IBM India today announced that it has appointed Nipun Mehrotra as its Chief Digital Officer for the country. IBM appointed its first-ever CDO — Bob Lord (former AOL President) in April 2016, who is now tasked with bringing together IBM’s Digital Business Group (DBG). Following the lead, Mehrotra with his team will now build proofs of concept around the digital-verse.
IBM is all set to tap the digital space in the country which is currently blooming, thanks to the massive support from the Government and rise in the rate of tech-adoption. Prior to being elected as CDO, Mehrotra served as a VP for growth initiatives IBM across several areas in Asia and India. In the company best known for its software, servers and enterprise solutions, he heads a startup engagement programme which seeks to deepen IBM’s relationship with the nation’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Speaking about his new responsibilities with ET, Mehrotra said,
This role is interesting because it’s a combination what IBM is good at deep tech and where do we want to move towards, which is the ecosystem and platform developers.The role has an interest in everything that IBM does research, cognitive, cloud, work that we do with ISVs (independent software vendors) and startups.
The company’s recent moves such as the collaboration with Red Hat and plans of commercializing quantum computing all suggest company’s increasing interest in fields of cloud, cognitive and artificial intelligence. In line with these strategies, Mehrotra believes that India is fast moving towards automated AI-powered solutions.
He is of the opinion that the Indian developer backed by big Indian SIs (system integrators) is at a point of inflection. Their business models are changing, and as the market transforms towards AI, this is the opportunity worth seizing. As per the company executives, 10% of the global (AI) applications will be developed by Indians, which is a huge number.
For India, Nipun will accelerate and scale all aspects of company’s digital presence, operations, and ecosystem. He will now focus on IBM’s cognitive computing platform Watson, which is a revenue generating platform and is well-received among the masses. It is one of the resources of its Digital business groups, which aims to attract startups, investors, academia, developers, and incubators towards the company’s digital tools and platforms.
