CTO Chats with Harpreet Kanwar, CTO of NTT Data

Could you please introduce yourself?

My name is Harpreet Kanwar. I’m based in Bangalore, India, and I’m an IT professional and technology leader. I’ve been working in the IT industry for over 30 years, specialising in life sciences, medical devices, and pharmaceutical customers. For the past 15 years, I’ve been providing digital transformation, IT transformation solutions, and strategic advisory to leading global pharmaceutical companies. So, I specialise in the life sciences industry, and for about 10 years, I’ve been playing the role of a CTO, combined with being a chief architect. I’ve worked with large organisations like Cognizant and Persistent Systems. More recently, I’ve been with NTT DATA, again focusing on life sciences and pharma customers, working as a Field Enterprise Architect and Field CTO. That’s a brief introduction about myself.

Could you share a bit about your personal journey?

Yes, so when I graduated almost 30 years ago, IT in India was an emerging field, and that really excited and interested me. I thought, “Let me try it out; it’s a new, upcoming field.” That’s how I got into it. My initial couple of engagements were quite exciting and good. I worked on developing the railway reservation system that operates in India today. That was being developed initially, and it was a very good learning experience and a challenging engagement, which further reinforced that the direction I had taken was the right one. From then on, there’s been no looking back. I truly enjoy this ever-evolving field; there are always new technologies emerging, which keeps me very interested, and I enjoy working on learning new technologies.

That’s very inspiring. You also mentioned that IT is constantly evolving. From your perspective, what are some of the most significant challenges you’ve faced or are currently facing, and how did you strategically address them?

Yes, so IT and technology are constantly changing. One of the biggest challenges you face is that you have to keep up-to-date with the latest happenings in the industry. This involves a lot of self-study and tracking industry developments. You always have to be on your toes, learning new things. If you stop learning, even for a couple of quarters, you’ll fall behind. So, you can consider it a challenge, or I consider it and enjoy that challenge. I’m always learning newer things through self-learning, by tracking industry trends, sometimes taking formal training, and sometimes pursuing formal certifications. It’s an ongoing learning process for me; after 30 years, you simply can’t stop learning. That’s the biggest thing you have to keep in mind if you want to be truly successful: you have to be learning every day.

You mentioned there’s always something new in IT. What do you think are the emerging technologies and innovation opportunities that businesses in IT should be prioritising?

Well, for the past couple of years, large language models, ChatGPT, and Generative AI (Gen AI) have been the buzzwords. That’s an emerging technology with huge potential to change and impact businesses from both a top-line and bottom-line perspective. That’s the latest. We’ve even moved from Gen AI to Agentic AI, which is the latest iteration. Every business is evaluating it, seeing how they can adopt it for their benefit. Going forward, I believe the next three to five years will be all about AI and its impact.

What major shifts or disruptions do you anticipate over the next three to five years?

This will have a lot of business impacts, affecting industries and businesses themselves, as well as IT service and technology providers. Both will be impacted. Previously, newer technologies merely aided businesses. Let me take the example of a pharmaceutical company. With Gen AI or Agentic AI, they can bring newer drugs to market very quickly, which is a significant business benefit for them and for patients. If patients had unmet needs due to certain diseases or conditions that weren’t addressed earlier, they can now get newer, faster, and cheaper medicines.

Similarly, every industry – whether it’s banking, finance, or manufacturing – will be impacted. There’s huge potential. There will be new ways of working, with a lot more automation. You’ll be working with AI agents, so humans or employees will need to learn how to coexist and work with AI agents. That’s going to be a major change or shift in businesses, as well as the way we conduct business or work today. Both aspects will be impacted.

Besides AI or Gen AI, are there any other specific trends or technologies that you believe will have the most profound impact on the IT industry as a whole?

Yes, there are other technologies as well, like quantum computing, which is emerging but not yet fully utilised. I believe that AI coupled with quantum computing, which offers capabilities for faster computation and processing, is going to significantly change how things work. And you never know, something new might emerge that isn’t on the horizon yet. But for now, I think AI, Generative AI, Agentic AI, and quantum computing are the big ones for the next three years or so.

Given your extensive experience in IT, what’s the biggest IT-related mistake you frequently see other companies make, and what practical steps can you advise them to avoid it?

The biggest mistake I see companies make from an IT adoption perspective is that they pursue technology for its own sake. For example, with the latest buzzwords like Gen AI or Agentic AI, everyone gets excited and wants to adopt the new technology. However, what often gets overlooked is whether there’s a real business case or a clear business benefit from adopting that technology.

Companies should only adopt technology if it brings a tangible business case or benefit. Technology should not be adopted just because it’s new or a buzzword. I believe that’s where most companies make their biggest mistake. They will only be truly successful if technology adoption brings a real business benefit.

Beyond technological shifts, we all know that the regulatory environment is also in constant flux. How is the regulatory environment changing, and how are IT leaders navigating these regulatory shifts?

Yes, there are regulatory challenges from both a technology perspective and within the actual business environment. For example, when we talk about AI, there are issues with security, privacy, and biases that the technology industry is trying to address. At the same time, there are also regulatory challenges in the actual business environment.

