Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to the Victory show welcome to the Victory show where seven figure founders, entrepreneurs and executives reveal the playbook behind scaling past that first million in recurring revenue and going way beyond. We go beyond the highlight reel into the hard lessons costing mistakes, key key growth inflection points and the human decisions that shape the numbers. And here's the twist. Every conversation we have becomes a chapter in our Victory book series so that the next generation of builders doesn't have to start from scratch. Today I'm sitting down with Vikas Sharma, a new generation executive helping global companies unlock serious value at the intersection of strategy and execution. V is the global COO of Applied advisory business at Genpact, where he partners with CxOs across banking, capital markets and consumer goods to turn companies, business challenges and complex business challenges into measurable impact.
He's known not only for his sharp strategic thinking, but also for breaking traditional barriers, rising fast through the ranks to earn his seat at the C suite table. As a young achiever on one of the world's most competitive corporate arenas and outside of the boardroom, V is the father of two and a committed sports enthusiast, bringing the same energy of focus and discipline to his personal life that it brings to leading transformation at scale. V.
Thank you for being here. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day for us to have a conversation.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Thank you, Travis. I sincerely appreciate your invitation to appear on your podcast. It's a privilege to share my career path and lesson I have learned in hopes of motivating others.
I hope to contribute to the discussion
[00:01:54] Speaker B: so did you always know that you were going to go into leadership?
Was entrepreneurship part of your blood when you were growing up?
[00:02:06] Speaker A: I think no. The answer is no. When I started my journey, I don't think we were in the era of a lot of technology enablement. So if I'm a Gen Z today, like, you know, I have so much access to the technology to figure out what do I really want to do. Versus those days coming from India, there were only limited career choices. You can either be an engineer, you can either be a doctor, or could be a lawyer. So the choices were limited.
But early on I'm computer engineer. In terms of my education qualification, I was very good at maths. Thus naturally I was very good at coding. But something very early on I realized that hey, it's not my cup of tea to sit on a chair and code like you know, 20 hours a day. So hey, so no. The the answer is short answer is no.
Having reflected on where I am now, I definitely know like, you know, looking back at my career journey, what do I do, what really keeps me going? And most importantly, you know, where does the passion lie? So that's important.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: So that's interesting that you didn't, you know, kind of found you, but you also were sort of on the fast track. I mean, you're CEO of a global company now and that that happened, it looks like, at a pretty young age. So what was your, what was the path that kind of, you know, I guess skyrocketed? You going from just entering the workforce into getting where you are today?
[00:03:40] Speaker A: I mean, I really wish I become the CEO of the whole company. So I'm the CEO of the applied advisory business for sure. But I think it's entrepreneurship at the end of the day, Travis, which keeps me going. So any role which requires you to build, and the keyword is build, right? Because when you are into the build mode, you are touched by all dimensions of a business, which means innovation, which is key to really differentiate yourself out in the market growth, which is important to keep going and scaling up your business.
And in the process, you have to leverage an ecosystem, because I strongly believe you cannot scale up your businesses if you do not leverage the ecosystem. And the ecosystem could be internal or it could be external. For example, in our case, my internal ecosystem is to work with the various other functions. So think of a professional services business either doing strategy or slash advisory work for their clients, or doing technology work for their clients, or doing business services is what we call digital operations for their clients. So you have to collaborate with multiple teams to be able to come up with the right solution for your clients. And the external ecosystem being you have to work with the various partners, like Microsoft is one of the partners we have. I mean, the list goes on and on.
So I think that's what keeps me going. Being entrepreneurial in mindset. And the good part is, doesn't matter how much you predict, you will always be challenged with things which were not factored in. And how do you overcome those challenges is something which keeps me going and reflecting on my career. I think these are the things which helped me grow.
And I won't use the word fast track. And being humble about it, I'm touching early 40s, so not young anymore.
Having said that, all the past roles I've done were very different from the previous role I had done. So that really I, I believe is something which helped build my brand equity in the organization, that, hey, throw something at the cost and he'll be able to catch.
And what really Helped me stuck to some of or all of those roles were. There was always an entrepreneurial aspect attached to that role. Even if there wasn't, I think you can always find one. I can't think of any role which doesn't have.
I mean, what is entrepreneurship? Right? It's ownership at the end of the day.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. That's a good track.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: What.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: So I'm. What I'm really fascinated with is you're going to be one of the, the first operators on, on the. That we've chatted to. We've talked to a lot of founders and we've chatted to a lot of CTOs. But let's talk a little bit about operations. And specifically, again, I'm not an operator, you know, so I'm not going to say I have a strength with that. But my assumption is one of the things that that makes a functional company run is. Is good systems in place that are easily, easily, easily replicatable.
