We value the talent in India: JDA software CEO

Hamish Brewer, CEO, JDA Software, was recently in India to inaugurate his company's centre of excellence in Bengaluru. He spoke to Shamni Pande. Edited excerpts:
 
Q. What are the bottle-necks to effective supply-chain management in India in retail and in manufacturing?

A. India has some world-class companies when it comes to manufacturing, such as Tata Steel and Essar Steel. In retail, the problem is that in India, consolidation has not really begun and as a result we see very small and scattered operations among players. This is possibly because the real investments have not happened in this space due to the uncertainty regarding the policy on foreign direct investment in retail .

Q. How do you think the transformation is going to come about?

A. I think e-commerce will be the transformational game-changer and the disruptive force in retail. Whether the government likes it or not, people will find a way of buying the things they want online. Definitely, e-commerce will be the agent of change that will redefine the industry one way or another.
 

Q. Why are you hiring in India, when retail has not taken off here the way it has in other developing economies?

A. We provide software solutions focused on end-to-end supply-chain management and also for pricing, merchandising and store operations for manufacturers, distributors, third-party logistics companies and retailers worldwide. We have opened our second centre of excellence in Bengaluru, we already have one in Hyderabad and we have on board 2,000 people here out of our total 4,500 employees. This shows how important is this market for us and also how we value the talent here. We intend to recruit at least 500 people and these would be from IITs with capabilities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We will also go in for lateral hires. In India, we have clients such Tata Starbazaar, Shopper's Stop, Asian Paints, Tata Steel, Essar Steel, Pepsico India and Unilever India among others. We have very low attrition and we offer world-class, career opportunities and jobs.