If I take the example of the pharmaceutical or healthcare industry, you can easily apply AI for disease diagnosis. You can use AI models to diagnose whether a particular patient has a specific condition, for instance, by looking at an X-ray to determine if someone has lung cancer. Now, that’s something technology can do today. However, because AI is what we call ‘probabilistic’, you are never entirely sure if the diagnosis AI provides is accurate or correct. Therefore, healthcare regulatory bodies have to implement certain regulations to ensure that when technology, specifically AI in this case, is applied in a healthcare scenario, it is safe for patients.

So, both industries – the actual business industry (e.g., healthcare or pharma) and the technology industry (IT) – have to put regulatory controls and measures in place to ensure that technology is adopted in the right manner. Specifically in healthcare, this means ensuring there’s no adverse impact on a patient’s life. While innovation is good and helps in the evolution of humankind, we also need controls, checks, and balances to ensure it’s not being misused or incorrectly used.

I believe it’s also a constant balancing act between the two. How do you personally balance the need for innovation with the demand for stability and security in your IT systems?

Yes, that’s a tricky question again. Companies have to address both aspects. They constantly invest in tracking and evaluating new, emerging technologies to see how they can benefit the business. But when it comes to actual implementation and adoption – circling back to my earlier example about where businesses make mistakes – you have to consider all the regulatory issues, security concerns, and data privacy issues. So, when you adopt technology, you must take care of these issues and ensure there are no adverse or negative effects from that adoption. Technology evaluation for the sake of technology is fine, but actual implementation and adoption must balance those considerations.

What do you consider to be the most critical skill that IT leaders should have today?

What I would say is that IT leaders generally need four key skills, in my perspective. Firstly, since they’re in IT, they should obviously know IT and technology. But beyond that, they must also have a very strong understanding of the business domain and the industry they’re working in. For example, I focus on healthcare and pharma customers, so I need a very strong understanding of that industry. Often, when people say ‘IT’, they assume you only need to know technology, but that’s incorrect. Business knowledge and understanding of your industry are equally important.

Secondly, you need a lot of softer skills, such as communication and presentation, because you’ll be dealing with many stakeholders. The third and critical one is stakeholder management. You should know who the key stakeholders are and what their expectations are. For instance, as a CTO, if I’m talking to the CFO of an organisation, their expectations would be very different from those of the CIO or the CEO. So, you must understand each stakeholder’s expectations and how to manage them. Stakeholder management, or ‘organisational dynamics’ as another way to put it, is equally important. So, in addition to technology and IT, you need a strong business understanding, softer skills like presentation, communication, and team-building, and finally, stakeholder management to be successful. IT leadership is not just about technology.

If you could pose or ask IT leaders one question, what would it be?

The one question I would ask IT leaders is: “How well are you serving the business?” IT is often seen as a cost centre, and it’s something people are ‘doing’. But you shouldn’t work in silos, focusing only on technology. Ultimately, you are serving the business. If you are a services organisation, you have to help them grow the business. If you’re in healthcare or pharma, you have to assist the business, whether it’s by bringing drugs to market faster or helping patients. So, you might be a technology leader, you might be adopting technology, but ultimately, you have to be aligned with the organisation’s business objectives. How well you are aligned to those objectives is a very critical question, and it’s what IT leaders should keep in mind to be successful and serve the business better.

How do you approach mentoring and developing the next generation of leaders within your IT team?

Yes, that’s a very important question and a critical factor from a leadership perspective. While you’re helping the business grow and aligning with its objectives, you also have to mentor and guide the next generation of upcoming leaders. So, the four aspects of leadership I mentioned – technology knowledge, business knowledge, soft skills, and stakeholder management – within soft skills, I would also include mentoring upcoming leaders. That’s equally important. You should spend time conducting training sessions or doing on-the-job mentoring and guiding your teams so that they can also develop and learn from your experience. Personally, I conduct many training sessions myself, create a lot of content, and share my personal learnings with my teammates and my team. That’s also a very important aspect of being a leader.

For someone attending an event like an Orus Club event for the very first time, what advice would you give them to get the most value out of their experience?

I can share my personal experience regarding how I’ve grown to the position I’ve reached, the challenges you face in a typical IT leadership role, how to address those challenges, and also the skills or things you need to do to become a technology leader. So, I can share my real-life experience on how to become a technology leader.

Is there anything else that you would like to share that we weren’t able to cover?

That’s pretty much it. I think the only thing I’ll add – and we touched upon it – is that being a technology leader is an ongoing learning process; it never ends. I just wanted to share that even today, after 30-plus years, I am constantly learning. I’m also taking formal training; for example, I’m currently doing a post-graduate course on ‘smart industries’ from one of the prestigious institutes in Bangalore, IISC Bangalore. I also continuously train my team and mentor other aspiring technology leaders. For instance, I recently concluded a programme where I was a mentor for aspiring CTOs at one of India’s prestigious ITs. So, sharing your experience is also a form of learning, and you simply have to continuously keep learning new things anyway. That’s just what I wanted to share.