MarTech+ #1: The great MarTech reset
Welcome to the very first edition of
MarTech+
, your sharp, smart, and always-on newsletter that cuts through the noise to bring you the boldest ideas and conversations from the ever-evolving world of
marketing technology
.
If you've been wondering how
generative AI
will reshape your
customer journeys
, challenge creativity norms, or even lend a (virtual) shoulder when campaigns tank — you're in the right place.
This week, we're going deep on one central force:
AI
. Not just as a tool, but as a seismic shift in how marketing is done. Here are three stories you cannot afford to miss:
📌
Gen AI and the Future of Marketing
From co-piloting creatives to customising campaigns at scale,
Gen AI
is no longer optional. We unpack where it's heading and how marketers can ride the wave — or risk being swept away.
📌
AI, the New Shoulder to Cry On. And It Doesn't Get Tired.
In a world where emotional resilience meets artificial empathy, AI is transforming brand support and creative feedback loops. Here's why that matters more than you think.
📌
AI Impact: What Happens to Advertising Now?
With machine learning rewriting briefs and disrupting media spends, we look at what's breaking, what's building, and why your next media plan might just start with a prompt.
Whether you're a CMO rethinking strategy or a
martech
enthusiast looking to stay ahead,
MarTech+
is here to decode the disruption.
Keep watching this space. The marketing revolution is just getting started — and it speaks in code.
Yours Truly,
Varun Markande,
MarTech
Correspondent.
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Time of India
5 hours ago
- Time of India
Tariffs have led to caution in the life sciences segment: Cognizant's Gummadi
Bengaluru: As clients look for cost optimisation, they aim to break silos and move towards consolidating their IT services partners. "They want a partner who can give end-to-end solutions," Surya Gummadi, President of the Americas business at Cognizant , said during the recent Bank of America Securities 2025 Global Technology Conference. With GenAI disrupting businesses, Gummadi felt pricing will evolve significantly in the next six months as clients move towards outcome-based said AI brought a great deal of uncertainty, adding to the macroeconomic pressures. That, he points out, is the difference between the previous cycles of the economic crisis. He, however, believes GenAI will create newer opportunities for Cognizant. Meanwhile, the tariff war triggered by US President Donald Trump impacted business sentiment in life sciences, product and manufacturing, as well as retail, he told Bank of America analysts. "There is some caution in the healthcare space. Tariffs have led to caution in the life sciences segment. Product and manufacturing clients are dealing with tariff uncertainty, and retail clients have also shown it in their guidance. All this is having a cascading effect on IT projects," Gummadi said. Despite the tough environment, Cognizant signed three mega deals by the end of the second quarter. Cognizant started to see an uptick in deal momentum, in general. Compared to 2023, when the firm signed 17 large deals, the New Jersey-headquartered IT services firm signed 29 large deals in 2024. In a choppy environment, CTS managed to get an extension of its contract with the healthcare client, which is a $1 billion deal. The full-year trailing 12-month booking for 2024 was $27.1 billion. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Eid wishes , messages , and quotes !
