The last decade has laid a strong foundation for the Indian IT industry to scale its economic potential and capacity. India is not just the Silicon Valley of IT and IT-enabled services; it is also emerging as the start-up capital of the world and as a major manufacturing hub. It has become a vast market where technological innovations can be developed, tested, deployed, and consumed. These significant technological developments over the past decades have fuelled a new wave of digital solutions empowering businesses.
Sandeep Agarwal has overseen these digital transformation initiatives and the adoption of deep technologies in businesses. Considering these advancements, as the CTO and MD at Visionet India, the Indian subsidiary of Visionet Systems Inc., he emphasizes strategizing and aligning business goals with the organization’s technological roadmap.
A Journey Experiencing Transformative Technologies
Sandeep’s journey in the IT world began with a deep fascination for technology and its profound impact on the world. He was initiated into this industry with Tata Unisys. His actual comprehension and exposure to complex systems, design, telecom quality and standards, development processes, and multi-cultural and multi-lingual working styles occurred during his project in Lucent US when he worked with the Software Switch project for more than three years.
In 2000, he joined Mindtree, which was a turning point in his career. His role evolved from engineer to manager, handling Delivery, Accounts, and CoEs and completing High-Tech verticals comprising Networking, Telecom, Consumer Electronics, Industrial, Automotive, and Connected Devices.
After a successful and dynamic stint of 13 years, Sandeep joined another start-up, Happiest Minds, in 2012, where he and his team conceptualized and built the entire ER&D portfolio of services for industrial, automotive and semiconductor companies. They created the IoT ecosystem, working in close alliance with Microsoft and AWS.
In 2018, he took over as COO for Digital Business Solutions. He was responsible for BU’s profitability turnaround by bringing a technology edge to its core offerings across BFSI, Retail, and Manufacturing verticals.
It was an organic transition for him to step into the CTO and MD’s role at Visionet. The desire to lead and drive innovation on a larger scale inspired me the most. At Visionet, he and his team drive engineering focus in the IT landscape and support the growing needs of Data, Analytics, and AI in changing business scenarios and fast-changing technologies. The dynamic nature of this industry and its potential for astounding innovations continue to intrigue him.
With 30 years of working with disruptive technologies and witnessing the evolution of technology, Sandeep has had a transformational journey. This education has taught him the importance of vision, leadership, and continuous learning, which are pertinent in the IT services industry in adapting to changing market conditions and customer demands.
Dynamic Leadership: A Driving Force Behind Company’s Achievements
Sandeep’s leadership style revolves around servant leadership. He ensures that his team receives the necessary support, technology and ecosystem partnerships at the workplace to achieve the core goal of ensuring customer success. He believes in setting a clear vision and strategic goals that align with the company’s mission.
Sandeep admires inclusivity and collective decision-making, empowerment and development, and a unified team approach where hierarchy does not impede progress. As a CTO, he ensures that everyone’s voice is heard to foster a collaborative and creative environment where ideas can flow freely and decisions are made efficiently.
Sandeep shares, “Providing professional growth opportunities and allowing autonomy so that individuals can take ownership of their work and prioritize their learning and development.” A one-team approach helps him work cohesively and drive innovation without hierarchical bottlenecks.
He thrives on implementing emerging technologies and nurtures strategic partnerships to stay ahead of the curve, ensuring that he leverages cutting-edge solutions to solve complex business problems.
By staying proactive, adaptive and technologically abreast, he ensures that the company empowers its clients to succeed in advancing market landscapes and provides them with effective solutions. This leadership approach guarantees that Visionet is not only responsive to market dynamics but also proactive in exceeding customer outcomes, positioning them for continued success.
Philosophy that Propels Success
Sandeep has established Visionet as a leading vendor for large-scale ERP implementation, Data Modernization, Customer Re-imagination, Customer Service, and Optimizing Supply Chain Ecosystems. Subsequently, Visionet emerged as a formidable force in digital and disruptive technologies, dedicated to solving complex business problems through the strategic application of technology.
Sandeep’s guiding philosophy for Visionet centres on three core tenets – vision, innovation and an engineering mindset; and solving business problems by assembling the right teams to make a significant impact on the customer journey. This focus and customer-centricity have propelled the organization to its current success, even without major marketing expenditures. Ultimately, it resonates with the guiding philosophy of the organization and drives its continued growth.
Commitment of Customer-Centricity
Sandeep believes in a business-first approach rather than a technology-first mindset. By thoroughly understanding his clients’ pain points, customer journeys, supply chains, and operational processes, his company can effectively recommend the most suitable technology solutions to address their specific issues.
Sandeep’s commitment to customer-centricity, a business-first approach and an innovation mindset have helped him position Visionet as a leading transformation company in technological solutions and service providers. For instance, many enterprises prioritize artificial intelligence (AI) as their go-to solution and often endeavour to solve all problems through the AI lens. However, a straightforward customer journey workflow automation can effectively resolve the issue.
Thus, as a true partner to their clients, Sandeep emphasizes the importance of a business-first strategy, ensuring that their technology recommendations align with the clients’ specific needs and objectives.
Enhancing Operational Efficiency, Serving Customer Satisfaction
Sandeep believes, “Achieving customer satisfaction does not require compromising on operational efficiencies.” “It’s quite the opposite; when the organization enhances operational efficiencies—through improved productivity, rigorous team training and strategic technology choices—it inherently boosts customer satisfaction,” he added.
