>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience, brought to you by HPE. >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of HPE's Discover 2020, the Virtual Experience. I'm Lisa Martin and I'm pleased to be joined by Harshul Asnani, the Global Head of the Technology Business at HPE partner, Tech Mahindra. Harshul, great to have you on the program. >> Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. >> So, tell me about Tech Mahindra. I see on the website abbreviated as Tech M, give our audience an overview of Tech Mahindra, what you guys do. >> Sure. So Tech Mahindra is digital transformation consulting and technology services company operating at the intersection of IT engineering networks and BPO services. We have about 125,000 people operating in our 90 countries with about 5.2 billion in revenue, and have about 1,000 customers across key strategic verticles our largest being communications, media, and entertainment. And then we have other strong word because like technology, manufacturing, HLS, BFSI, the retail, and energy, and utilities. So that's broadly what we do, being in existence for well over 30 years now. >> And tell me about your role as the Head of the Global Technology Business. What have you seen transpire and evolve over the last few years, and especially the last three months with COVID? >> Sure. No, absolutely. I think, you see, we have organized a company around six strategic business units. They are these customer facing business units and I lead the one that focuses on technology and the high tech industry, if you will. I'm based in the Bay Area. And in this business unit, a large part of our business is, in some sense, 360 degree relationship with our customers, where not only do we sell into our customers, we also sell with and sell through our customers and also buy from them. So in that sense, it's a little different model in which we operate as compared to, say, other verticals that we have like manufacturing or BFSI or healthcare, but the relationship is largely customer and a supplier relationship. We have a full blown 360 degree relationship. It's very unique from that standpoint. And things have, you know, in some sense, dramatically shifted in the last three years, rather three months where we are seeing that, you know, amount of digital transformation, which was to happen over the next two years, has kind of happened in the last two months. So this is kind of pivoting a lot of enterprises, and including the tech sector, into an era where we are saying, how do we reposition ourselves to bring in more COVID-related solutions, both from a commercial standpoint, as well as a humanitarian standpoint, to deal with this crisis. So that it does in terms of changes that are happening out there in the industry, as well as in Tech Mahindra, as we can't forget ready fore-global and post -lobal. >> If you look at some of the specific trends that you're seeing during the COVID crisis, in the high tech segment, what are they? >> So, a couple of things have, we've looked at very differently. Supply chain for example, which is very crucial to high tech, is undergoing, in some sense, a metamorphoses shift. It's undergoing a seismic shift in the way supply chains are kind of reconfiguring themselves. You're also seeing customer experience kind of dramatically changing. Another thing that is coming in very, very strongly from a change perspective, it's kind of a storm that is brewing out there is, is how do we enable people to work remotely? We at Tech Mahindra, ourselves, had to enable 80,000 people in India who work remotely in a matter of weeks. And it's by no means an easy task to do which in a country where working from home is not really a culture. And also where we work, out of secure customer premises, even in India, our secure offshore locations in India, and all those people have now moved to their homes, and work out with their living rooms and bedrooms. And that was a sizable shift in the way we had to deal with our engagements, and with our customers. And so far so good, knock on wood, We have not had any issues. >> So Harshul, pivoting so quickly, as Tech M did to get your 80,000 employees in India to be able to work from home connectivity, all the challenges associated with that, goes hand in hand with your business, being able to deliver an exceptional customer experience, customer experience being an issue that you say is a rising trend amongst your customers. Customer experience and work from home these days go hand in hand, right? >> Absolutely. No, I think we also surprised ourselves with the pace at which we could move these 80,000 people to work from home in a matter of days, as I was saying, and as without missing customers. Our task was unimaginable in the pre-COVID era. And we will also surprised ourselves at the pace at which we could turn around COVID-related solutions so quickly with the help of partners like HPE that are today helping us pivot ourselves from one kind of old age solutions to the new age solutions, to the new normal today. And yeah, of course, and at the same time, we are to ensure that we enable the customer experience, and doing this on that while we repurpose our people to work from home. It was a challenge, and frankly, we surprised ourselves the way we did. >> So Harshul, talk to me about what, in these COVID crisis times, HPE and Tech Mahindra are doing together to help your customers accelerate, maybe adoption of new technologies that