Tech Mahindra aims to “co-create” an ecosystem that is intelligent, secure, and sustainable—one that mirrors the region’s aspirations to lead the next era of digital progress, says Sahil Dhawan, president and head of Tech Mahindra for India, Middle East & Africa, in an interview with TRENDS.
Tech Mahindra operates across India, the Middle East, and Africa, each with distinct technological landscapes and economic priorities. How do you tailor innovation strategies to address the unique needs of each market while maintaining a cohesive vision for the region?
The Middle East today stands at the crossroads of ambition and innovation, and our strategy at Tech Mahindra is shaped by this momentum. We believe in local intelligence within a global vision, adapting our technological capabilities to advance national priorities such as Saudi Vision 2030 and the UAE Digital Government Strategy. Our focus spans smart urban ecosystems, sustainable digital infrastructure, cognitive automation, and green technology adoption, ensuring that transformation is both future-ready and human-centric.
While India serves as our hub for scalable engineering excellence and Africa as our frontier for digital inclusion, the Middle East has become our living lab for digital reinvention, where ideas rapidly evolve into impactful, real-world solutions. Through deep partnerships and a contextual approach to innovation, we aim to co-create an ecosystem that is intelligent, secure, and sustainable—one that mirrors the region’s aspiration to lead the next era of digital progress. This interplay of regional insight and global capability enables Tech Mahindra to deliver a connected world that is intelligent, secure, and inherently sustainable.
With digital transformation becoming a cornerstone of the knowledge economy, how do you see emerging technologies such as AI, cloud, and IoT shaping the competitive advantage of businesses in MENA?
The MENA region is entering a defining phase where digital transformation underpins economic diversification and competitiveness. Emerging technologies such as AI, cloud, and IoT are no longer mere enablers; they are the strategic levers reshaping value creation, productivity, and national resilience. At Tech Mahindra, we view AI as the intelligence layer driving predictive and adaptive enterprises, cloud as the architecture of scalability and collaboration, and IoT as the bridge connecting digital insight with physical impact.
Across MENA, these technologies are powering sovereign digital agendas—from Saudi Arabia’s innovation-led Vision 2030 to the UAE’s ambition of a data-driven economy. The competitive advantage for businesses now lies in their ability to integrate these capabilities cohesively, transforming data into foresight, operations into ecosystems, and sustainability into strategy. This convergence will define the region’s evolution from digital adopters to global architects of the knowledge economy.
How does Tech Mahindra balance innovation with long-term business sustainability, particularly in high-growth but resource-constrained markets?
We view innovation and sustainability not as parallel pursuits but as converging dimensions of responsible growth. In high-growth yet resource-sensitive markets, this balance is achieved through what we call purpose-driven innovation—leveraging technology to create scalable, efficient, and inclusive solutions that serve both economic and environmental goals.
Our strategy emphasizes digital frugality and circularity, designing cloud architectures, AI models, and connected systems that optimize energy use and extend the lifecycle of assets. We invest in local ecosystems, nurture green skills, and co-create with governments and enterprises to ensure innovation translates into long-term community and environmental value.
By embedding sustainability into every stage of transformation—from product design to deployment—we are building a model of growth that is resilient, equitable, and future-ready. This approach ensures that progress in emerging markets remains both technologically advanced and socially regenerative.
What strategies are you implementing to build a future-ready workforce, and how do you see talent development evolving in the region?
The shift toward a knowledge-driven economy is redefining the very fabric of talent, where adaptability, digital fluency, and purpose-led innovation are the new cornerstones of competitiveness. At Tech Mahindra, we are cultivating a future-ready workforce through continuous reskilling, experiential learning, and deep industry-academia collaboration.
Our talent strategy integrates AI-powered learning platforms, capability academies, and leadership programs that nurture both technical expertise and design-thinking mindsets. In the MENA region, we see an extraordinary opportunity to shape a digitally empowered workforce aligned with national transformation agendas such as Saudi Vision 2030 and the UAE’s NextGen initiatives.
We are actively co-creating talent pipelines through collaborations with governments, universities, and innovation hubs. Ultimately, our goal is to nurture a workforce that is not only future-ready but also future-shaping—resilient, adaptive, and inspired to drive sustainable progress.
How critical are partnerships in accelerating innovation and delivering transformational outcomes? Could you share examples of successful collaborations that have advanced the knowledge economy in your markets and verticals?
In today’s hyperconnected world, no organization innovates in isolation. Partnerships have become the strategic currency of transformation, enabling speed, scale, and shared intelligence. We view collaboration as the catalyst that bridges imagination with execution. Our ecosystem-led approach brings together governments, hyperscalers, academia, and startups to co-create solutions that advance both business and societal progress.
Across our key markets, this philosophy has translated into impactful collaborations—from working with telecom leaders and public sector entities in the Middle East to build smart urban ecosystems and digital governance frameworks, to partnering globally on sustainable, cloud-native, and AI-driven innovations. Each alliance reinforces our commitment to connected, human-centered innovation, where technology serves purpose and inclusivity drives scale.
Ultimately, partnerships enable us to transcend transactional outcomes and deliver transformational change, shaping resilient, knowledge-driven economies that are future-ready and globally competitive.