So can you talk a little bit about the challenges that you've had in the operations space in especially this last four or five years? Just adjusting with all of the crazy changes that have happened. Obviously, you know, Covid shut things down. We've now had the, you know, so we've went from in person to virtual and then. Right. It was. We're getting used to that. It's like, hey, here's AI.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: So I think it's been a journey. If you really look at my last seven or eight years, I've had like constant. I had to make constant shifts and pivots which were very different from the previous ones around the COVID times just to give it a frame.
I used to be the chief of staff to now our current chief growth officer who was at that point in time head of transformation services for genpact.
And we as a business were heavily reliant on providing a kind of services.
And come Covid very quickly you had to realize that the business priorities of your client changed like in a whim.
They're not in the offices anymore.
They also did not know how to tackle. And I'm talking about, you know, you can really parse Covid journey into three phases. Right. So when Covid hit, nobody knew what to do about it.
When you were getting into the COVID and it was going into the waves and then getting out of the COVID So getting into the COVID I learned a invaluable lesson from my boss, who's my skip level boss now, how do you quickly make pivots? So we very Quickly changed our strategy.
She's somebody who can drive changes with extreme agility.
Very quickly she figured out how to use the ecosystem from a pivot of particular kind of services to something which our clients wanted to do. And that was the age we figured speed over perfection.
And that's where like, you know, that's a mantra I still think now a lot of company embraces because hey, there was a time where people will really go after perfection versus now.
There's a good, you know, there's a good affinity for. You need to be 90% right and be in the market versus getting it 100% right. And you work on the technology mode, which is high. You launch your first version, which you know is in technology terms is never going to be perfect and you get the feedback loop from your clients and you continue to release version after version versus until you know that you know you have hit the right product.
So that was the time we quickly pivoted and we came up with point solutions, mini solutions and loads of them to keep our business growth going.
In the process, we realized that clients are going through major transformation.
The entire business model is changing.
People are introducing drive throughs, people are thinking about hybrid workforce.
The same CEO who always maintain that everyone has to be in office could think that everyone could be virtual. And like, you know, at that point in time everyone was saying that hey, I can run my business virtual versus now. You will see a lot of corporates who are focused on still bringing their workforce back to the business. So now people realize that it has to be a hybrid model where certain roles could be virtual versus certain should not be coming into the stepping into the COVID You had to think two steps ahead, that it's not going to last, which is great news at that point in time and now as well.
And then getting worried about, hey, you will have to make another pivot.
And that's the pivot which got all of us into a deep technology era where a technology change which in the past would take three or four years, those interventions are now happening within months.
So I think that was something which was a huge embrace for us. And if you really look at our pivot, we are now advanced technology solutions company who solve our client problem statements using advanced technology, not just technology. And those pivots are changing very fast from Genai to agentic to so on and so forth.
And getting out of COVID was to maintain the same rigor, the same pace.
Managing three conflicts in your calendar at the time because hey, you cannot really now manage calendar. These Days. Right. So you just have to pick and prioritize.
So I think Covid was one of the biggest pivots and I should not be making the statement that that's one of the best things which have happened to human race. By no means losing life can be appreciated, but it definitely taught us on how to be more agile, how to be, you know, pivoting to things and think not two steps, but 10 steps ahead.
So that's how I would lay out my Covid experience.
Wow. And post that. And I'm sorry, I kind of lost the plot of the.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: No, yeah, it was just more of like how to, you know, from an operation standpoint. How have you got like, you know, in the last five years there's been, you know, change in the business front that I don't think we've seen in like, you know, a good 20 years in terms of the, you know, normally there's kind of a steady progress, but we had like pivot one day and then we're all just sort of getting used to the new hybrid world and then AI shows up that completely re structures how kind of we look at what can be accomplished with business. And so where I'm going from that is that that's pretty two huge, big changes into short amount of period. You've got a lot of employees, you're with a big company. Just curious. So we've already addressed the, the, you know, the COVID What happened to Covid? But now how are you guys, how are you looking at AI and you know what, what are your fears with AI and what are you guys excited about with AI and how is that impacting how you're doing your day to day.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: So let me answer this in two parts. This is the first part of coming back and thank you for bringing, bringing me back on the track of how did I, you know, how did I. Or we manage our operations well. And then the second part being what is our thoughts around AI and the technology.