they need to for their businesses to thrive. >> Yeah, sure. No, that's a great question, Lisa. Let me start by saying that HPE is a very strategic partnership for us, and we see it as a coming together of two market leaders to deliver a very differentiated playbook of solutions for our customers. There is a robust set of products and solutions and edge offerings, edge gateways, converged edge systems, and clear analytics, combined with HPE's great GreenLake offers, which is around flexible consumption-based services, which helps align our customers' IT spend to deliver pretty much everything as a service. We kind of have already robust partner in HPE. And when you combine this with a Tech Mahindra's industry domain and technology depth, and the systems integration wherewithal that we bring in, it makes form, I believe, a very potent combination to drive, serious value to our customers, right? And given the COVID situation, we have kind of defined our relationship along three broad vectors based on the mutual synergies and where we believe we can quickly drive value. Firstly, what the solution white spaces that we want to address together? Secondly, what are the geographies that you want to operate in and third is, what are the industry verticals that we believe we can quickly focus on? So from a solutioning standpoint, there are four broad trust areas that we want to sharply focus on. Firstly IoT. It's been a strong partnership with HP with IoT. And we would like to continue that followed. With HBE's edge offerings, and converged edge systems, we have kind of demonstrated the possibilities of IoT solutions across smart cities, factories of the future, of energy and utilities and of Costa Rico. And we have some good success stories we already have with HPE that would like to build on, we have won some for significant smart city projects in India, in four different cities of India. And we also, by the way, won the Systems Integrator Award for Edge and IoT from HPE last year, and also the SI Partner of the Year for HPE last year. So we would like to continue to build on that. We all see already have a COE on IoT set up in Bangalore. It's a very unique COE that we're built up where we have showcasing solutions around a smart city or IoT, and also brought in Aruba gear as well, but solutions that are smart campuses, so on and so forth. So, that's number one. Number two is data center transformation. As hybrid cloud kind of takes root through our customers are now looking at transforming their data centers as well. And particularly with HPE's GreenLake, it becomes a very strategic commercial tool for us to bring on demand paper, use models, elasticity, kind of the, as I was talking about, the flexible consumption services model, which is so unique today, as we help customers reduce their capex and get them to pay by the drink, if you will. Now that becomes very, very relevant in the COVID times. And last but not the least, our focus is also on network of the future. When I say that our partnership with HPE is really pivoted around 5G, as DNFE and private LTE solutions. For example, you know, HPE's private LTE network, which is essentially powered by HPE's EL300 and EL4000 converged edge systems. It's kind augmented by our industrial IoT expertise. And it includes a reintegrated, off the shelf, industrial IoT application from Tech Manhira. It's a kind of an end to end solution that uses the breakthrough innovation such as small sales EPC, and smart multi-access edge compute. So, we are staying sharply focused on these areas. And we started seeing the results, and given the goals in this scenario, we have evolved a bunch of use cases very quickly in multiple industry areas. And bought from a commercial library standpoint, and also importantly, on a humanitarian level, what we can do together. For example, in Italy, as the pandemic was raging. As many of you will know, a ship force can order into a hospital, probably 1,000 bed hospital, and HPE stepped in, and they brought in the Aruba gear to put up network together, the infrastructure and the connectivity to bring together, and take Manhira, which has a rapid response healthcare solution who help with remote patient diagnostics and monitoring. Kind of brought in that solution along with HPE, to bear in Italy as the pandemic was raging. So that's just an example of how we are partnering at multiple levels. You know, created a solution around workspace as a service, as an remote working becomes a new normal. >> Right. >> With HPE on that. So a bunch of other solutions as well, Lisa. >> Sounds like you guys have done a great job of, as you mentioned in the beginning of our time here, rapidly pivoting within Tech Mahindra, as you said, it actually kind of surprised ourselves to what you were doing with HPE to deploy rapidly in Italy, to I can only imagine helping customers accelerate projects like smart cities and smart factories where suddenly we need sensors on more things. Harshul, I thank you so much for spending time with us on theCUBE today. Exciting topics. We can't wait to see where this goes. >> Well, thank you so much, Lisa, for your time. It was great talking to you. >> Excellent. My pleasure. For Harshul, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 2020. Thanks for watching. (gentle music)

