Watch: Harnath Babu on ushering in digital transformation at KPMG India

As CIO of KPMG India, Harnath Babu’s job is to harness cutting edge technologies and usher in digital transformation at the local arm of the global Big Four consulting firm. It’s an onerous responsibility because eventually KPMG will look to roll out many of those solutions to its clients both in India and overseas.

In order to get the digital transformation exercise right, Babu has made the reskilling and upskilling of employees his top priority. "People will have to understand if they want to be relevant for the future or not. We have training programmes happening at our office and they are mandatory for everyone,” he said in a recent interview on the sidelines of TechCircleLIVE in Delhi.

He also spoke extensively about how digital transformation is taking shape at KPMG India, the importance of the right tools and technology and how chatbots are playing a crucial role in increasing employee productivity.

Prior to KPMG, Babu, who works out of Gurugram, was CIO at Aviva Life Insurance Company where he was responsible for defining the company’s digital strategy. Earlier, he had a similar roles at Star Union Dai-Ichi Life Insurance and Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company. In his current assignment, he is responsible for building new and advanced solutions to streamline business operations, compliance, and improving IT infrastructure efficiencies.

Earlier this month, the consulting firm said it plans to hire about 9,000 people in India, mainly to cater to its overseas clients. 

In October, it signed a strategic partnership with US-based digital workflow company ServiceNow to strengthen its technology business. 

It has also developed its own portfolio of AI (artificial intelligence) tools under the brand name KPMG Ignite. Apart from AI, the firm is focussing on emerging technologies such as NLP (natural language processing) to streamline audits. NLP tools help companies to extract data from unstructured formats such as contracts and emails.