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Accelerate Innovation : Growth Mindset Virtual Conference
Nov 9, 2023
A conference growth mindset, success, and motivation. Join live panels and ask your questions about digital transformation, emerging technologies, innovation, strategy, and leadership. Enjoy live music played during session breaks. Brew exotic tea, coffee, and learn how to mix drinks from an award-winning bartender. Conference Website: https://growthmindsetconference.com SPEAKERS Roopesh Das - https://www.linkedin.com/in/roopeshdas 🌎 C# Corner - Community of Software and Data Developers 🔗 https://www.c-sharpcorner.com​​​
View Video Transcript
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Guys and gals, have you ever wondered why some companies are more successful than others
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at digital transformation and moving into Industry 4.0? You will quickly conclude that it takes a village, but there is also a chief in the
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village with leadership skills. I personally had the pleasure of working with our next speaker on planning, launching and
0:27
operating a global digital accelerator. So I want you to meet someone that's not just talking about things
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but actually delivering on innovation at an extremely high velocity. Meet the man, the myth, the digital legend, Rupesh Das
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Ishar, well, that was something. I don't know whether I agree with all of that stuff
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but I'll take it. It's Friday. You got it. You got it
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We're happy to have you. It's all yours. Okay, cool. So, folks, nice to, well, meet you virtually
1:05
I think wherever you are, we are hoping you have a good day. And you are looking forward to the weekend as much as I'm looking forward to it
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So, especially for that reason, it must be a good day, not only because you are in this conference
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But let me get started and kind of share with you, keeping in mind this session or this focus being about growth mindset, what I and we are doing here at Villainas-Williamson
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Let me share my screen. I hope I don't get into some tech challenges with that, but let me get going on that
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Okay. Okay. So interesting, right? It means take a look at this tweet and many of you must have taken a look at that, right? Between Elon Musk and Jim Farley, right? The CEO of Ford. And so true, you know, to build prototypes, easy, right? Not simple, but easy
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but you know to get live to get into production to get it out for your customers and be cash flow
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positive uh hard right uh kind of and how do you as a startup right how do you survive so
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in the next 30 minutes or so i would say you know put yourself in the shoes of a startup that's what
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we did when we started our journey in this big enterprise uh but the digital accelerator team
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which Shell was one of the founding members helping us out over there
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And we put ourselves in the shoes as a startup that has to survive, you know, kind of
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So I'll share that story in the next 20 minutes or so with you
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that how we embarked on this journey and what we have done and where we are going kind of, you know
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So I'll share the story with you in three parts, right? One is the introduction, give you, we are not a household name
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Villanias Williamson. It's even tough to pronounce that name. I've got used to it now
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But so I'll give you an introduction of who we are and what was the background
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Then I'll get into some sharing some examples with you on digital goods, right
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Because we produce things, you know, we just don't talk, right? As I said, we produce things
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So we produce digital goods. And then, you know, a little bit, I'll give you a glance or share with you
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a secret sauce of it, you know, kind of, okay, how do you make this happen, right, kind of
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Something which, again, we believe in open innovation and sharing as much as possible
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We get a lot of that and we share a lot. So, you know, hey, if in some sense this is working for us
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why not share it with all of you? So that's what we'll do in the third part of the story
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okay so who are we right uh kind of we are uh one of the world's leading uh logistics uh providers
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for automotive uh and heavy equipments you know so any uh more most of the cars i would say or any
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car you have uh driven we may have had a hand and touched that right so we kind of take it from
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a plant where the car comes out to a destination, which could be a dealer or any other location
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right? And it could be either hundreds of miles within a country, thousands of miles within a
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country continent or across continents, right? It goes over land, it goes over the sea
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it goes over trucks, it goes over rails and so on and so forth, right? So we manage the whole
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Gambit and you name any car manufacturer out there and they are our customers. Right
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And we have done it for a long time. Right. The history of the company, it's 160 years old company
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And we know logistics. We know shipping. Right. Kind of. We touch around 7 million cars on land
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We also do value added processing for our customers. most of the name brands as I said again all of them we ship around four and a half million
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cars on an annual basis overseas on our own vessels these are deep sea vessels going from
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one continent to another and you know we we do it of course having a presence across 29 countries
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and more than 10,000 people, right? But one of the key things for us is, right
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that our founders, our shareholders, and there's a belief and the culture in the system
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there's a motto of being, you know, being sustainable while doing logistics
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And to that end, right, we put money where the mouth is and we walk the talk
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So we have been able to reduce 35% carbon emission, per metric ton over 2008 to 2019