Time of India
11 hours ago
- Time of India
'It's no longer a cost thing': GCCs shift from support units to strategic value creators
Once viewed as peripheral back offices or outsourcing outposts, India's Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are undergoing an identity shift. Today, they are emerging as strategic nerve centres—driving product innovation, global go-to-market capabilities, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) breakthroughs across industries. Take the instance of Bosch Global Software Technologies, a global digital engineering company, where the journey of GCCs spans a 30-year transformation into a global AI-led business unit. Meanwhile, Rakuten, a global financial group based in Tokyo, suggests renaming GCCs as Global Value Centres (GVCs), a shift that indicates the growing strategic and innovation-led value these centres contribute beyond cost efficiency. In their increasing role as R&D powerhouses, GCCs are not just applying AI but leading innovations across healthcare, real estate, mobility, and hardware. At Bosch, GCCs are steering the company's generative (Gen) AI roadmap, with GenAI frameworks helping enhance code libraries. In a similar vein, at Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated (JLL), the global real estate conglomerate is focusing its internal hackathons on agentic AI. Meanwhile, Qualcomm, a global chip manufacturing giant, designs AI-enabled chipsets for next-gen vehicles, even as Philips Innovation Campus leverages AI to reduce MRI scan time by 50%. These signals of transformation were discussed at the final round of Bosch Conversations roundtable titled 'GCCs as Engines of Strategic Innovation: Creating Global Centers of Excellence'. Held on May 22 at the Hilton Embassy Bengaluru, industry leaders came together to chart the evolution of India's GCCs from cost centres to engines of strategic value. Live Events Against the backdrop of a sector poised to reach USD 105 billion and employ over 2.8 million people by 2030 , as projected by Union Labour Secretary Sumita Dawra earlier this year, the discussion delved into how GCCs are now pivotal to global product innovation, AI-led transformation, and go-to-market acceleration. The speakers included Ramaprasad Subramaniam, Vice President & GCC Lead, Qualcomm; Arvind Vaishnav, Head of Philips Innovation Campus, Philips; Pawan Sachdeva, Managing Director - Digital and Health Services Platform, Carelon Global Solutions; Manish Mittal, Director, GBS Corporate Shared Services, Novozymes (a Novonesis company); Pratik Nath, Managing Director, Epsilon India; Ashokkumar Jayakumar, CIO, JLL; Subbu Swaminathan, Senior Vice President – Product & Engineering, Rakuten; Soumitra Saha, MD and Country Head, Lumen India; and, Ramesh Ramaswamy, Head - Transformation, Bosch Software and Digital Solutions. Driving the AI-led shift One of the clearest illustrations of this multi-decade journey came from Ramesh Ramaswamy, Head of Transformation at Bosch Software and Digital Solutions. Reflecting on Bosch's early entry into the GCC space, he said, ' 'We began our GCC journey long before the term even existed—over 25-27 years back,' he recalled. 'For us, a GCC is not only about delivering for the headquarters, it is also about being close to the end markets enabling us to deliver high-value, relevant outcomes to the parent organization.' Ramaswamy traced the evolution of Bosch's GCC footprint across India, Vietnam, Mexico, and Poland—driven not just by access to talent, but by proximity to customer ecosystems. He emphasized how Bosch GCCs have matured from delivery units into true innovation hubs—creating new products and even monetizing them independently. Moving up the value chain: From innovation to execution This theme of end-to-end innovation was echoed by Arvind Vaishnav, Head of Philips Innovation Campus, who reinforced that India is no longer just executing ideas but generating them, particularly in healthtech. He pointed to Philips' SmartSpeed solution as a breakthrough in AI-led clinical outcomes. Speaking about the interventions that could make Indian healthcare robust, from predictive diagnostics to faster scans, the speaker highlighted the need for a broader mindset shift: 'Everyone is identifying these real-world pain points and striving to move up the value chain. True value is created only when you're solving meaningful problems—not just building for the sake of it.' He added that it's no longer enough to just deliver hardware or standalone products. 'The real differentiation comes from combining robust software with innovative thinking to create solutions that truly improve patient experience and clinical outcomes. That's how India can lead—not just in innovation, but in execution that has a global impact.' Solving real-world problems at scale Throughout the conversation, a common refrain was the deep customer orientation and problem-solving mindset. Philips stressed co-creation with clinicians; JLL builds tools that help brokers make decisions 'in front of the client'; Rakuten developed India-born products now used across Asia. For Ashokkumar Jayakumar, CIO at JLL, India's GCCs have become indispensable to the firm's digital-first real estate strategy. The Bengaluru centre, now 1,000-strong, leads key products such as Azara and enables real-time decision tools for brokers and clients. 