So I am a huge sports enthusiast. I mean, there is a little known sports called cricket.
I actively play cricket. Like, you know, I just wouldn't watch. And it had huge impact on me on who I am in terms of how do I approach my personal and professional life. So that really helped me keep things simple even during the uncertain times, which is in sports, the best teams don't obsess over the scoreboard during the game, they obsess over the next play. Coaches always say control the controllables. You can't control the referee's call, the weather or how well the other team plays. But you can control your footwork, your communication, your conditioning, your execution of the play. You have practiced 100 times. So I strongly believe in keeping things simple. Focus on the process and not the outcome. One step at a time is how, you know, probably the west coast offenses is something Travis, you can relate to.
Short, inefficient passes versus thinking too much about like, you know, the scoreboard that really helped. That was the key. If I hope I'm able to articulate on how did we manage our operations?
No. While we had like, you know, huge strategic pivots, but all of those pivots were broken into achievable smaller changes which we could make. And we have a huge influence. Genpart has a huge legacy of geography. We are an offshoot of ge. We started as their captive and then we started to go independent and work with like several hundred other clients.
But the legacy of Lean Six Sigma focusing on the process has always stayed with us. And that kind of that analogy, you know, is very, very similar to the sports analogy, which I had my influence from the early, early childhood days kind of aligned very well.
So I think that's where my personal philosophy of how do I run my business or how do I run my professional life versus how the organization expects us to align and progress has huge synergies. So that is something which helped keep U.S. operations going.
Nothing fundamental change. So I don't think we ripped apart everything we had overnight. No.
We made smaller shifts to the processes. We had to make sure those processes do not break and continue to work efficiently. So I mean, that's one advice. If things do not work well, try to make smaller shifts and adjustments to your existing processes first before making that big bang.
In terms of AI, I think that is also something I can say that one can assume it's going to make a huge shift. The answer is yes.
But you have to figure out a understand the technology well, B, understand your business well, which in our case has two dimensions. We are applying lot of AI and agentic to our own operations. So our CEO who has assumed this role in last two to three years, had a huge initiating statement that we have to demonstrate what we bring to our clients into our business first. So we have something called Client zero, which is where we deploy these technologies, these solutions first into our existing operations so that we can demonstrate the same to our clients. And it brings a very different mindset in terms of technology focus.
We believe it's out there for every company, for every client.
However, our strong Belief is technology alone is not going to help your business transform.
You have to fix your processes first.
Whether it's core of your business or if you're a consumer goods company and supply chain is the core of what you do and finance is the non core of what you do. Figure out your process first. Before deploying any technology.
Start with use cases and especially in the case of, you know you can really think of technology as like you know, two tone technology Travis one which is trusted so there is package technology which will come into your business. So if you're a smaller business it could be a Microsoft Dynamics.
If you are a big business it could be S4 for example SAP. In this case those technologies are trusted and proven so it's easier to drive change in your organization for the acceptance of those technologies. By no means they're easy to implement. That's a different story altogether.
However, there is always going to be a second tone of technology which will be new where people will be unaware of what they A what the technology is all about B how can it help my business see what kind of outcome you know it can drive for me and see am I ready to as a leader drive that change? Because change will require driving adoption and at the end of the day it's about ROI in the business, right? So wherever you spend dollars it has to bring in the roi. So in case of second I think it's, it's important to identify the business problem statements which could be solved using this new age technology, figure out the right use cases, drive that pilot and then think about. So I, I think in case of agentic which is the latest technology everyone is talking about, Genai is now like you know something we hey was a topic of traction last year versus not now.
I think what we are experiencing and seeing from our clients is they're a lot more open earlier a CTO would be a lot more interested in understanding hey what is agentic, how can I deploy versus now? You speak to a chief chain supply chain officer and his conversation would not be what agentic solutions do you have? For me his conversation would be how can I make my supply chain operations as agentic solution. So these are like very very different conversations.
In the first you talk about this is the solutions, these are the solutions we have versus in the second you are actually hitting the drawing board co innovating with your clients on how we can reimagine their operations using Magentech. So I think that's where we are.
Where would it go is anyone's guess. Travis Being very, very honest, we believe agent tech is going to stay, but like I said, how the technology is transforming itself in the shorter Agile versions,
[00:20:43] Speaker B: it's crazy to me. Yeah, yeah, it's like, you know, two months from now it's like we're already like what, what we're talking about now is already kind of outdated with as fast as things are growing, which is, which is interesting to me.