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So while we do the logistics of all of this stuff, we have a very good handle around the sustainability aspects of that
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And recently, we kind of announced that by 2025, we will have a fully wind-powered vessel doing deep-sea operations
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So we have been a very innovative company in terms of our vessels, in terms of logistics, equipments, and so forth
6:43
And we see that the physical and the digital world are merging
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And it is not just about systems. It is no longer about IT systems or products or stuff
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It's actually about your business. You know, the digital business models with these physical services that we provide, once they come together, right, they are creating new kinds of businesses
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There are new markets. And it's not going to be about how big you are or what's your, you know, what's your history and so on
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You capitalize on that, but you have to be speed. You know, you have to be fast. And we see that all the time with new entrants coming in
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and they move at 100 miles an hour, kind of. So we realized that that's what we have to do
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if we have to be relevant and competitive both. And I think with this audience, a lot of you are in tech
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You probably work at many big enterprises, small enterprises, doesn't matter. You consult, you do whatever
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so as I said in this 20 minutes put yourself in the
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shoes of a startup and unplug yourself from system thinking to platform thinking and the thing is that we see that the companies which are coming in or the industry is disrupting at you know 10x 50x speed right We see our customers getting
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disrupted or things with, you know, the EV coming in, you know, electric vehicles, you know
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from ownership to usership business models with all the mobility products out there, whether it's
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Uber, Lyft, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of things happening
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in our customer's world and that translates back to us also. So again, one of the constant theme
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you will hear from me is that it's not about incremental changes
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You know, yes, I can deploy that another CRM system, make it better. I get 10%, 20% improvement
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That's great. You know, that's your normal, I would say, running the business kind of thing
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even though that may be transformative projects, But at least in this sense, we don't count that as transformation
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You know, things have to really be not only faster, but impactful, right
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Towards your valuation, towards the new products that you bring in, you know, and so on and so forth
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And cost, right? Not to forget about that, that we have to do this at speed
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We have to launch new products and we have to be 5x cheaper than the traditional products, you know, than the traditional digital systems and products
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So I think it's a mix of all of that stuff. So this is the last slide on the introduction because I want to get into the action also
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So in somewhere around 2019, we kind of realized that, you know, we have been very successful in doing a lot of IT transformation
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We have everything on the cloud. We made that journey. We switched our networks from WAN to internet-based networks
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We did a lot of transformation around. We moved a lot of things from in-house build or commercial of the shell software to SaaS models
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So on the IT side, we have been very successful in doing those major transformation
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And this was our next step on now taking it out on the business side, you know, marrying digital and business together
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And that's where I kind of transitioned out from my CIO role in Velenius Williamson or head of IT role and came out to form this digital accelerator
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And, you know, one of the key things for us in this, while there are many things, there are two things, right
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I call it the digital factory because it has to produce things
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It cannot just be thinking. It cannot just be ideating, right? It has to produce things
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So that's been very key for us. How do you take things from ideation to solution in a very fast manner, right
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And you cannot do that if you don't partner, right? So just imagine the amount of technology changes
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You know, in my time, there used to be products or softwares which would have a yearly release
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you know, or maybe like that, right? And that itself used to be an issue. And nowadays, right, things are changing like weekly, monthly basis, right, kind of
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The amount of technology, you know, not only buzzwords, these are things which are really in action
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AI, ML, you know, computer vision, et cetera, et cetera. So it's impossible to do everything on your own
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And that's where we kind of have created a global ecosystem of tech, including a lot of startups, accelerators, labs
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besides the traditional access we have had to talent. So I think those are the two cornerstone
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for a digital accelerator is having that factory concept that we are here to deliver and execute
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And you'll hear me saying that a lot because I think mixing ideation with execution is key
12:07
One cannot live with the other. And that's one of the things which we learned
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when we were polling many places that they were very good and coming up with ideas problem
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but how to execute it and execute in time and keep it cost effective
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and take it out and scale. I think that's a lot of the missing piece
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we were seeing in innovation around and we didn't want to fall into that trap
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So that's why, as I said, it's a very factory model, very stage gating things
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and not falling in love with our solutions or this software or this code or this tool
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It's all about the problem and time to market and falling in love with the problem