'We want to give the best tech tools to [our brokers]—so building CRM systems or any apps that they can use to show in front of the clients... we enable tools so our clients can make informed decisions.' Jayakumar underscored how sustainability imperatives are shaping product development from India. 'Each and all your companies have sustainability goals, so we help our clients with that... we come up with tools and tech to see how we can reduce and help our clients get their goals.' He also pointed to India's growing influence in ideation: 'We run hackathons... (the) majority of the participation comes from our GCC... This year, actually, we are running a hackathon on agentic AI… exciting times.' Pawan Sachdeva, Managing Director - Digital and Health Services Platform, Carelon Global Solutions, highlighted how GCCs are evolving beyond cost arbitrage to become strategic platforms delivering tangible value in healthcare innovation. That said, Sachdeva cautioned against technology obsession over consumer experience. He shared a real-life example from within Carelon Global Solutions to demonstrate this. 'It wasn't some rocket science or major tech breakthrough. It was something very simple—my team began systematically reviewing user feedback on the app stores. If a single, small issue was responsible for multiple negative reviews, we fixed it. Then we proactively responded to the users to let them know their feedback had been addressed. This led to overwhelmingly positive responses,' Sachdeva illustrated. India as the nerve centre: From innovation hubs to global deployment Pratik Nath, Managing Director of Epsilon India, seconded Sachdeva's opinion, reinforcing the view that India's GCCs have evolved far beyond cost centres to become core engines of AI and martech innovation. Nearly half of Epsilon's engineering talent is based in India, Nath noted, leading global initiatives in predictive modelling, personalised marketing at scale, and campaign automation using generative AI. He urged a shift from legacy maturity models to outcome-led global leadership from day one. 'What's fascinating is the sheer scale and continuity of model evolution. Just in the time we've been speaking, over two billion model updates have happened globally. And many aren't shiny GenAI models—they're older, embedded systems like risk and recommendation engines, some dating back to the '90s. Innovation isn't about replacing them, but layering new capabilities like GenAI on top of what already works.' 'GCCs are often seen primarily as tech hubs, but they're just as capable of delivering high-quality customer experiences—even from thousands of miles away from the headquarters,' stressed Soumitra Saha, MD and Country Head, Lumen India. From being a traditional telco, Lumen is transitioning into a digital-first, AI-powered company—with India at the forefront of this shift, proactively piloting GenAI initiatives. 'A key success factor for GCCs over the next decade will be their ability to drive innovation in products, services, and experiences directly from India. But to do this effectively, they must combine deep domain expertise with strong business understanding.' From Rakuten's observability tech launched in India and scaled to Southeast Asia, to Qualcomm's India-led chipset design for global devices, to Philips' India-developed FDA filings—the narrative is clear: India is not just a talent pool, it's a launchpad. Subbu Swaminathan of Rakuten India offered a compelling reframe: from Global Capability Centres to Global Value Centres (GVCs). Over the past decade, Rakuten's Bengaluru-based hub has evolved from a conventional outsourcing unit to a launchpad for in-house product innovation. 'Started as… (an) outsourcing centre, but now, leading the innovation from India to Japan and other markets.' Swaminathan cited an in-house observability solution built in India and now scaled to multiple clients across Southeast Asia. 'We saw a need... So we entered and built our own observability solution and piloted at scale… launched the business from India.' For Rakuten, the GCC model is now about strategic alignment and business contribution. 'It's no longer a cost thing. It's about: how can you strategically look at the parent organization, and how can you increase the business contribution from India?' Closing the loop, Ramaprasad Subramaniam, Vice President & GCC Lead at Qualcomm, reflected on how India has moved from the periphery to the core of Qualcomm's global chip design strategy. Over two decades, the India GCC has grown from a cost arbitrage base to a full-stack innovation engine powering next-gen chipsets across smartphones, IoT, computing, and automotive use cases. He highlighted Qualcomm India's role in designing solutions for leading domestic brands such as Mahindra and Tata, and underlined that India now contributes to ARM-based laptop alternatives and future-forward chip architectures. As GCCs scale their ambitions, they are also expanding geographically to tap into India's broader talent base. Vaishnav noted that at Philips, there is a growing importance of building Tier-II/III ecosystems to avoid 'concentration risks' and tap into untapped talent. Similarly, Subramaniam affirmed Qualcomm's commitment to capability building across India, reinforcing the idea that GCCs are investing in geographic resilience. Responding to a discussion on how organisations perceive and position their GCCs, Manish Mittal, Director of GBS Corporate Shared Services at Novozymes (now part of Novonesis), explained that at this global bio-solutions leader, the India centre is not treated as a separate, siloed support unit, but as a fully embedded strategic extension of the global organisation. He emphasised that location is irrelevant when capabilities are core and integrated into enterprise decision-making. 