For Aarthi Subramanian, who was elevated as Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of Tata Sons a year back, work dynamics have changed a lot but not the work environment. In her earlier profile at TCS, where she was global head of delivery excellence, governance and compliance, she was driving digitisation big time to meet market challenges. Now, she is "driving digital adoption across group companies."
Despite the new work dynamics, Subramanian has the same reporting head, Tata Group Chairman N. Chandrasekaran, who mentored her during her TCS days. Subramanian's understanding of the Tatas work culture makes the process of executing digitisation in group companies easier. Chandrasekaran had said after announcing her appointment that she would play a key role in driving digital adoption across group companies as well as the group's digital initiatives.
Subramanian's role is important as the $100 billion group under Chandrasekaran has been sharpening its focus on big data and analytics to analyse consumer behaviour and accordingly tweak the way it does business. Her colleagues in TCS remember her for the innate ability to resolve issues and passion for excellence. One of her most challenging assignments after she became the ED of TCS was the Passport Seva Project for digitisation of the passport issuing process, which was a roaring success.
A Bachelor in Computer Science from National Institute of Technology, Warangal, Subramanian is a hands-on operations person. In her personal life, she is as much a fitness freak like her boss Chandrasekaran, who is an avid marathoner, and prefers to do longer walks daily.