>> from Palo Alto, California It's the Cube covering the EM Where women transforming technology twenty nineteen. Brought to you by V. M. Where. >> Lisa Martin on the ground at the end. Where in Palo Alto, California for the fourth annual Women Transforming Technology event. W. Squared one of my favorite events, and I'm pleased to welcome back to the Cube, one of the leader female leaders at being where Lily Chang, the VP of of the strategic transformation office. Lily, it's so great to have you on the program again. >> Thank you. It's my pleasure and honor to be here. >> So this event, one of my favorites, as I mentioned, even just walking up to registration this morning. The energy, the excitement, the supports >> is in the air. >> Yes, And then you walk into the keynote, and it was kicked off this morning with such an incredible presentation, and number was actually mentioned earlier. That was about fifteen hundred people just in person today, not even mentioning the live stream. So the momentum in just four years that you guys are creating is huge. >> Yes, Well, where is a great place for diversity and inclusion that is one of our companies. Strategic Motif Way believed that in order to basically create the best technology in the world, today was the evolution and the advancement >> off. All these technology working together, we're servicing all genders origin globally. So that means the creation of this. We >> need to bring all these culture aspect to bring into our design thinking. So when we saw the problem, we are not solving in in a mo no fashion way actually can look at multiple facets. So having this event is part of our passion is really part of our DNA. Now >> I think that's fantastic. That's inspirational for other companies to really look it. It's not just an event that Veum were put on. This is really changing the anywhere from within as well. >> Yes, this a change process has started quite a while ago. I would say inherently Arjun Attic nature off of'em were is that we actually >> do believe in all genders are original founder and CEO was a woman, right? And so we pioneered a virtual ization and we believe in woman leadership. We believe in all levels off woman innovation, together with man and all the origin globally in the >> world That's fantastic. So I wanted last year we talked with you, which was fantastic. We're happy to have you back. I want to talk about something that you guys recently launching aboutthe last year helping women return to work. Tell us about Tara and just >> helping women how they are able to get back into technology. >> Yes, so this is one of my favorite topic. Basically, we talked about glasses, ceilings for decades, about woman in terms of how you break two classes ceiling, how you identified, how you work around it and all the things. There is a huge transparent glasses ceiling being view worldwide for a long time, and that is basically woman care about the society. Women care about the family, so, so, so so all the genders as well. However, there's a lot of the woman were forced. They may be technically very achieving in terms with their career or academic side. They have to basically take care ofthe parenthood, take care of family for various personal reasons. After a couple of years, their passion for the technology still exist. They want to join the war force to propel the world, and basically especially now, was the technology is put to a lot of technology for good, to help sustainability, to help medical field, to help disabled people. All these >> things right, but they're having a little bit of >> difficulty to read. Enter the work face and that's a glass is silly because their technology knowledge may be a little bit dated because just away how in the past ten years how you were in all >> the other Giants has propelled technology so quickly changes so quickly like three months >> is almost like a decade nowadays, right is moving in that quantum speed. So what >> we have done is basically we decided to create a Tara project. Is a woman returned to work initiative and we're basically >> launching specifically, focus on India region, right? And basically we are funding fifteen thousand woman, and we are training them and brought him up to speed about technology. Especially, was our software different data center in virtual ization? Networking storage? Right. So we are giving them a certification program, and that is something in some part of the world. That certificate moves a lot. It's like a pedigree indicate that you not only believe you actually know all this you've got evidence that you really know it and they're people. I certify you so with that, that enable them to be able to jump back into the workforce was full qualification and was a virtual ization being dominant in the world, right? Basically, it's like something that it's really hot and really relevant and were also helping them to basically connect with our customers in India so that they actually could be interview for future positions as well. How so, basically, is a into end strategy transformation to break the huge glasses ceiling >> here. Thick glass ceilings. So you fifteen thousand women this >> has just >> launched last year. How long is the certification program that they >> go through? We want to be able to achieve that. Go in the next couple years, starting this year >> starting this year, fifteen thousand women in the next couple of years. >> In the next couple years >> way, I should have >> got a few thousands already. So in the beginning for the first quarter, two were making very decent progress and Wei have a community partner. Happens to be a woman who co