the growing clientele across 130+ countries. “Our customers are our best salespeople. They’re the ones who provide references,” he added.
Mapping History
HCLSoftware was created by HCLTech with the single purpose of building a software production business. “It was a very conscious plan decision and a curation of intellectual property acquired from IBM, Cisco and a few others,” recalled Kumar, who has worked with HCL for over two decades.
“We’ve got a set of capabilities which enable businesses to rewire and run the company in a digital plus enterprise economy. We help them attract prospects, transact and nurture the customer lifecycle, “he said,
But that is one part of our business. The second is the world’s most extensive portfolio of low code and no code capabilities, which the team inherited, noted Kumar. The company’s low code development platform, HCL Volt MX, has proven exceptional as it provides solutions to customers like Ferrari.
Kumar noted that the third is the suite of products around hybrid data. “We believe the world of data cannot get on the cloud or on-prem. It has got to be hybrid consistently,” he added, emphasising the company’s focus on cloud.
HCLSoftware also has the Intelligent Automation Cloud Suite, which can securely deploy, develop, and build applications and manage endpoints, observability, AIops, and the whole lifecycle.