Proper planning and alignment of technological solutions with business objectives are crucial. It enhances operational efficiency and improves the organization’s capability to deliver tailored, high-quality solutions to its customers.
Sandeep motivates his teams to deliver higher-quality output through their work. Subsequently, it streamlined processes and faster response times, which are key to meeting and exceeding customer expectations. It is committed to continuous improvement, leveraging feedback loops and data-driven insights to refine its operations and better meet evolving customer needs.
Encourage, Empower and Enhance: Three ‘E’s of Team Building
The organization’s workforce is pivotal to its success, representing its most prized assets. Therefore, Sandeep emphasizes empowering its assets with continuous development opportunities, the right tools, defined career paths and an exceptional workplace environment. Visionet offers comprehensive training programs that cater to both technical skills and professional development.
The company encourages and supports employees in obtaining relevant certifications that enhance their expertise and career growth prospects. It facilitates mentorship programs where seasoned professionals provide guidance and support to junior employees. Sandeep believes in “Nurturing open communication channels to encourage collaborative problem-solving and idea-sharing.”
It fosters a culture of growth by emphasizing empowerment and skill enhancement, encouraging active participation in decision-making processes and setting clear growth targets for all levels of leadership within the company.
Resilience and Ingenuity over Adversity
Sandeep and his team have often encountered incidents in which resilience triumphed over adversity in the organization. The company worked on cutting-edge technologies, and many times, the problem statement is ambiguous since the customer is also adopting new technologies.
While working with a major healthcare client, he is not ready with the infrastructure necessary to support such cloud-native applications. It was in the customer’s scope to take care of infra as defined. However, when Visionet completed its first set of deliverables, it found that the customer’s infrastructure was not ready with the specified environments and lacked some knowledge on the same.
At that moment, Visionet’s team quickly came together to partner with the client, went beyond the stated contract terms, and worked as one joint team to support the client. On a war footing, they helped set the desired environments and infrastructure instead of calling it just a dependency and waiting for the same help from the client.
This helped in terms of not only overcoming the challenges but also leaving a lasting impact on the customer.
Contributing to Technovative Future
A major USP of Visionet lies in its innovation and engineering mindset. As it serves its customers, it reinvests a significant portion of its profitability into research and development. The company has conceptualized 18 platforms with an engineering mindset, where continuous investment and exploration take place.
Three of these platforms—DocVuAI, Atclose, and PartnerlinQ—have achieved notable success. These platforms have significantly reduced time to market, ensured quick delivery with high quality, and facilitated rapid implementation for clients. They enable individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset to thrive within their ecosystem without leaving the corporate world.
Visionet hosts VisionTechFest and partners with start-ups, academics, industry experts, and its teams to foster a culture of learning and knowledge sharing. Last year, as part of this initiative, Visionet developed a global go-to-market collaboration with four start-ups.
Visionet also focuses on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), sustainability, social tech, and more, further cementing its commitment to innovation and societal impact.
Historic Triumphs
In December 2023, Visionet was honoured with the IDC Enterprise of the Future Yearly Award. Despite being a services company, Sandeep’s efforts aided the organization in designing and implementing a hybrid cloud solution for its IT infrastructure, effectively demonstrating the viability of hybrid cloud management, utilizing cloud-based computing and on-premises storage in its Data Center.
He started a proprietary Cloud Studio platform, which played a pivotal role in optimizing the company’s IT operations. This achievement was an outcome of Visionet’s collaboration with Dell, and its success with this initiative was showcased at IDC, which led to the organization’s first IDC India Award.
In 2022, Visionet was a proud recipient of the Microsoft Dynamics Business Commerce Award among 46,000 annual applications. This recognition was for a significant B2B commerce deployment for a leading retailer in the United States. Moving forward, the organization remains committed to fostering internal innovation and achieving excellence through its client projects.
Words of an Expert
Sandeep’s advice to budding entrepreneurs is to identify the right white space areas while entering the tech space where they can develop products, platforms, or services that can be integrated into various businesses through technology. It’s crucial to infuse AI into these innovations, as AI-enhanced products and platforms are more likely to be embraced by business users. Beyond development, opportunities abound in AI security, governance, access controls, and AI operations as AI becomes integral to mainstream business.
There are also immense opportunities to create AI-based tools for specific use cases, such as resume search, content creation and market campaigns. These tools can serve as valuable add-ons for businesses, enhancing their operations and competitive edge. The message for aspiring tech entrepreneurs is clear: find your niche, leverage AI and contribute to India’s burgeoning tech ecosystem.
Vision of Innovation and Development
Sandeep’s vision for the future is multifaceted and geared towards sustained growth. Growth will happen in multiple ways. Organic growth will be driven by building strength in innovative technologies and new CoEs that could be quickly learned and adopted as new service offerings. Secondly, he will emphasize investing in ecosystems and partnerships with major Cloud, Data, and Security providers, as that increases their offering portfolio. He has increased Visionet’s partnership with the start-up ecosystem, where it will anchor start-ups and partners for global GTMs through its channels.
Thirdly, he is exploring inorganic growth through strategic, region-specific mergers and acquisitions (M&As) that will expand their global footprint, bring in new talent and skills, and enhance the diversity of his business from all perspectives.
He considers India a significant market for the IT industry and will use the help of his global teams, including their solutions, to fine-tune their offerings for the Indian market and business needs.