'We are very integrated. We don't call ourselves a GCC… The core is strategic. It's not like 'this is India'—it's just, this is it. We are another function.' For more such critical insights on the future of GCCs and how GCCs are generating new revenue streams, not just supporting existing ones, watch the conversation here. 'It's no longer a cost thing': GCCs shift from support units to strategic value creators | Discussion Watch the full conversation here Bosch Conversations is a global, by-invite flagship series that brings together thought leaders. Hosted by Bosch Software and Digital Solutions , it focuses on digital disruptions and leadership in the context of market needs and industry challenges. Economic Times WhatsApp channel )
Time of India
13 hours ago
- Time of India
Tech firms embrace agentic AI, drives faster code transformation
Tech companies are evaluating the benefits of deploying AI agents to augment developer productivity while broadening their GenAI implementation. These intelligent systems are being utilised across diverse functions, spanning from programming to systems transfer. Anupam Mishra, director of Developer Programs, AWS India and South Asia, said that these agents are successfully executing moderate-complexity coding assignments. Their functionalities extend to test case creation, documentation generation, security flaw detection, and solution development. At the recent AWS Summit Bengaluru 2025, Mishra informed TOI that his AWS teams achieved four times faster migration from .NET (pronounced dot net ) to Linux while working with clients. The cloud services company's product demonstrated an 83% quicker conversion of older Java scripts to newer versions for their client Persistent Systems. "We have a case study where several teams converted their Java code from older versions to newer versions. Amazon developers saved 4,500 years of manual work and $260 million annually from performance improvements by using our Amazon Q Developer Agent for code transformation to migrate over 30,000 applications from Java 8 or 11 to Java 17," he said. Mishra said the average time to upgrade an application to Java 17 plummeted from typically 50 developer days to just a few hours. "In under six months, Amazon upgraded more than 50% of its production Java systems to modernised Java versions at a fraction of the usual time and effort. Amazon developers shipped 79% of the auto-generated code reviews without any additional changes. As we use AI extensively, mundane tasks like writing test scripts will be taken away from the coder," Mishra said. Arun Parameswaran, EVP & MD of sales at Salesforce South Asia, said that agents generate 30% of code, expected to reach 50% by year-end. Their AI product for creating autonomous AI agents achieved 93% accuracy for a European airline client. For Salesforce's helpline, agents handle 84% of queries, with escalations reduced by half. Their CodeGenie model has processed over 7 million code lines, addressed 500,000 developer queries, and saved 30,000 monthly hours, enhancing developer efficiency and reducing costs. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch vàng CFDs với mức chênh lệch giá thấp nhất IC Markets Đăng ký Undo Cognizant earlier reported that agents write 20% of code, with plans to increase this proportion whilst passing AI-derived cost benefits to customers. US-based Constellation Research's principal analyst Ray Wang indicates that with agentic AI , code can be written using 20% of developers, achieving 50% higher productivity, while testing requires 40% fewer personnel. "We are seeing fully automated software development life cycles. In a world of exponential efficiency, IT services startups are delivering $1 million revenue per employee today and expect $5 million in 3 years," Wang said. IBM, in its proxy filing, said it achieved over $3.5 billion in annual productivity run-rate savings since 2022. Speaking at the IBM Think 2025 event in the US last week, its CEO Arvind Krishna said that in the long run, 'productivity is everything' and there is an 'insane need to go fast'. That is where agents come into play. According to Krishna, IBM's AI products Spyre and Telum, when used to detect fraud in financial transactions, could save $190 billion. Nasscom's recent GenAI report highlighted India's tech industry leading in agentic AI readiness, from vertical solutions in legal or pharmacovigilance processes to multiple platform-based use cases. AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