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falling in love with the outcome, being passionate about your solution, but not falling in love with your solution
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So there are lots of these things and I'll show some of the examples in the next segment
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so that we move away from some theory to some real action
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And that's where the part two of the story comes in. you know, digital goods, right
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And for us, well, consider this like a menu of categories, right
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Or menu of services under which a lot of digital goods can come. So you can see that I haven't put out the traditional stuff
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like, you know, your CRM, your operational systems, your et cetera, et cetera, because that's taken for granted
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I mean, that's there, you know, that has to be there. What we are talking now about is how to leverage technologies which are not just buzzwords, but are there
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And so the things which we are working a lot of, some of these are already in usage within Willenius Willimson
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And many of them are under incubation and different stages. So I'll share a few examples to kind of put some meat on the table that what does this really mean, right
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So in terms of mixed reality, we just had COVID kind of expedited things
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We were already looking at mixed reality, the HoloLens and some of the other stuff
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But there are two areas where we have now actually deployed this globally
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One is for remote assistance. So, you know, in one of the cases, right, we have a customer who's in Seattle, Washington
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could provide assistance to our facilities in polar Georgia. thousand of miles away, right? Within a one hour call, they could work on a very complex machinery
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come up with a solution, address it, which typically would have taken three to four days
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and did some travel involved, right? And all this was done within an hour. So that's the power of a
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technology like this, right? And it's not only that, right? When you're doing this, it's also
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digitized because all of that stuff is now recorded, right? And the metadata, et cetera
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So I'm not going to go into that part, but the point is that not only was this done
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you know, you have no data from that. Plus there were more people who could participate because
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you have like a Teams conference going on where the HoloLens is also joined and, you know, and
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stuff like that. So it's also creating new ways of working, which is sustainable post-COVID too
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So, you know, kind of another area similar is, you know, where we have hundreds of sites, right
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And we have to do audits. We have to do surveys. Ours is a very physical business
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And I love that, right? Because we touch the 7 million cars. You know, we don't put that in a container and the container goes and every container looks same
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We actually touch each and every unit, you know, and nothing goes in a container
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These goes directly. These are ships. So we see a cargo, right? So it's a very physical business
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and we need to do survey, we need to do audit. So we just completed in Australia
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we completed an ISO certification using HoloLens and assisted technology completely virtual
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And it was interesting that when that was happening, one of the auditors the HoloLens became quite hot because after a certain period of time it was kind of you know it was getting warm So we discontinued it and they waited for 30 minutes before it came
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They didn't want to go back to WhatsApp, FaceTime, anything. Once they saw the experience of this, that it's kind of like being there, right
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You're getting that feeling. So that's where, you know, you're taking a technology which is there, bringing it fast-paced manner
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You know, we worked with Microsoft on the devices and all. We worked with another startup in San Francisco who helped us put together all of this stuff
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And boom, right? We could now be, and now we could start scaling this kind of
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Similarly, right? We are looking at, you know, space utilization is quite critical
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This is one of our facilities in Georgia. And, you know, you see a lot of heavy equipments over there
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So we're using technologies like, of course, drone gives you automation. I kind of put it under the category of robotics that it automates stuff
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But the combination of the software, the AI-based software that we do, and then creating digital twin of that whole yard takes it to a complete different level
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So no longer do your users have to sit behind a row and column and look at that inventory and do all of this stuff
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They actually get to see the operations via a visual representation of the yard
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And they also have all that row and columns on the side. And they get a 3D model of their site where they can go in, zoom in, they can measure stuff
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All in all, why can we find 10% more space by optimizing this, which has immediate benefit on your profitability
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So again, how do you marry technology with a business outcome and take a 10x leap where you're not thinking of optimizing that software which we had and putting an enhancement over there, but rather completely changing the game and bringing this kind of data and visual and integrating it with your operational systems
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right? And I can go on, but this is one of the other slides which shows how we are actually using
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computer vision, which many of you are tech, so you would know that, but of course, it's a combination
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of camera and the AI technology. So we are deploying fixed cameras, say for example
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on the ramp of a vessel. So now we have real-time count and other data from what's being loaded and
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unloaded. And just again to give you an imagine the scale, some of our vessels, any of our vessels
