When Amur S. “Lakshmi” Lakshminarayanan took the helm of Tata Communications in October 2019, he inherited an organization with deep telecommunications roots, however unsure prospects in an more and more digital world. Conventional telecom suppliers had been being relegated to “utility pipes,” merely carrying visitors with out including strategic worth, whereas enterprises demanded clever, agile and safe digital infrastructure that might energy their world ambitions.
5 years later, Lakshminarayanan has orchestrated a outstanding transformation. Beneath his management, the India-based firm—which maintains vital U.S. operations in Santa Clara, California; Reston, Virginia; and Matawan, New Jersey—has advanced from a legacy telecom supplier into a world communications expertise powerhouse. Via strategic acquisitions like The Change and Kaleyra, plus over $1 billion in functionality investments, Tata Communications now generates practically 50 p.c of its income from digital companies.
From powering Components 1’s ultra-low latency media workflows to enabling AI-ready infrastructure, the corporate has positioned itself as a strategic companion for U.S. enterprises working in an “always-on” digital world. Within the following interview, Lakshminarayanan shares his technique.
How did you lead Tata Communications’ evolution from a telecom supplier to a world communications expertise participant?
After I joined Tata Communications in October 2019, I stepped into an organization with a robust telco legacy, but additionally one standing at a crucial inflection level. The world round us was evolving quick. All people was having telco’s lunch.
Telcos had been nonetheless working like utility pipes—carrying visitors, with out shaping or elevating the worth of what flowed by way of. Enterprises, nonetheless, not needed simply connectivity; they demanded clever, agile, safe digital infrastructure.
On the time, we had been additionally under-leveraging our potential. Our capital depth was excessive, margins and return on capital employed had been low, and we had little proprietary IP to drive differentiation. So, our first precedence was clear: turn out to be financially match.
This meant bettering operational self-discipline, optimizing prices and restoring profitability. On the identical time, we would have liked to alter how we noticed ourselves—not simply as a community supplier, however as a strategic companion enabling the digital ambitions of world enterprises.
Our transformation journey started in earnest once I joined, and we articulated this imaginative and prescient by way of our Reimagine technique, that formally launched in 2020, proper on the onset of the pandemic. It marked a pivot from legacy pondering to forward-looking execution.
We launched dynamic pricing fashions and shifted emphasis from deal measurement to money movement high quality. Our focus was to streamline the group, take away silos, and embed pace into our tradition. We met our mid-term monetary objectives forward of time, strengthened our steadiness sheet and improved ROCE considerably—the primary markers of our shift away from being a standard telco.
However transformation is not only about numbers. It’s about relevance. As enterprises accelerated their digital journeys, they wanted a brand new type of companion, one that might ship built-in, safe, cloud-first options.
We advanced our providing into what we name the Digital Cloth, which is a expertise spine that helps enterprises uncomplicate, innovate and strengthen their digital foundations throughout networking, cloud, cybersecurity, IoT and buyer interactions.
We invested considerably in constructing core infrastructure and creating proprietary IP on high of it with companies wrapped round it. That allowed us to go together with differentiated, programmable and clever choices to our prospects. Immediately, practically 50 p.c of our enterprise comes from our digital companies portfolio, starting from CPaaS to managed safety and cloud options.
And, whereas it could not at all times make the headlines, our transformation has not solely been in regards to the shift from merchandise to platforms, or solely about functionality constructing—it’s additionally been about elementary shift in our tradition. We’ve needed to shed a long time of linear pondering and embrace a mindset of steady reinvention. From engineers to gross sales groups, the group has grown extra agile, collaborative and deeply attuned to our prospects’ challenges.
That’s the half I’m most pleased with—not simply what we’ve constructed, however how we’ve constructed it, with goal, resilience and a deep perception that relevance is earned every single day.
Our journey is way from over. However we at the moment are enjoying a really totally different position in our prospects’ lives—not as a connectivity supplier, however as a companion of their development, resilience and innovation. That shift is our actual success story.
How does your world presence form the strategic worth you ship to U.S. enterprises?
U.S. enterprises in the present day are world by design and their development more and more relies on a digital infrastructure that’s quick, safe and clever and a dependable world companion to ship this for them. That’s the place our world presence turns into a strategic benefit. Our Digital Cloth, spanning cloud, community, cybersecurity, IoT and buyer interplay platforms, permits enterprises to function seamlessly and well throughout borders.
