BENGALURU MUMBAI: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is creating a product brand for its artificial intelligence (AI) product Ignio and has hired from US companies to drive sales of the standalone product, a move that analysts say is akin to building a software company with a different model to its traditional services. The company is working to ensure the Ignio brand is a standalone -- with a separate website that has minimal TCS branding. Digitate, the unit that houses Ignio, is only once referred to as a TCS venture. "If you want to sell Ignio as a product, you have to create a product brand. TCS as a services brand is humongous. We have to make sure that the product can stand on its own. It is deeply embedded in TCS, but from sales and branding perspective, you have to create an identity," Harrick Vin, global head of Digitate, told ETin an interview.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is creating a product brand for its artificial intelligence (AI) product Ignio and has hired from US companies to drive sales of the standalone product, a move that analysts say is akin to building a software company with a different model to its traditional services. The company is working to ensure the Ignio brand is a standalone -- with a separate website that has minimal TCS branding. Digitate, the unit that houses Ignio, is only once referred to as a TCS venture. "If you want to sell Ignio as a product, you have to create a product brand. TCS as a services brand is humongous. We have to make sure that the product can stand on its own. It is deeply embedded in TCS, but from sales and branding perspective, you have to create an identity," Harrick Vin, global head of Digitate, told ET in an interview.

In another huge setback to Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka's strategy to strengthen the company's new digital and innovation capabilities, Yusuf Bashir, MD of the $500-million Infosys Innovation Fund, has resigned. The MIT-alumnus had worked closely with Sikka at SAP as VP of new products before joining Infosys in March 2015. Together with another former SAP executive, Ritika Suri, Bashir was to help Infosys take a leap into the new digital world that has become important to global clients. Bashir, based in Palo Alto, had the mandate to identify and invest in early-stage companies doing cutting-edge work in areas including AI, machine learning, big data, cloud and analytics. Acquisitions has been a key strategy used by Accenture, for instance, to build the new digital capabilities.

An employee of Indian IT security solutions company Innefu Labs works at its offices in New Delhi. Newer fields, including artificial intelligence, will require highly advanced skills, analysts say. An employee of Indian IT security solutions company Innefu Labs works at its offices in New Delhi. Newer fields, including artificial intelligence, will require highly advanced skills, analysts say. Madeshwaran Subramani is the human face of IT disruption in India.

With its announcement last week that it will purchase enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) and automation vendor Rage Frameworks, Genpact became the first IT and business process service provider to acquire an AI platform. The addition of Rage Frameworks, which has been applying machine learning and language processing to build intelligent automation platforms for financial services, capital markets and supply chains, "will take Genpact deeper into integrating semi and unstructured data and AI, where we see the true marriage of business processes with clever technology and self-developing algorithms," says Phil Fersht, CEO of outsourcing analyst and consulting firm HfS Research. On the surface, another acquisition of a niche automation vendor by an IT service provider might seem unremarkable. But industry watchers say this may be the tipping point where focus will shift from back-office automation to integrating and intelligently automating front- and middle-office functions. "It represents an evolution of the back-office oriented automation acquisitions that many outsourcing providers have made over the past several years," says David Borowski, director with outsourcing consultancy Pace Harmon.