Exclusive Interview: Dhana Kumarasamy, CEO, Fulcrum Digital

Tell us about Fulcrum Digital and your company’s India growth trajectory.

In an exclusive interview with DQ Channels, Dhana Kumarasamy, CEO of Fulcrum Digital, a business platform, and digital engineering company shared deep insights about the company.

Fulcrum Digital is a front-runner among business platforms, Digital Engineering, cloud solutions, and services providers. We provide a comprehensive, consulting, and platform-led suite of enterprise-grade software products, platform services, and solutions with expertise in digital transformation, machine learning, and practical innovation technologies relevant to the business. We collaborate with enterprises across banking and financial services, insurance, higher education, food services, retail, manufacturing, and e-commerce industries.

2021 was a successful year for us in terms of our India business. We have improved over the previous year by better comprehending the evolving needs of our clients and creating bespoke digital solutions, and managed solutions. We have elevated into a next-gen composite platform and digital engineering services company throughout the pandemic, and the platform-based products we provide to the market have benefited us. To offer special solutions to our partners, our engineers have leveraged cutting-edge technologies, including composable architecture, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, data science, and reliability engineering. They have developed innovative products that have helped in removing manual dependency. For instance, by automating procedures built on already-existing platforms using QR codes, and predictive modeling,   our solutions for clients in the food tech sector have contributed to a reduction in the number of manual touches.

How does FulcrumOne work, and how does it impact business growth?

FulcrumOne is a business platform with a composite design, low code accelerator that provides components to build digital platforms with minimal coding effort. It also helps reduce development time and costs with its unique plug-and-play pre-built mechanisms with performance-tuned and hardened for Security. One of the critical characteristics of this interoperable platform is our approach to services-first v/s applications, which is similar to a Lego game that can be rearranged flexibly to fulfill varied demands. The platform’s openness and composite nature make it suitable for external-facing capabilities that new digital business processes, moments, and models demand.

Low-code business platforms like FulcrumOne have showcased maturity, and SMEs and MSMEs have demonstrated a good adoption of these platforms.

What is your Pune delivery centre’s contribution to global innovation?

With access to 900 people who bring high-tech knowledge and abilities, our Pune Global Delivery Center (GDC) serves as Technology Center and provides services in building business platforms for our customers, full-stack digital engineering, cloud, integration, MS Power platform, consultancy, and managed engineering services. Our GDC serves as a central technology hub, offering the knowledge and capabilities required to support the growth strategy of our client while delivering top-notch service to clients globally. In order to assist clients in achieving their objectives, our Pune GDC plays a pivotal role in business operations and is an integral part of our customers’ growth and expansion strategy. As an added benefit, we develop bespoke solutions for our client's global initiatives and key customers using our flagship platform, "FulcrumOne." In building the business platforms to solve their operational efficiency or growth problems.

What are the benefits of low-code/No code business platforms?

‘Low code-No code platforms’ while they are new terms, are old concepts. The potential for reusable blocks and componentization has vastly matured with advanced toolsets and standards maturity. Software developers have begun to understand the concepts of reuse and their impact on all aspects of software engineering. However, the lack of access to the correct methods, standards, and tools has prevented software reuse. Thus aggregation and integration of applications became easy, and the power of plug-and-play came to the fore.

Today, the low-code platforms we see are the latest iteration of the evolution to democratize programming. It is similar to how the cloud has democratized computing power and has been made available to a more significant section of businesses, thus making it easier to consume and use. It has provided enterprises with the scalability and agility required to enhance business productivity.

The low code movement has been in the making for several years. In comparison, not the only reason for the rise in low-code platforms, the existential shortage in the developer community is adding momentum to adopting low-code strategies. If used correctly, low-code platforms improve productivity and free up developer and tester time.

What are the challenges faced by organizations when transitioning to the cloud?

One of the common problems most organizations face while migrating to the cloud is the mismatch between what they have on-premises and how they use the services they purchase. Many ended up having a hybrid environment during the transition. It requires talents, processes, tools, and governance to effectively manage hybrid situations.  Many underestimate the retraining needed for businesses to support resources. 

Businesses shouldn't assume public cloud providers are 100% compliant with their specific business needs and compliance requirements.  Organizations have to spend considerable time and resources to validate business compliance including data security, privacy, data protection, and IP.  In order to protect data from threats, businesses should also invest in a variety of solutions including comprehensive security, redundancy, reliability, and people training.

Share some insights on the tech talent pool in India and their demand in the global service market.

India is the second largest nation in the world, with 65% of its population under 35, and most of this young population is interested in deep technologies. Now, with the entire tech universe moving towards Web 3 and Metaverse, we see great potential for Indian tech talents, to play a major role in their respective sectors. Over the years, Indian talents learned the importance of business knowledge, industry/vertical experience, and market trend.  It distinguishes India’s tech talent pool as very advanced and at par with the global market standards.

India has a robust educational infrastructure that includes engineering colleges, polytechnics, and design and architectural schools along with reskilling and further education environments. With the best technology facilities accessible and students undergoing rigorous training, India is creating the most refined tech specialties, which is why most global MNCs look at India as a Technology, Innovation, Product Development, and Business operation Hub for their businesses.