Hyderabad: Sindhu Gangadharan, the Managing Director of SAP Labs India, is a prominent figure in the German enterprise software company, overseeing operations in one of the fastest-growing economies, India. In addition to this, she leads SAP’s Customer Innovation Services at a global level.
Present in India for the last 26 years, SAP India operates the company’s largest R&D hub at its headquarters, employing 40% of its global R&D workforce across five locations — Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, and Gurgaon. The company has more than 15,600 employees in India.
Gangadharan expects India to remain a key growth center for SAP and shared the company’s insights in an interview with Deccan Chronicle.
Q. Why is SAP bullish about India?
“Firstly, India’s growth as a digital nation has been remarkable over the last decade, making it highly attractive for a multinational company like SAP. Secondly, India has phenomenal talent that we can tap into, especially as it plays a significant role in our IP creation, particularly in business AI. It has been a phenomenal journey for us in India, and it continues to be so,” Gangadharan stated.
Q. How do you think artificial intelligence would impact a product company like yours?
The world’s large customers across industries rely on SAP to help them run, which makes it a very interesting proposition for us to leverage the power of AI to also transform these business processes. So as a product company like us, it’s really about leveraging AI to make sure we transform these companies — whether small or large — run at their best. This is why a big part of our investment was made in business AI. And a big part of it is happening here in India.
Q. But when one thinks about SAP, there’s a perception that it is meant only for the large companies.
If you just look at the nature of our business, we are helping the world’s largest businesses run at their best. About 99 of the top 100 companies in the world run on SAP and 97 of the top greenest companies in the world run on SAP. 80 per cent of our half a million customers worldwide are SME customers. We have the power to transform those business processes using AI.
Q. You said that a lot of SMBs are using SAP. So how did SAP help small businesses to transform their businesses?
The fact that 80 per cent of our half a million customers fall into the SME category is a true testament to the fact that the customers understand what SAP stands for. But we want half a million companies to grow even further. There’s huge value for the small and mid sized businesses to automate and accelerate their business with AI because we really help in making sure that whatever we are building in our core is relevant for their business. It’s reliable and also what we call responsible AI.
Q. What kind of trend are you seeing or demand coming from the customers?
Pretty much in every conversation that I’m having with customers there is one common thread — they want to innovate and completely transform their business models. They want to know how they are able to get their services to their customers in different ways and also want to know how they could leverage or automate their business. They also want to move to the cloud because it allows them to scale and expand to new geographies. AI in general looks at new ways in which they work with their customers.
Q. You have plans to expand your facility in Bengaluru. So any such plans for Hyderabad centre?
Hyderabad is a very important growth location for us. We will soon establish SAP Labs as an entity in Hyderabad. Now we are operating at an SEZ and we would soon be moving into an STPI for better flexibility. So we’re definitely going to increase our investment in Hyderabad, which is an absolutely pivotal market for labs. It’s a very prominent hub for us from an innovation and a talent point of view, especially the deep skilling talent pool that we can tap into. So we are looking at 2025 to shift to an STPI.
Q. The Telangana government is planning to set up a Skilling University in Hyderabad. Are you willing to be a part of it?
We have strong collaboration with the Edu Net Foundation to promote upskilling in Telangana. In fact, in March, we announced the expansion into Telangana through our CSR programme Code Unnati. We are upskilling several thousands of students and also faculty members, because we think the talent that comes out of the universities are trained by the faculty. The idea is to make sure that engineering students in the underprivileged areas are upskilled and face the selection based on merit. So, I always support strong collaboration between the government, and corporations like us, academia and society.