What for you? Like, well, how do you deal with employees in terms of one communicating your vision for what the company's doing, but then also helping to sort of alleviate and help any sort of confusion they may be feeling with just how fast things feel like they're coming now because of agentic AI,
[00:21:21] Speaker A: I think it's very easy and very difficult at the same time. It's very easy because if you have, if you look at the bottom of the pyramid and you have a lot of these young employees who are very used to, of making these pivots going from Android to Apple and to the different versions and how do they easily adapt to.
I mean I use an iPhone, but I being very candid, I still don't know how to use all the features of the iPhone versus you go to Gen Z who's part of my analyst, I will bump up over a drink and you will know 10 features which you never knew about your phone. So I think I use them as change agents. They are the best ones to adopt the technology.
Show us the use cases and it becomes very easy for the second layer of the pyramid which is neutral to technology. They just need to see how the technology is going to impact their work. And then there is a layer which will always be very difficult to adapt to, has always done things in a certain way and you can only hope through that hard change you drive with respect to communications, with respect to the weekly sessions we have for our partners and the overall advisory population on how to think technology in your solution is also now embracing the fact that hey, there is no way you can solve your clients problem statements without thinking technology first.
So it's really about using the right Persona of the employees you have to inspire the other Persona of the employees you have. And the same statement applies to your clients as well.
There are some who are going to embrace technology and there are some who are going to be resistant to technology.
But if you can think business first, outcome first, versus saying that hey, I'm going to come and deploy this technology for you versus saying that, hey, I'm going to come and change these business metrics for you and the way you operate and go about those metrics and then bring in that hey, technology is my enabler is a very, very different conversation
[00:23:41] Speaker B: that, that, that's fantastic. What with where you're at right now, what are. Because you guys are running, you know, you're a big company. What have been the challenges you've had from a leadership standpoint of having teams across multiple countries?
[00:23:57] Speaker A: So we operate across 12 to 13 industries and we operate across functions which is supply chain finance, risk sales and marketing and so on and so forth.
So that's one dimension. The second dimension I just spoke about, the third dimension is we have capability teams who bring it all together to solve our client problem statements. And the fourth dimension is really the regional aspect of it. So I would say as a heritage and the legacy of 20 plus years solving clients problem statement, regional issues, region is not an issue which we generally face.
So we are extremely good and efficient at using global teams to come together as village and solve our client problem statement. So I would say that, hey, that's not really the challenge I had faced or I faced today, having said that, making sure everyone works with the same outcome. And we are a highly matrix organization as well. So thus it's very, very important for what we do for our clients, which is bring in the toolbox of the things GenPart has to offer and solve their client problem statements as an advisor is something we apply Agent Pat as well.
So coming back to your question, I don't think being in multiple countries being global is really a challenge for us.
Got it.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: So where do you like sort of visioning where you're at with your company?
Where do you think things will be from a business standpoint by the time we hit 2030?
[00:25:39] Speaker A: 5 year visions are thing of the past in my personal opinion. So
[00:25:47] Speaker B: things are too moving too fast for us to be able to plot out that far.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. So if you really think about my career, it's a two part career. I have now completed 11 year and six months. I just got an AI reminder today. So we have something called Amber, which is AI chatbot which interacts with the employee at critical junctures of their journey. And this chatbot reminded me that hey, you've completed 11 years, six months, what's your experience like? So that reminded me the tenure and prior to that I'd spent 10 years into the financial services industry with names like having done my analyst program with UBS or having worked with Citigroup Global Markets or some of the most reputable names.
I think the first 10 years were more about, it was a very, very different culture. Right. So you work in a framework which is very, very structured and you know what to do.
You join Citigroup, you open your computer and the first thing you see is Outlook is set up, all the tools are set up and you already have a list of tasks which you're supposed to go and perform. Versus Genpact is a lot more startup culture. We are 103,000 40,000 employees today but deep down we do have the startup culture which is like you know, pick up a problem statement, work after it, think about how do you solve for that problem statement, take it to the market and the, the lead time and the whole cycle time is, is very, very agile.
So I think From a first 10 year perspective when I was a sell side analyst and I used to cover European banks for Citigroup.
So it's, it's kind of ingrained in my, my you know, career upbringing on how to analyze and you know, analyze companies.
I, I'm very for of the very firm opinion that five years is a too long time period for you to draw your strategy because most of your strategies are now driven by technology and like we discussed we don't know what's coming next or how soon it's going to hit us.
