Interaction - Piyush Jain, Global Delivery Head, QuEST Global

Piyush Jain, Global Delivery Head, Software & Digital Services, QuEST Global talks to us about his Indian company of engineering solutions and services which has expanding worldwide.

How are the companies utilising local-global business model to use the talent pool in India?

Piyush Jain - Organisations worldwide look towards India when it comes to large scale readily available talent pool. Companies in India have been perfecting the global delivery model for decades to provide affordable talent to companies that are looking to benefit from the cost advantage of offshore talent. However, in recent times, there is increased focus by all companies to engage more localize talent alongside global talent due to either geo-political compulsions or to gain competitive market advantage. This is where QuEST, which has been pioneering the local-global model for a number of years brings in the differentiation. QuEST’s strategy has been to setup a delivery model that engages teams with people from  the local region for better engagement and connect with the customers and at the same time provides the scale and cost advantage through the a global workforce provides best of both worlds to them.

Our local-global model includes local resources with customer product and process knowledge combined with a scalable and experienced global team that has industry and process experience.

 What are the challenges involved in making in India for a global market?

Piyush Jain - The IT industry accounted for 8% of India’s GDP in 2020. The software exports increased in FY21 with respect to FY20, this growth was driven by rapid digitisation and the IT industry's timely transition to remote working environments that helped to keep up the industry’s growth amid coronavirus pandemics. However, there is also a gap between new business models, technologies & the existing readiness of engineering talent – the world requires skills in exponential technologies at a faster pace, and what we need are better education and training support for engineers to be job ready for these requirements.

The positive aspect is that the Indian government is continuously working to overcome these challenges -

• MyGov, the citizen engagement platform of the Government of India, in partnership with the Department of Higher Education has launched an innovation challenge to create an Indian language learning app.
• Also, to establish an enabling environment for the IT industry, the Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) launched three innovative technologies – Automatic Parallelizing Compiler (CAPC), Cyber Security Operation Centre (CSoC) as a Service, and C-DAC’s indigenous High-performance Computing software solutions—Parallel Development Environment (ParaDE).
• The Indian government signed a MoU with Japan to enhance cooperation in areas of 5G technologies, telecom security and submarine optical fiber cable system.
• The Indian government also released “Simplified Other Service Provider” (OSP) guidelines to improve the ease of doing business in the IT Industry, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT-enabled Services.
• NASSCOM, the non-government association of the tech industry in India, has started an initiative called FutureSkills, where the existing tech talent of the country can keep re-skilling as per the requirements of the industry to stay relevant and abreast with the current trends in emerging technologies.

With these considerable efforts and more towards overcoming the challenges, I am positive about the Make in India initiative for the global market.

How do you resolve these challenges?

Piyush Jain - At QuEST, we have taken a definitive path to solve client challenges by engaging with clients, understanding their problems and working out solutions that suit their needs. We have been providing world class engineering services and solutions for more than two decades and have expertise in supporting OEMs not only in the Hi-Tech world, but across all our industries. Our services play a dominant role in providing solutions for the Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Energy, Hi-Tech, Medical Devices, Rail, and Semiconductor industries. Additionally, we have invested in developing markets leading pervasive digital technology capabilities coupled with engineering, process and product expertise in the industrial and high-tech domains. This gives us a unique perspective to provide insights, outcomes, and digital solutions that matter. Our engineers develop digital solutions that include cloud, edge, AI, IoT and enterprise software for internal and external applications, for connected factories, and have blueprint solutions born in the high-tech space that we are bringing to the industrial market.

We have also acquired technology companies in the digital, software and the embedded space to solve our customer problems of accelerating new product development and integrating digital technologies to improve productivity, experiences and generate new revenue streams. The recent acquisitions in the Hi-Tech domain is helping us accelerate development of new digital capabilities for our customers. And this growth has also enabled us generate employment in the relevant verticals.

We plan to continue building digital solutions across the product value chain for our customers. Our acquired companies in the electronics, software and digital space have a large presence and are well aligned to our strategy to build the latest technology and digital solutions to help our customers lead the market.

what's the potential for engineering workforce in India to leverage deep tech for solving global challenges faced by the Hi-Tech industry?

Piyush Jain - India has always been at the forefront of engineering talent and its adaptability to new technology changes rapidly. We have always been quick to ride the technology wave and get our workforce aligned to emerging trends and needs. Problems being faced by the Hi-Tech industry are complex and it would require multi-dimensional skills to solve them. Evolution in IT is imperative, the new way is to utilize the existing IT for advancement in any industry as applicable, in short, cross-pollinate technologies. For instance, the algorithm that used in medical diagnostics to detect cancer nodules is also applied in aerospace assembly shop to detect any defects in the aircraft post assembly.

When applications from one vertical are utilized to solve the problem of another vertical it creates an opportunity for the engineers to make use of their potential. Today, as businesses realize the remarkable potential of solving problems with cross industry knowledge, it has opened wider doors for the engineering workforce not only in India, but across the globe. Hence, the need of the hour for the engineering workforce is to be adept at the versatility of skills, rapid learning, and flexibility of operations to solve problems and truly benefit the customers.