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can carry anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 cars, right? And then when they come at a port, you have to
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load or discharge thousands of cars or equipment in a short time, right? So these kind of things
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helps us a lot because it gives us real-time visibility. The technology behind, right? There
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There is a camera. There is edge computing happening over there locally
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Some data is sent to the cloud. And the representation comes on the mobile app
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so that everybody has a real-time, you know, what do you say
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View. Again, these are various stages of incubation, as I said. Some are getting into pilot
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Some are getting into operations. So we can use and scale this technology across various places
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And similarly, you know, the mobile app, right? It's a great tool sitting in your pocket
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So we have converted that into, I like one of my team members said
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it's like a Swiss Army knife, right? So the mobile app is a Swiss Army knife
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that now you can use it for various purposes. So you're kind of using it to measure a complex cargo, right
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High the big cargos and create a digital twin of that in a couple of minutes by doing a walkthrough
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and then getting accurate measurements, et cetera, et cetera. and so on. Even for quality checks, we have a machine learning based app where you can get
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started on visual inspections by just uploading initially hundreds of images on past, failed
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something like that, get going. And over the period of time, the accuracy improves
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And before you know, you have digitized that whole process and the operator on the field
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this picture which I'm showing is from a facility in Canton, which we operate
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where we are actually doing checks for whether the right Mondrani labels is on the right car
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and whether the Mondrani labels are meeting some of the regulatory mandates that have come into play
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So initially you had to train people. They had to know now, just take a picture of that
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and let the trained AI model do that job for you. So again, last slide on this
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what is a red thread? You can see that data is a red thread. And it's all the data that we have
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from systems, but all these new kinds of data, right? It's pictures, it's video streams
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it's spatial data. So I think the power is in taking the right data because there's enough
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data. Many of it is useless. You know what we have in general when I say, but a lot of it
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If you start connecting between the traditional systems, the operational systems, which are giving you that data, these new kind of products which are giving you the data and the external data, and you can start creating magic
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So we are in early stage of kind of creating a full port intelligence product, which starts giving us real time congestions, predictions and congestions at the various ports, the ETAs and so on and so forth
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so again and all of the stuff which I showed and there are various other things
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we have been able to do this from late 2019 to now and including during COVID
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and the big reason we are able to do that is because of this playbook right and it's not like
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we put a playbook and then we started doing this we actually started doing stuff and over the period
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of time we created this playbook. And I would say this playbook is 60%. It can never be 100%
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It will keep on changing. So that's how you can move at a fast-paced manner. You can try out
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things. You can pause, stop if it doesn't work, but you can scale it to production
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And one of the things which I say is that you have to run multiple races at the same time
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When you are working in an enterprise, you have a business to run also
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You have a profitability to protect, which is your current business. Why do you, at the same time, you have to do these things
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So it's important to, of course, have the vision on where it's going. How will this relate into either becoming part of my existing product or maybe a new product offering
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So that's the marathon that you run. At the same time, you have to deliver in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days
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stress it out, get it out. If it doesn't work, take a pivot. Again, a full startup kind of thinking
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you are a startup within an organization. And there will be hurdles in between
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There will be, no doubt about it. But you have to run a marathon with the speed of 100 meters
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different stages of 100 meters. That's how you complete the marathon. So that's one part of the playbook
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And I've already mentioned this, that you have to put yourself not as an IT department or an HR department or this, right
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Where you have a job to do, you have a system to rule out. You have to measure yourself as a startup saying, I have to see what's the velocity for the next three months
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What value am I delivering to my customers? Where do I have traction
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Which customers work with me? Drop things which don't have a traction
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and cut your costs if something is bleeding you. So all that principle you have to apply which kind of throws a lot of that where the growth mindset comes in right That you have to be comfortable doing all of this stuff
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The other part is that, you know, in simple terms, right? How we have now come is like, it's a four-step process, right
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We are constantly hunting, scouting for technology, as well as, you know, for problems in our business
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And that's the pre-incubation stage. we make sure that we have a problem to work on
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It's not like a Willy Wonka land where you're just doing experiments and stuff like that
