Building a Digital-First Enterprise at TTK Prestige

In 2025 you completed nine years at TTK Prestige, how has been the journey working with various teams and the top management?

My nine-year journey at TTK Prestige has been both transformative and deeply fulfilling. I had the unique opportunity to architect the IT organisation from the ground up, laying a strong foundation for enterprise-wide technology enablement. This included establishing robust cyber resilience frameworks and initiating a forward-looking digital transformation agenda. We set “Digital First” actions well before the pandemic, which got accelerated to the need for digital agility.

Working closely with cross-functional teams and top management, we embraced innovation as a core driver of business value. From modernising legacy systems to implementing process re-engineering aligned with industry best practices, we ensured that technology became a strategic enabler across the organisation. One of the most impactful initiatives was the launch of our direct-to-consumer digital commerce platform, built on a headless commerce architecture and integrated with omni-channel capabilities—positioning us as a digital-first enterprise.

Between 2016 and 2024, our digital transformation efforts contributed to organisational growth and performance. This was not just a technology shift—it was a cultural transformation. Every business function evolved to embrace digital tools, data-driven decision-making, and customer-centric innovation. I consider it a rare privilege to have led such a comprehensive transformation journey, and I’m proud of the collaborative spirit and strategic alignment that made it possible.

In hindsight, how will you express the nine year roadmap, various pit stops and milestones achieved?

Reflecting on the nine-year journey at TTK Prestige, the roadmap has been marked by bold decisions, pioneering implementations, and a relentless focus on business value through technology. Each milestone has been a strategic pit stop that propelled us forward in our digital maturity.

One of the most defining achievements was our early adoption of SAP S/4HANA, we were the early adopters to implement and also led the way in integrating GST through SAP Hana in 2017, well ahead of the curve. This positioned us as a trailblazer in enterprise technology adoption.

We initiated our data analytics journey from the ground up, transforming analytics into the backbone of our decision-making. Today, insights drive every level of the organisation—from strategic planning to operational execution.

Cybersecurity was another foundational pillar. We built our practices from scratch, ensuring resilience and compliance in an increasingly complex threat landscape.

We also reimagined our Go-to-market strategies, especially enhancing the productivity of our field sales force through digital enablement—an initiative that delivered measurable impact.

On the automation front, we successfully deployed over 100+ process automation workflows across the enterprise, driving efficiency, consistency, and speed.

Information visibility has been democratized across the organization:

• Top management leverages Data analytics for strategic foresight.

• Middle management uses dynamic dashboards for KPI tracking and performance management.

• Operational teams are empowered with real-time insights from our ERP and integrated systems to drive daily execution.

Finally, we’ve maintained full compliance with regulatory frameworks and partner ecosystems, reinforcing trust and operational integrity.

Each of these milestones reflects a deliberate strategy to align IT with business outcomes, and I’m proud of the collaborative spirit that made this transformation possible.

 

What has been your cloud strategy?
Our cloud strategy has been anchored in a cloud-first philosophy, designed to deliver agility, scalability, and cost optimisation while aligning closely with evolving business needs. This approach has enabled us to rapidly support new business models, accelerate innovation, and ensure infrastructure readiness for future growth.

While cloud-first is our guiding principle, our infrastructure remains hybrid by design. This hybrid model is not just a technical choice—it’s a strategic imperative. It allows us to balance performance and cost efficiency while ensuring compliance with regulatory frameworks and data residency requirements.

We have adopted cloud services wherever they offer clear business value—be it in scalability, speed to market, or integration flexibility. At the same time, we maintain a minimal on-premise footprint for workloads that require tighter control due to compliance or operational sensitivity.

This dual approach has helped us:

• Optimise infrastructure costs and reduce capital expenditure.

• Enhance business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities.

• Enable seamless integration across platforms and ecosystems.

• Maintain compliance with industry and government regulations.

Our cloud strategy is continuously evolving, with a strong focus on governance, security, and performance monitoring, ensuring that every cloud investment is aligned with enterprise goals and delivers measurable outcomes.

What kind of support did you get from the top management and other stakeholders?

Stakeholder alignment has been central to our success. As a CITO, I’ve always prioritised stakeholder engagement—ensuring that our technology vision is deeply integrated with business objectives. I’m immensely grateful for the unwavering support and trust extended by our board, management team, CXOs, business leaders, my IT team, strategic partners, and compliance bodies.

Their collaboration has been instrumental in driving innovation, transformation, and regulatory alignment across our 70+ year-old organisation. Our management has consistently empowered us to take bold decisions, invest in future-ready technologies, and challenge the status quo. This level of Trust has enabled us to deliver outcomes that are not just IT-centric, but enterprise-wide in impact.

Equally, our cross-functional teams have embraced change with agility and ownership—making digital transformation a shared journey rather than a siloed initiative. This collective mindset has been the cornerstone of our evolution towards digital-first enterprise.

Going forward, where will the focus of investments be as far as IT and digital is concerned?

Our future investments in IT and digital will be focused on three strategic pillars: digitisation of the core, process optimisation and automation, and customer experience enhancement.

We strongly believe in the transformative power of digitisation and are committed to expanding it across the enterprise to drive operational excellence, agility, and resilience. This includes modernising legacy systems, embedding intelligence into business processes, and leveraging advanced technologies such as RPA, AI, ML, and advanced analytics to enable smarter, faster decision-making.

Equally important is our focus on delighting customers. We are focusing on personalisation, self-service capabilities, and seamless experiences across all channels and touchpoints. Our goal is to create a frictionless, intuitive, and responsive digital environment that strengthens customer engagement and loyalty.

Our focus is guided by a business-first mindset, ensuring that every digital initiative is aligned with strategic outcomes—whether it’s accelerating revenue growth, improving cost efficiency, enhancing customer satisfaction, or ensuring regulatory compliance.

In essence, our digital roadmap is designed to make technology a catalyst for enterprise-wide transformation and sustained competitive advantage.