India team an incubator for Kyndryl's apps, data and AI: Nicolas Sekkaki

Kyndryl, the multinational information technology infrastructure services company created after its spin-off from IBM, is eyeing exponential growth in its applications, data and artificial intelligence business. Nicolas Sekkaki, Global Practice Leader for Applications, Data and AI at Kyndryl tells Sourabh Lele in an interview that India is an incubator of this growth. Edited excerpts:

Before Kyndryl was spun off from IBM in 2021, it was IBM’s infrastructure services business. How much has the applications part of your company grown since then?
 

We have been very successful worldwide with applications, data and artificial intelligence (AI). We were the smallest practice division when Kyndryl was created. But we are the fastest-growing now and I can tell you that next year we will not be the smallest practice, because the rate of growth is exponential. 
 

We don’t speak too much about numbers, but we have the breakdown. It makes a four per cent contribution to the overall business. We are shy of a billion dollars. In the Indian market, we have doubled our revenue from application, data and AI in a year.

What role does India play in Kyndryl’s global capabilities?
 

We used to have India as the low-cost delivery model for the rest of the world. And yes, it is competitive. But being cost-competitive doesn’t mean the skills are not higher. I have an Indian team with skills that I don’t have in the rest of the world. For me, it is an incubator of growth. 
 

Kyndryl has over 30,000 people of its global workforce of 90,000 in India. Kyndryl India is dynamic, one of the most successful entities we have. Most of my global team are in India. They serve the world, but are also able to serve Indian customers when needed. Everything we think about, we can test in India, learn from it, and also help our domestic market to grow, because we have some new skills.
 

What has changed at the organisational level in the past two years, after the spin-off?
 

We like to portray ourselves as a start-up. It is about the culture, mindset, and agility we want to bring to the organisation. It is about being able to think about how we reinvent ourselves, but we don’t want to change what we do best for our customers. Our CEO, Martin J Schroeter, has been clear that we needed to change our culture.
 

There is also a shift in the mindset and the perception of our customers about us, because they will see us as a start-up if we are agile and responsive. This also applies to our people. You can have great skills, but if we don’t change our culture, we cannot address new markets, and application data and AI is a new market for us. We encourage our employees to build and innovate, and if they have done something different, to show it to the management team.
 

Recent developments in generative AI have created a new phase in innovation. How are you using it? 
 

ChatGPT is amazing in what it can do. You see a lot of consumers using it. Is it powerful? Yes. However, it also raises a lot of questions. One such area is copyrights. For ChatGPT they have a set of data, they harvest the data and then use it again. But what if the data is copyrighted and you use it? What happens? What you are doing is transferring your intellectual property to another company.
 

Aren’t your customers demanding applications with ChatGPT?

At Kyndryl we internally decided not to use ChatGPT. At present there is a lot of hype around it. We have a couple of customers who are asking us how they can leverage this technology with their data, and make sure that it’s protected. But at the end of the day, our mission for critical mission applications is to understand the technology, and if it can be applied. And also make sure that we do not put too much risk into them.
 

What are your focus areas for the next wave of transformation in data and applications?
 

With 5G coming in, you now have all the ingredients to put manufacturing 4.0 into motion. We want to make sure the whole value proposition on industry 4.0 comes together for companies to be able to harvest edge computing. This is a big thing, because when we look at it, the sensors are the tip of the iceberg. The rest is infrastructure, data governance, security, and everything that Kyndryl knows how to do. We want to play in the field of edge computing, for sure.