Implementing Agentic AI across processes a key priority for us this year: Piramal Group’s Viral Gandhi

The Piramal Group is a four-decade old Indian conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai. The group is primarily present in three sectors: real estate, healthcare, and financial services. As the world moves towards a digital future, the group has adopted technology-driven transformation to enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and drive innovation across its business. 

In an interview with TechCircle, Group Chief Information Officer (Group CIO) Viral Gandhi shares insights into the company’s digital transformation journey.

Given the diverse nature of the group’s businesses, the approach to digital technology is different, catering to specific needs. That said, the technology strategy overall is deeply aligned with the business strategy, ensuring that technology supports the multi-year vision, strategic goals, and financial objectives of each business unit, Gandhi said. 

Business specific digital tech initiatives

The Piramal Group initiated a digital transformation project under the name ASPIRE in 2016, with a primary aim to evolve from a commodity service provider to a strategic business partner.

“Initially, we focused on automation, modernizing IT infrastructure, strengthening cybersecurity, and enhancing data visualization and reporting,” said Gandhi. He added that technology’s role within the group has evolved to make an impact on profitable business growth. “This evolution led us to prioritize data analytics, cloud adoption, AI/ML, and ultimately, the integration of generative AI, further solidifying our role as a business goal enabler.”

In financial services, the group has a large engineering and analytics team in Bengaluru, with around 600 strong techies focused on developing tech and data-driven solutions. “This allows us to create a business differentiator and helps us roll out newer capabilities, with a faster go-to-market approach and ownership of intellectual property. For instance, we have already implemented multiple Gen AI use cases, actively used by 16,000 users across the organization,” said Gandhi.

“In pharmaceuticals, our long-range plan targets doubling revenue in five years and tripling profitability.” To achieve this, the company is leveraging automation, efficiency improvements, and hyper-automation across processes. The vision is to create an intelligent organization, integrating ERP, peripheral applications, and data analytics.

Lastly, in real estate, customer experience is a major focus. The company has developed consumer-friendly interfaces, including mobile apps, to enhance communication and engagement throughout the customer lifecycle.

“In financial services, about 70% of our technology is built in-house, while 30% is outsourced. In pharma and real estate, the ratio is reversed, with 70% being industry-standard solutions and 30% custom-built,” Gandhi said, 

AI-led innovation

Piramal Group’s AI strategy has evolved over years. Gandhi said that before 2022, the focus was on traditional AI which focused on data-driven decision making for process optimisation. 

In 2023, it began experimenting with AI. “When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, we swiftly established a Gen AI Center of Excellence (CoE) the following month.” The group during the period focused on learning and experimentation, conducting PoCs, identifying use cases, and assessing benefits and costs. 

By 2024, these experiments transitioned into tangible enterprise-grade applications, embedding Gen AI into core business functions. “Now, in 2025 and beyond, we are entering the era of Agentic AI - where AI systems go beyond generating insights to making autonomous decisions. Our focus is to implement Agentic AI across various processes and technologies, making it a key priority for the year.”

Cybersecurity posture

In July 2024, a hacker claimed to have stolen data related to current and former employees of the Piramal Group. The hacker purportedly offered this data for sale on the dark web, releasing a sample that included full names and email addresses. However, Piramal Group refuted these claims, stating that their cybersecurity team had rigorously examined the systems and found no evidence of a breach. The company suggested that the data might have originated from a third-party platform, identifying Mailinator, a service used for testing email and SMS workflows, as a potential source.

Speaking about current cybersecurity measures in place, Gandhi said that compliance, governance, and information security are foundational to the group’s approach, given the regulated businesses in financial services and pharmaceuticals, where the company handles sensitive customer data and intellectual property. 

He added that some of the key focus areas for the business are — zero trust security frameworks, AI-driven threat intelligence, cloud and endpoint security measures, and employee awareness programs. “Since we handle sensitive Customer and Consumer data, we maintain strong governance frameworks to ensure data protection as well as compliance with regulations.”

In conclusion, when asked about the digital technology investment made by the organisation, Gandhi said, “Our investment strategy is benchmarked against industry peers, and we deliberately position ourselves at the higher end of the spectrum.” He also added that the investments continue to grow year over year, closely aligned with business expansion and transformation goals.