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So it's nothing like that. You have a problem or an opportunity
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with the business unit from day zero, there is somebody from business unit involved
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and you incubate the things, right? You do your POCs, you do your proof of technologies, et cetera
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And you try to do that in such a manner that you're not integrating with your current systems
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you're not integrating with your business process, etc. Get it fast. Make sure it's something which is viable
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Once you have that, we move to socialization, where we now pilot it on the ground
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We have some light integration, etc. And once a business viability, commercial viability
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customer viability, it could be any of those is established, then we move to operationalize
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And during this period, you can drop 30 to 40% of the things do get dropped, has to get dropped, because not everything can move from incubation to operationalization
25:57
That's it. The last to sum it up, I would say, at least what I've learned and my two cents, speed is of essence
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execute. I would say less talk, more action. Partnerships are key. For each one of you
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go beyond your teams. Talk to one new person every week out there. You will get to know something
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you know, and you will bring it back. And the most important part, the last part I would say
26:27
is happy people, I call it, right? Because it all looks rosy. It's great technology, you know
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fancy stuff. It's like an iceberg right behind the scene. It's a lot of sweat and a lot of
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disappointments and everything. So you need people who can manage the gray zones, can move ahead
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without really having prediction of everything, you know, and just see the world as glass half
26:50
full and can work with business, can work with external stakeholders, et cetera, right? That's
26:56
what you need. And the partners bring us the tech, you know. So I think happy people, I cannot stress
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that more that that's very important for all of this magic to happen. That's awesome. That's
27:08
awesome, Rupesh. So we have we have a question. So let's take a few. One of them is, congrats to
27:15
you. This is an awesome story. Can you share how you got started with your accelerator and the best
27:20
first steps? Well, I think as I said, right, we were already doing a lot of transformation on the
27:29
IT side. And that was, I would say, a startup because all the resistance we had, and I'll be
27:36
very open, right? I'm, I used to head of IT and all. We in IT kind of also become very defensive
27:42
and resistance towards many things. So, you know, moving to SaaS was a big step. But then once we
27:48
saw the benefits of that, right, coming out, I think it gave me a realization that, wow, you know
27:55
you can move fast, you can deploy things fast and you can, you know
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so that I think created a little credibility. I would say, you know, you have to have a leadership which has credibility
28:07
which has proven itself, you know, and that's your first step kind of
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The next is, you know, you start small, you know, you start small
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you be humble. Don't try to get into the trap of, I need a big team
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I need a big budget and all of that stuff. Start small, start delivering
28:26
I think all of that other things will follow through. Great. Okay, questions are pouring in
28:33
You can read them, Rupesh, instead of me reading them to you. Well, yeah, I think that's an interesting one
28:44
And I would say you yourself are your Robin first, right? Because as I again said, yes, I'm a leader, but I'm a startup, right
28:51
I don't have an army of people. So I have to be that Robin too
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And then of course, you know, I have one or two other Robins, right
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And all of this stuff. But your delivery should be a Robin. The outcome should be a Robin, you know, kind of and stuff like that
29:06
That's what I would say. How do you market your back and work to your customers
29:14
Or do you let the overall experience do most of the heavy lifting
29:19
Very, very interesting question. So one of the things is, right, we are a 10,000 people company, right
29:24
So I did get an advice. Can we put it out on the portal? Can we, you know, this thing
29:29
I think we took a different approach. We work with influencers within the organization, people who are forward-looking, who have influence, and let them then, you know, kind of put it out over there, right
29:41
So I think that's the strategy. At least for us, it has worked much better rather than doing a blast of information out there
29:48
Yeah, great. Okay. All right. Can you talk about the size of your team and the roles
30:00
That's a good question. We have, I would say it's a very, again, it's a very relative question
30:07
the team size is less than five kind of but we have been able to as I say run 25 to 30 pilots
30:17
in a year with around the hit rate of 40 to 60 percent moving towards socialization and
30:25
operationalization and the reason is because we have worked with around close to 30 different
30:32
partners right from very small startup to mid startup to tech companies right so what do you
30:37
call a team side? I don't know. For me, it's like all the 30 startups that I worked with, that's
30:43
my team. So I think that's where I think you need to get out of the mindset that you need
30:50
your own people reporting to you. Yeah. Great. Okay. They're piling in here. We're not going
30:56
to have time for all of them, but please go as fast as you can. Come on. Be speedy
31:01
What is the biggest challenge you faced in speed up innovation? I think the biggest challenge is the happy people part
31:09
I think that's the biggest challenge of finding those happy people because I had to source some of the people away
31:17
And in the first thing I said, you won't have a team. You won't have this team leads, this thing reporting to you
31:23
You're on your own, but you'll have this whole network over there, which you'll work with
31:27
I think that's not very easy for people to come in who have had teams
31:31
and who have had big, you know, titles and stuff like that. So I think that and scaling to production
31:38
I think is a big, big challenge. Okay, great. Well, this is a previous one
31:43
but I think we're just going to end it there, Rupesh. But here's what we'll do
31:48
We have more questions. So if it's okay, I'll just send them to you because you can digest them and say
31:53
okay, you know, these are good, right? This gives me... Absolutely, you know, that... Yeah
31:58
It's always better. I don't know from these questions. Yeah, that's what I mean
32:03
So thank you, Rupesh. I love your story, of course, and I'm a little partial
32:07
but I'm proud to having been a small part of your journey and setting up your digital accelerator
32:13
So I refer to your use case all the time because I love it
32:18
So Rupesh, you're an amazing leader. So thank you. Thank you, Shil
32:22
And thank you, folks, for bearing with me
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