Guruduth Banavar
Director,
IBM’s India Research Lab (IRL)
 ‘Our innovation focus is on real world issues’
Guruduth Banavar has recently taken over as the director of IBM’s India Research Lab (IRL). An IBM Research veteran, he has played many roles over the years, including that of technology researcher, senior line manager, worldwide research strategist, and patent portfolio manager. In this exclusive interview with Faiz Askari, Bureau Head, Network Computing, Banavar shares his vision and strategy for taking IRL to the next level of innovation. Excerpts:
IRL has just completed 10 years in India, with several milestones under the belt. What would be your strategy to drive innovation at IRL to the next level?
As an organization we have a very clear strategy toward innovation and research. The most important thing for me and IRL is to continue the focus on core real-world demands and how innovation and technology can help in enhancing the [user] experience.
Mobile research is being discussed a lot, especially after IRL announced India as the global hub. What will be your initiatives in that direction?
Mobile is undoubtedly a huge potential area and India is the best possible location for any research in this direction. There are several reasons to justify this statement but, above all, there’s availability of talent and growth of the market in India. So I see a lot of promising action ahead.
Spoken Web is also an area where IRL is aggressively working on. Can you explain a bit about it and how will it be different from a high-end IVR application?
Although it would be difficult for me to comment on specific details of our research on Spoken Web, it is important to point out that our team has done a certain amount of research and the results so far are extremely positive. We initiated our efforts in this direction when we understood some real world opportunities. For example, there are a couple of important elements in any type of information flow: one is the demand for easy access to information and the other is the demand for easy and fast content creation. So with Spoken Web, it will be a two-way traffic. While accessing information is going to be made very easy, anyone can also upload their content very easily by simply using the phone. It is going to different from IVR because posting of information is also available. This would be an extremely innovative and dynamic tool.
How do you look at the services segment and what role is IRL going to play here?
We have a huge focus on services, given that more than 50% of India’s GDP comes from the services segment. This, however, includes the unorganized market also. IRL will be playing a critical role in bringing innovation in specific areas of the services sector. For example, in any retail organization, business intelligence, streamlined processes, enhanced customer satisfaction, etc. are in much demand. This leads to some amount of automation and customization as well. We at IBM have created a knowledge repository based on our own experiences of doing business with the service industry. We used to call it Services Science.
What exactly does Services Science deliver?
IBM Research, at the worldwide level, collaborates with leading academic institutions and research institutions, besides using real-world experiences, on understanding the core pain points of the end user. Any business can avail of a systematic process for its expansion and generate better business value [for the customer].
What challenges do you face in your work in India?
With regard to talent I see a huge challenge in terms of reaching out to the best possible experts in research. I don’t see retaining talent is any sort of challenge for us.
What are other focus areas for IRL in the near future?
Apart from mobile research and services, we are focusing on areas like software engineering, high performance computing and analytics.
What benefits can an Indian enterprise get from IRL?
We are working directly with our customers. Customers can directly come to IRL and discuss their issues with us. We also have a program called On Demand Innovation Services through the customer is most welcome to share their demands and issues.
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