With growing client base and advanced capabilities, Bahwan CyberTek Group has expanded its operations to newer geographies in the Americas and Far East. Excerpts from an interview with S Durgaprasad, Co-Founder, Director and Group CEO

How was the last year for Bahwan CyberTek from a business perspective?

FY 2018-19 has been one of the most important periods in the company’s history. Marking the 20th year of operations, the year saw a number of strategic initiatives executed to scale BCT’s value, and strengthen its footprint and spread in the market.

Sensing the predominant trend impacting global business, with the vision to create clear value leadership in key verticals leveraging digital technologies, BCT consolidated its deep domain expertise with IP, and created subsidiaries – dt360 and BCT Digital.

This is the result of a well-thought out strategy of creating a global digital technology organisation based out of Santa Clara, heart of the Silicon Valley, to deliver transformational value to its clients, whilst maintaining the capability to scale fast with state-of-the-art and emerging technologies such as digital experience, predictive analytics, IOT, AI & ML and mobility platforms. This year saw BCT Group launching new products, making acquisitions and strategic investments, acquiring marquee clients, strengthening partnerships and winning coveted awards.

As testimony to its journey over the years, Stanford Graduate School of Business has written two case studies on the evolution of the Bahwan CyberTek Group. The case studies written in 2017 and 2018 are unique in that Bahwan CyberTek is the only company from the region to be featured by Stanford University. Going further BCT’s case study has been included in the curriculum for Management Studies in Stanford in Palo Alto USA and also listed in HBS. With growing client-base and with advanced capabilities, BCT identified newer growth engines expanding its operations to newer geographies in the Americas and Far East.

Have there been any significant products or services that you have launched in the recent past?

We have launched several game-changing solutions in the recent past, that are aimed at solving complex problems for process-intense, data-heavy verticals, in turn aiding in the digital transformation of processes and technology of organisations. Some of the products we launched in the recent past are:

Dropthought, a real-time digital experience platform integrated with machine learning for deep text analytics, which would help record and analyse what stakeholders are saying about the company, market, products and services to name a few.

FuelTrans, an integrated logistics and transportation solution for oil marketing companies, which offers a 360° view of the entire oil distribution logistics operations.

Fuel Station Automation, an end-to-end solution for retail automation of the downstream oil and gas industry offering real-time visibility and control of the entire retail operations, with the solution covering every major component of the fuel station from the pump, to the dispenser and tank, and also covers vehicle identification, wet stock management and fleet contracts.

CueTrans, an integrated digital supply chain management suite of products with HSE driven journey management and track and trace capabilities that enable end-to-end planning, optimisation and tracking of logistics operations and supply chain.

Freight Exchange (FX), an easy-to-access digital freight market place, built on a pioneering concept, to bridge the gap between shippers and truckers.

rt360, a risk management product suite to manage the entire risk portfolio of banks and financial institutions that includes credit risk, capital allocation, pricing risk, liquidity risk, model risk and operational risk.

Cuecent RETINA, an OEM agnostic real-time asset monitoring and predictive analytics platform built to monitor and efficiently manage energy and utilities business operations.

Bahwan CyberTek has had strong partnerships to enhance customer offerings. Can you give us a brief on some of them?

Bahwan CyberTek has made several partnerships over the span of its 20 year journey, all with specific strategic purpose and intent. In recent years, BCT has partnered with industry leaders like TIBCO, Boxlight, Zycus, Allsec and SigFox, and made strategic investments in technology start-ups, each contributing and complementing specific avenues of BCT’s offerings.

BCT-TIBCO: Our strategic partnership with TIBCO software, the global leader in integration and analytics software, has grown from strength to strength and has now moved for an expansion of the partnership into Asia.

Strategic investments: Being a staunch believer in connected innovation, and realising the need to scale fast as a company, we invested in adjacent technology companies, who hold authority and thought leadership in AI and ML, offering asset visibility and prescriptive analytics, such as, Tekion and Cloudleaf.

Tekion: Our investments in the technology partner company Tekion has resulted in the development of a state-of-art solution for the automobile industry vertical which is set to become a disruptive technology player in this segment.

Cloudleaf: Cloudleaf is an end-to-end technology solution using sensors, cloud and machine learning for continuous visibility into all assets and workflows.

BCT-Zycus: We tied up with the global leaders in procurement, Zycus, to offer state-of-the-art supply chain and procurement solutions.

BCT-Boxlight: With a firm commitment to bring quality education to the ME region, we entered into an exclusive partnership with Boxlight Corporation, a leading provider of technology products, to bring its award-winning classroom solutions to the Middle East, with exclusive rights for Oman.

BCT-Allsec: We signed a partnership with Allsec Technologies Limited, to leverage Allsec’s “low-touch” HRO solutions, and expand its product portfolio in the West Asian and African Markets.

BCT-SigFox: We also signed a partnership with SigFox, the world’s leading Internet of things connectivity services-company. Through this partnership, BCT will launch IoT-based asset tracking solutions in Oman, and aims to integrate SigFox approved devices coupled with SigFox connectivity, on to BCT’s Telematics Solution Platform to track and trace assets in real-time.

How are the recent trends like Cloud, AI and mobility services changing the digital and IT landscape?

Digital transformation is the mainstay of the digital and IT landscape as of now. And technologies such as cloud, AI and mobility are at the heart of this transformative journey for almost every organisation out there.

Digital transformation, in its purest sense, would be about enabling an organisation, through the integration of such technologies, to garner speed and stability in every aspect of operations. Technologies such as AI and ML aid in the automation and accuracy of an organisation’s core and sometimes extraneous operations. Understanding patterns from data and business processes enable an optimized way of enhancing operations as well as reducing TAT. With more bots trying to replace manual activities, digital technologies are at the forefront of this transformation.

What are your plans in the coming months?

We are market leaders in credit risk management and following the launch of Early Warning Systems, we have brought in four more products that are critical from a global regulators perspective. The regulatory landscape on risk management all over the globe is changing dynamically – and BCT Digital has specific focus to be market leaders in overall risk management with their flagship product suite rt360.

Investments in newer digital technologies that will create significant impact to our customers across various verticals.

Strengthen our digital transformation IP portfolio spanning digital supply chain, digital experience and predictive analytics in order to offer unique value to our customers in a variety of areas.

Expand our domain knowledge and understanding to put us in a position to deliver well-tailored digital transformation for our customers in various industry verticals.

In line with our approach ‘connected innovation’, we will continue to expand our partner network in order to offer valuable thought leadership to our customers.

Expand to newer geographies through a partner-led strategy to scale our business.