So three year plan maybe for GenPad to answer your question, we will continue to accelerate our journey of being seen as an advanced technology solutions company who solve for our client problem statements using latest technology interventions or business share and the revenue profile will continue to drastically shift towards the data tech, AI and the advanced technology solutions we sell for our clients. So today that mix is, is, is a fair half and half ish.
I would expect that business mix to change.
Our revenue mix will also change. So a lot of our revenue mix today is traditional which is hey, if you implemented technology you're being paid for on time and effort basis or a fixed price model versus now we are shifting to and we have always been a company who will focus more on outcomes. So I think on a revenue model shift as well we will see a lot of outcome oriented commercial models and that would mean a revenue per headcount I see going up.
So all good things in store.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: So for what genpact does, who's like sort of an exact fit client who, who's like what's the industries or size of businesses you guys get sort of a you know, slam dunk results for.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: So I think that's one of the things which helped me, I mean when I completed my 10 years, Travis I reflected on, hey, shoot, I've like finished 10 years at this company, right? And if you look at the first part of my career, global brands, I could not stay for more than two, two and a half years because hey, whatever there was to learn, I could learn that, execute that in two, two and a half years. And the, the question was always about what's the next challenge. So genpact helped you always throw that next challenge.
You could be doing the HR role for tomorrow if you want. And from there you can make a shift to technology role. Obviously you have to prove that you're capable of doing that basis your past experiences.
So that's something which kept me going from the perspective of.
And if I take a moment to think about, I think, I think it's, it's, it's really how we are embracing innovation and at the speed on which we are embracing innovation.
And in the process it just does not limit itself to the product and the solutions. We take it for the clients, but maniacal focus on our employees who can bring up that skill allows us to play across the dimension of the client. So we do work with Fortune 100 clients, but we also work with companies which are billion to $5 billion in revenue.
And the fit and the Personas of those companies are very, very different. So we have a sales channel which focuses just on clients who are a particular market capitalization range, very different from a global company which has global footprint.
And well, the solutions are essentially the same.
But how those solutions are adopted by those companies are very, very different.
The kind of, the speed and the execution is very, very different. And you think about some of the global companies and acquisitions they make, you will be surprised in the past two to three years, the trend we see that those companies choose not to integrate those smaller execution, smaller acquisitions in their overall corporate business because they think that they lose their speed and agility, the innovation they bring along the way. So a lot of clients I know who have made those acquisitions and let them, those companies run independently because they want to grow that brand or segment of their business.
So short answer. We work with the spectrum of clients. We've made our bets on the industries and the sectors we are going to play in. Within that we have a very clear segmentation of these are the enterprise clients and these are the kind of clients who are coming up and we want to be with these clients. And some of these clients are thought to be the next big clients over a period of time. Because some of these 1 billion, 5 billion dollar companies which eventually will have 50 billion, 100 billion dollar market caps. So we play across the spectrum.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: So if somebody's reading this chapter, seeing this episode and they want to, they're interested, how do they get hold of genpact, see if it's a good fit?
[00:33:04] Speaker A: I.
Okay, two part answer again, I think how do they come across genpact?
I think we are a very fairly popular name.
Our business model heavily relies on the great work we do for our existing clients. So I think that's, I mean you don't expect a Fortune 100 company to give a business to nobody, right? So there is always a diligence which applies prior to the deal. And a lot of these companies are working with advisors who advise them on their strategic execution. So a lot of these advisors are genpact partners or are already aware of genpact.
So we are a fairly respected name in the market. So I don't think the challenge lies in hey, how do you come across genpact?
How do they see genpact as a fit?
We strongly believe we have a maniacal customer centric city culture.
This is something which is in rooted engine part.
We don't just treat our clients with contracts. So I mean, you know, there's something I can flex.
We'll be more than happy to, you know, maintain and focusing on expanding in, you know, nurturing that relationship versus, you know, throwing contract at you and then say, hey.
So I think it's a, it's a maniacal focus.
The process and the domain expertise combined with technology is what we bring to the table is quite unique and our respect and love for the client, so you can have respect for client, but we also bring like, you know, that love to the, to the table which is like, you know, let's make this relationship work come what may.
Other three things I think a client would think about, hey, whether it's in fact is a good fit or not.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Love it.
V, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate you taking your time out to have this conversation with us.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: I really, really appreciate the opportunity. Again, Travis, thank you so much and wish you very best for your next bestseller.
