Piramal Group focuses on AI, ML, analytics for digital efficiency

The Piramal Group, which began its digital transformation journey about seven years ago, is continuing to sharpen its focus on the use of digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), cloud, internet of things (IoT), hyper automation, and advanced data analytics to enhance its business processes and customer experiences. 

The Group has two objectives in mind, according to Viral Gandhi, President and Group CIO, Piramal Group. The first is to streamline the business conglomerate's core business functions including sales, manufacturing, and logistics, while the second is to use these technologies to focus "on solving new problems and optimising areas of uncertainty to make them more predictable" for all its three businesses
-- Financial Services (Piramal Enterprises Ltd), Pharma (Piramal Pharma Ltd.) and Piramal Realty. 

"We looked at the strategic objectives of each business, and then arrived at various themes like customer experience (CX), digital enterprise, smart manufacturing, and supply chain. Within each of them, we identified and executed a few initiatives contributing to the theme," Gandhi said in an interview.  

For instance, the Group launched a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) centre of excellence (CoE) in October 2018, which works with all business units and has "implemented more than 75 bots (till date), saving about 50 person years of effort every year", according to Gandhi. RPA solutions have helped "automate key financial processes including bank reconciliation, daily exchange rates and bank statement auto-updates and monitor the status of debtors’ accounts receivables", according to Gandhi. They have also resulted in "significant cost savings in day-to-day financial operations, and improved data accuracy and compliance". 

In Piramal Enterprises, primarily retail lending, the Group is using AI and ML, decision sciences and automated Business Intelligence (BI) tools to enhance customer experience, and detect fraud and delinquency rates, among other things. Further, Piramal Enterprises’ technology platform is now fully on the cloud. "As part of our DHFL's (Dewan Housing Finance Ltd.) integration with us in 2021, we inherited on-premise technology platforms, which we have either retired or migrated to the cloud," Gandhi said. The Group has also integrated its cloud platform with a telephony cloud platform that "has resulted in increased productivity, enhanced customer experience, fewer sales cancellations, superior brand value and strong regulatory compliance", according to Gandhi. 

In Piramal Pharma, the Group has implemented a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) at one of its sites to digitally control, monitor, and document manufacturing processes in real-time throughout the manufacturing cycle right up to the batch release. Piramal Pharma already uses a chatbot to address employee related queries in a bid to improve HR process efficiency. Use of data analytics in the pharma unit, meanwhile, is helping it identify high-growth areas while setting ML-enabled credit limits for distributors. 

To be sure, many large companies and conglomerates in India are fast tracking their digital transformation initiatives. Farm to-finance conglomerate Mahindra Group, for instance, has been working on bringing its diverse products and services under one overarching digital roof. Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Retail initiated a revamp of its My Jio app in August 2021 to convert it into a super app by integrating various consumer offerings. Tata Sons launched its super app called TataNeu in April 2022, to cover all its units -- fashion to finance, gadgets to groceries, hotels to health, and tech to travel.  

Ahmedabad-based Adani group, too, has set up a new division, Adani Digital Labs, to build its super app. Harsh Goenka-run RPG Enterprises is implementing three metaverse projects besides developing agritech, medtech, blockchain and artificial intelligence-powered platforms as part of its digital journey. 

The Piramal Group, however, does not see any need for a super app. According to Gandhi, "If we expect technology to really transform the business, technology leaders cannot just be experts in technology--they have to be experts in business too. Hence, each business has a head of business technology, and we call them Business CIOs / CTO. This results in the CIO becoming a "co-owner" of the business outcome of technology transformation.”