It has been a couple of months of independent existence for Kyndryl, IBM’s former managed infrastructure business which was spun off and divested. Kyndryl — now independently listed on global bourses — has revenues of $19 billion with a presence in 65 countries. Of its 88,449 employees globally, nearly half are based in India. Lingraju Sawkar, President of Kyndryl India, spoke to BusinessLine about life as an independent company and the new opportunities it has presented outside the IBM eco-system. Excerpts:
What are the strengths Kyndryl has, as it travels uncharted waters after separating from IBM?
What we are extremely proud of is the customer base. We work with 75 of the top Fortune 100 companies, whose vital systems and technology systems we built, operate and manage. Our future trajectory is built on 2-3 areas.
One, is looking at the market from a broader technology perspective — the lens of cloud hyper scalers, of the partnerships ecosystem, the start-up alliance framework and, more importantly, integrating all these capabilities with our key customers. With that, we see our total addressable market doubling from $240 billion to $500 billion. We’ve already announced some very interesting partnerships with Microsoft, VMware and Google, and a lot more is yet to come. India is a very interesting place for Kyndryl globally. From a country-market operations perspective, this is one of the oldest business divisions and we support and manage a lot of critical, vital systems of our customers. For example, 2 out of 3 telephone calls and 5 out of 8 cars on (Indian) roads are supported by us. Online banking transactions, health care systems, essential services — we support wider systems in all these areas.
And second, Kyndryl India as a talent base. We have our Client Innovation Centers and Centers of Excellence — where we deliver to global customers from here — but we also have our Labs where we do some very strong research work which helps drive innovation for our customers. So these are two parts of what we do in India.
Kyndryl India is organised around 6 practices — Cloud Services, Core Enterprise, Resiliency & Security Services, Network & Edge, Application Data and AI. These are the areas in which we look at the market; our capabilities are built around this. This is truly a very exciting time for us because the digital journey of our customers and market, as you know, is on an accelerated path.
What is your relationship with IBM now?
IBM is one of our largest partners, and that will continue given the heritage of the technology work that we’ve done together. The world of technology has definitely moved to a multi-environment. When you look at a data centre or the cloud environment, there are multiple cloud environments within our customers’ environments. There are multiple technologies running for our customers now because of the value and differentiation each one offers. So that is why you will see Kyndryl India partnering with other hyper scalers, be it Microsoft or Google. So, in summary, IBM is an existing relationship and partner that will continue, but we will also have freedom of action to work with other partnerships.
One of the reasons IBM spun you off was declining revenues and low margins, apart from the capital intensive nature of business. Will you look at inorganic opportunities to offset that?
The very purpose of branching out as a separate company is because each of the businesses has its own trajectory — IBM as a cloud company and Kyndryl as an infrastructure services capability company. So, whatever the needs of this trajectory, whether it is organic or inorganic growth, we have an independent balance sheet, independent board and an independent management organisation with a flattened organisation structure which makes our decision-making much faster. We’ve removed two-thirds of our decision-making nodes. Given all of these things, we definitely see an opportunity for growth. The board and the managers will have the freedom and the ability to make decisions.
Half of your global workforce is based out of India. Given all the flux surrounding the company in the last year, has attracting and retaining talent been a challenge?
Kyndryl India has a sizable talent force in India. From a talent attraction and retention perspective, our value proposition is fundamentally around three things that we put on the table. First, we’re coming with a 100 year-plus history and stability. But now, we have the hunger of a start-up in terms of flexibility and agility. The second factor is the ability to work with the leaders in various industries — retail, airline, manufacturing, telecom, automotive and banking. The third and most important part, I would say, is the peer group — distinguished engineers, master inventors, PhDs, scientists, data analysts — where one can engage and be intellectually stimulated.
