Tata Digital will sail but the TCS iceberg…
Tata Digital, Tata Group’s newest venture has been facing through a problem of series of exits. Over the last 20 months, at least 10 of their top executives have left the company.
And, what could be the reason for it? Well, the team wants to operate as a start-up but is operating like its IT behemoth and brother TCS. At least, some employees there still do call it a startup.
The reason for this clash is the fact that many of its top executives are from TCS. While on the other hand, many of its top executives, that were hired by Mukesh Bansal, come from start-up background.
One of example of cultural clash is that when there’s a need for SaaS, a startup would acquire a business while an IT services company would build it. The other clash they faced was, when hiring a team, they would hire 5 people for one job. That’s not the case with startups though.
When Tata Neu was launched, it faced multiple glitches, and to fix this mess, they hired TCS. Now, it was pointed out by internal employees that many of TCS’ employees were not familiar with new age tech. The service oriented mindset started to flood into this new age tech venture.
Then, it was earlier planned to be just a platform offering loyalty points, offers, payment services to group’s brands. But this, was later shifted to a full scale, E-commerce platform, that surely created a trouble at first.
Although, post its early glitches, Tata Neu made a comeback in Diwali 2022 for sale and went well. Although, when it came to dealing with ecommerce business, you would gather product, business and tech teams together, this wasn;t te case here as stated by one of their employees. This created confusion.
Although, at this point, the company is not planning to hire externally, since there is a long term vision in play and they are confident, it will work out. They are synergising their offline and online consumer facing brands. Croma, BigBasket, and many other have already been integrated into it.
The parent, Tata Group is also looking for streamlining, as its looks at fundraising and stake sale options. The company is also planning to cut costs down on customer acquisition by trimming such costs in BigBasket and 1mg.
They are also building lending, insurance which are high margins business. They are also entering into OTA (Online Travel Agency) market, since they have Air India, Hotels.
Tata Digital is also exploring a partnership with Uber to anchor ride services in order to boost traffic. It might also get a USD 1Billion boost from its parent. Tata Sons recently sold a part of their stake in TCS and it wouldn’t be a surprise if part of it is invested in Tata Digital.
Well, only time will tell as to how big Tata Digital will be in the coming months. Its closely being watched since its the newest venture in one of India’s oldest business empire.