because they have a worldwide organization and they're sending the community message out to promote this. We also working really closely with the Indian government to push for this, to get their recognition for this as well, because we believe that will be beneficial for these woman we brought back to the war force. There's multiple aspect is not just touching the hearts in the soul ofthe many, many family, but is also basically injecting quality, highly qualified, incompetent technical talent back into the India community and industry, so that actually can proliferate and elevate the entire India technology level. >> Two shaves >> Transformative. I feel like that word isn't even strong enough, Lulu. That's remarkable. The potential that has on you mentioned the involvement of women who could have been on the board there for quite a while >> for more than three years now. >> And I was looking at >> some numbers with growth of that community alone is incredible. Over one hundred eighty thousand members in twenty countries So far you've done over eight thousand training's workshops. Hackathons conferences over two point five million dollars has been awarded in developer school in conference scholarships. >> Wow, the momentum moment is very high. It is very hard, you >> said you're even launching another country this year. >> We So we're not sitting on saying OK, we're satisfied. We're never satisfied because the world goes on right? So does the word expand. Thus the technology excel itself. We want to basically leap ahead with all this. So we're not stopping. So this year will Mexico and being where we're launching Costa Rica za So we believe we actually opened a lot of the region of the world and unlock the energy and the innovation and the community's oh gender to work together in India, China, Sofia. And we worked really closely with a lot of the industry technical giants and woman Wilco propelling this tech woman community in us and also in Europe. Now we will leave Costa Rica. It's a very strategic side for bm where >> tell us a >> little bit more about why is it sister team is a >> strategic for a couple reasons we are doing also world we are working together was a global community and the global clock. So Costa Rica is tine zone wise very nicely either bridge in between the other time zone with us and also it's overlapping very well with us times. Oh, so they actually could do a lot of the key business execution, including operation and IT and customer support. Technical support. So we do have technical people over there, but not enough technical woman Momenta way also believe the country can really use some help from us. So we're working with a woman who co and this is a decision will be assessing for awhile. But we believe that ranch in Costa Rico Ashley make it a blossom in that region off the world, not just Costarica. We're kind of looking that we hope it becomes a hub >> That's incredible, just but also not just what you're doing with Tara and with expanding women who code to Costa Rica. It's also the opportunity for actual economic benefits to these countries. But what I also I'm hearing is that, for example, with Tara, you're No, it's not just it's a the end where myopic. We want more women to come back to the workforce the way we want them too injured to be introduced to our customer base so that they can network, >> and it tends to establish report >> other opportunities for employment. >> That's right, even though they do not get a particular position when they are connected to a customer that is a relationship, and that is something that will stay with that woman in that talent for walk. And that is something that we feel is very important to connect all these critical stakeholders together. So Tara has that faucet ahs well, >> and you mentioned that there's already been about a thousand or a couple of thousand >> of thousands already gone morning. >> Twenty five hundred, I believe, >> any favorite success stories that come to mind. >> Yes, my favorites is says Story is >> the very first Tara Certify Woman is a woman who co member, so we're very, very proud of that because that shows the partnership actually works. That means a lot of the technical curriculum and a monthly meet up and all these technical conference. That woman who was trying to do the scholarship they try to handle all those are kind of a cumulatively paying off. Was Tara being the major critical push to push them over that glass ceiling limit? Right? >> I just think that's fantastic. I was looking at the woman who could website just the other day, and I saw that your event it was sold out >> you connect >> twenty nineteen? >> That's right. >> But just the moment on the excitement, the support in this community that is growing, as we mentioned earlier, one hundred eighty thousand plus tell us about the connect event >> Connected is a technical conference. We do talk a little bit about. The leadership in this office is skilled, but it has motive. All technology track. In fact, this year what we want to do is we want to start basically elevating into technology domain track because we now have a very successful who created leadership role like a city director. City Italy. They incubated from Weston ten thousand member in the past three and a half years. Two hundred eighty thousand member. A lot of the kudos and credit go to them, but as a result, we have wealth, body off woman talent that are highly technical and highly versatile in many, many