Over the previous 5 years, we’ve invested over a billion {dollars} in the direction of functionality constructing. We’ve additionally made strategic acquisitions like The Change, a frontrunner in reside content material manufacturing. Our lately launched facility, The Change@Victory in Los Angeles, strengthens our potential to serve top-tier sports activities and media manufacturers with end-to-end, always-on media options.
Tata Communications media and leisure companies powers among the most advanced, demanding and time-sensitive operations, like Components 1, the place we ship ultra-low latency media workflows and distant manufacturing innovation. It showcases our real-world functionality to deal with advanced, high-stakes deliverables by way of improvements centered on subsequent era distant manufacturing and low latency video administration.
Via Kaleyra, one other American acquisition, we now supply enterprises clever buyer interplay instruments that allow hyper-personalized, contextual engagement at scale. These platforms are serving to U.S. companies improve effectivity, deepen buyer relationships and unlock new development frontiers.
Our infrastructure spans 190-plus nations, and supplies a safe, performant community with direct connection to 35 p.c Web routes as buyer routes. This unmatched world footprint provides U.S. enterprises native agility with worldwide attain. Most lately, our TGN-IA2 cable system—linking Asia, the U.S., India and EMEA—has been designed to assist the following wave of data-intensive use instances, from AI workloads to inter-data heart connectivity.
How do you see AI shaping the way forward for enterprise, each for Tata Communications and people of your prospects?
AI is producing each pleasure and uncertainty, however for many enterprises, it’s nonetheless early days. Many are experimenting, working pilots and figuring out the place the actual return on funding lies. I firmly imagine that the following 5 years will form how companies function for the following 50.
What’s clear is that AI has the potential to be a robust power multiplier. Already, we’re seeing AI-driven analytics predict community failures earlier than they occur, optimize hybrid cloud workloads, and allow real-time choices that drive higher enterprise outcomes. However this comes with a caveat: AI will place unprecedented stress on digital infrastructure. Many companies are unprepared for the size and efficiency AI calls for, significantly round inferencing and skyrocketing egress prices.
We’ve been evolving our Digital Cloth to be AI-ready. For instance, Kaleyra AI, our flagship communications suite, lets enterprises personalize at scale, construct no-code assistants and simplify information interplay, delivered over our AI Cloud with superior price-performance economics.
We’re additionally embedding AI into our personal operations, from clever service supply to quicker inside decision-making. Our AI Centre of Excellence and AI Academy are cultivating the capabilities to drive not solely value financial savings, however innovation, buyer retention and long-term worth.
Wanting forward, AI gained’t be an add-on; it is going to be embedded in how companies suppose, resolve and develop. The true alternative lies in serving to enterprises harness its energy responsibly, securely and in ways in which create significant, measurable impression.
The tech sector is more and more recognizing its excessive carbon footprint and taking significant steps to cut back it. How is Tata Communications embedding sustainability into its core operations and improvements to steadiness folks, planet and revenue?
Sustainability is not a peripheral concern; it’s elementary to long-term worth creation and enterprise resilience. At Tata Communications, we view our position not solely as a expertise companion but additionally as a steward of inclusive and sustainable progress. Via our Reimagine Technique, we’ve embedded sustainability on the coronary heart of our enterprise mannequin, aligning folks, planet and revenue in a single cohesive strategy.
A key milestone on this journey was securing a $250 million sustainability-linked mortgage in June 2024, with rates of interest tied on to our emissions discount objectives. It’s a robust sign: Our monetary efficiency is now intrinsically related to our environmental impression.
However the ambition extends past our personal footprint. We’re enabling prospects to speed up their local weather objectives too. From sensible vitality meters and virtualized reside manufacturing to low-carbon cloud companies, our options assist scale back emissions whereas enhancing operational effectivity. In 2024 alone, for each ton of CO₂ we emitted, our prospects prevented 16 tons—showcasing the exponential worth of expertise completed proper.
Our Components E partnership is a real-world instance of impression at scale: a 42 p.c reduce in airfreight for TV manufacturing, 49 fewer flights per race, and a 50 p.c discount in onsite personnel—resulting in a considerably smaller carbon footprint per occasion.
Internally, our 3C technique—Local weather Motion, Buyer GHG Financial savings and Round Economies—guides every part from vitality sourcing and waste discount to group improvement and inclusion. We’ve set daring targets: 20 p.c water use discount by FY30, aiming to turn out to be water-neutral, and net-zero emissions by 2035 and we’re pleased with the progress made thus far.
Finally, sustainability is not only good governance—it’s good enterprise. It builds belief, drives innovation and ensures expertise uplifts not solely enterprises and shareholders, however the world they serve.