fields. Right, because we believe today, for a poor talent to be successful in technology field, you cannot just specialize in one. If you look at Coyote, you look at a blockchain, all these emerging stuff. It's not just about a Iot machine. Learning is also about virtual ization about how well you can do the logic and the analytics and the data mining and the algorithms. Right? So basically we want to have multiple technology track, and that would include things like cloud like Blough Chan. And then that gives also a possibility for one who quote to create a individual contributor volunteer track, like we want to basically launched a notion off a cloud architect, right? So give basically people away to aspire to growth and so they can actually measure the growth, which is very good in the sense off that you know where you stand, you know, you can't plan for the next step. And so this isn't something that we want to be able to do, and we're basically launching that as well. Um connect also via were hosted open the Global Connect in India. This year we had a breakthrough. We actually have more than a thousand attendees. Wow, so that's like more than twice to jump from last year. Last year was about maybe three hundred. Niche, right? So this is a tremendous growth, and basically it's wonderful to see that there's a lot of technology track and the woman coming in sharing very openly about what they know and the sharing and the learning. And the coaching is part of the whole overall energy as well. >> So if we look at impact so far, the various impact that you talked about with both Tara, which is quite really in its history women who code w. T squared and we look at, say, even in the US alone, fifty percent of the population is female. It's a tremendous amount of women who are just women in general who are technologically savvy but are passed over for these positions. Then he kind of factor in into that fifty percent. How many of them are women who have had to leave the workforce for various reasons that we talked about earlier? There's a tremendous amount of of women out there with skills who aren't being looked at. Where is women who code? And Tara, where are you on changing those numbers from fifty percent too, you know, forty seven percent of forty five percent. Do you have any sort of strategic goals in your office? Numbers wise? Well, for me personally >> and the forewoman who co we wanted basically be able to change the world way. Want to offer all the technical woman in the world a choice for their career letter? So Tara is a >> way to do it to break one particular glasses. Silly, right? And there's also a lot of these scholarships. And olders is to help women to be able to do career, transform native patient change change, for example, Woman Ochoa's part of comeback. We actually handle five awards to recognize five outstanding woman leaders, in our opinion, one of them, she started with a woman who co was a individual member. She was just a junior engineer. But in less than two years periods, she is actually now a VP. Let's fast track. It's very fast track. So we believe in human power and potential way, especially believe in a woman that basically is under representative in a lot of the technology sectors. Our job is to unlock these potential and their barriers and roadblocks in various forms, right big and small. So the job is really to unlock all this way. Want to be able to move the needle up to towards the right direction with all these things that we're doing >> last thing here, let's finish with how you yourself have broken through many, many levels of glass ceilings to get where you are tonight. Share with us a little bit about your career journey. >> Micro Journey is recently about two and a half years ago, I moved from our indie world to strategy transformation office. It's a it's a one of these moments, I would say, is a glass a cliff, Right? You're standing at the edge of this glasses ceiling house and you're just about to plunge it in. That was the feeling I got two and a half years ago. But you know what? I am so loving it. It is basically the best occur decision I've ever made because there was a dimension that I could never have the experience and seeing before because I spent that case in R and D. A beautiful. A lot of these no hot and competency, and I just work with the business world. But in the transformation office, we do nto way actually bridged to world together. So basically, for me it was a fantastic learning journey, and it's just empowerment and the trust I got from the awards executives and all Michael workers, I feel like that is probably >> the most a transformative decision I ever made. It's not just your shifting technology field with the technical world. I literally shift >> into a buy one hundred eighty degree to a difference by truck. But my job is to connect Tonto and stretch together, which is something that I feel has profound impact for the company. And I just love every minute of it. Oh, >> and I love that. That's that's a great story. And it sounds like what you're doing. You're just at the beginning of all of what? Your transformation. So I can't wait. You know you next year. Thank you. Every great thing that happened to the rest of twenty nineteen. Really? Thank you so much. >> Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. Thanks. >> I'm Lisa Martin here, watching the Cube coming to you from women Transforming technology. Fourth annual BMO. Thanks for watching