Pivoting Tata

THE NARROW ROADS to Thimjepalli village, 30 kilometres east of Hosur in Tamil Nadu, hit a dead-end on a plateau in the middle of three rocky hills where Tata Electronics Ltd. (TEL) has built its precision engineering plant. When it opened a year ago, villagers set up a dozen shops on the approach road to meet the daily needs of 10,000-odd workers, mostly women, who arrived at the plant in company buses. As business prospered, villagers realised the plant manufactures components for iPhone.

At Adibatla village near Hyderabad, trucks are moving in and out of a strategically protected zone where Tata has built a 14,000 square metre facility in joint venture (JV) with U.S. aircraft major Boeing. It manufactures aero-structures for Boeing’s AH-64 Apache helicopter.

The avionics play extends to western India as well. In Vadodara, Gujarat, Tatas are building a plant in a JV with Boeing’s rival Airbus to manufacture transport aircraft.

Closer home, at Pune’s Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial belt, workers at the EV shop floor of Tata Motors are strapping powertrains inside Nexon gliders round-the-clock to meet rising demand. The dedicated Nexon electric vehicle (EV) production line, which started with eight vehicles a day in February 2020, has increased to 80 across three shifts.

To ramp up renewables play, at the Tata Power Solar (TPS) facility at Electronics City, Bengaluru, the 32-year-old plant making solar panels and modules is improvising technologies to capture more energy with photovoltaic cells. Originally a joint venture between Tata Power and BP Solar in 1988 (BP exited in 2011), its turnaround came later with India’s focus on renewable energy and the resultant demand for solar power. The plant, which raised cell-making capacity to 530 megawatt (MW) from 14MW in 2002, is not able to meet Tata Power’s growing requirements. TPS is now building a 4,000MW solar module manufacturing plant at Gangaikondan, near Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, at an investment of ₹3,000 crore.

Most of these new businesses herald a change that the $128-billion Tata Group has rarely seen in its 154 years history. After consolidating 100-odd companies under 30 large ones across 10 verticals by grouping/merging similar businesses, the group is pivoting towards a host of new emerging opportunities — be it aircraft manufacturing & defence, FMCG, electronics and semiconductors, SuperApp, payments, battery manufacturing and storage solutions, 5G technology and infrastructure, or hyperloop technology, among others.

“We want to see what impact we can make on society. A lot of things we can do at scale,” says group chairman N. Chandrasekaran. The management wants to be invested in self-sustainable businesses, not cash guzzlers. Chandrasekaran, who completes six years as group chairman in February 2023, says the Tata Group intends to create future-ready businesses with strong balance sheets in the next five years.

That has resulted in a plan to invest $90 billion over the next five years — mostly within India — to build businesses around these opportunities. At the same time, legacy firms in steel, automobiles, power and chemicals are required to pivot to newer technologies with enhanced focus on the domestic market. These businesses are embracing emerging technologies — data analytics, AI, IoT, blockchain and metaverse — as Chandrasekaran exhorts group companies to engage with last-mile customers and pursue new business themes. Group holding company Tata Sons is egging them with the assurance that it will bet its capital wherever needed.

The group is at a stage to relaunch itself into a new trajectory after a five-year clean-up that involved exiting or merging unprofitable businesses, shedding old technologies, paying off debt and seeding new areas with potential for future growth. The clean-up more than doubled profits of the Tata Group (aggregate of top 36 companies, excluding subsidiaries) to ₹64,267 crore in FY22, from ₹36,728 crore in FY17, due to improved performance from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tata Steel and Titan. Tata Power and Tata Chemicals maintained growth in profitability. Tata Motors stayed the laggard with losses of ₹11,441 crore in FY22. But in FY23, it reported its first quarterly profit in 2 years in Q3 — ₹2,957 crore on revenue of ₹88,488 crore.

Group revenues grew 48.34% to ₹9.44 lakh crore from ₹6.37 lakh crore in the five years despite Covid-19 and geopolitical tensions. Market capitalisation jumped 180% to a peak of ₹23.18 lakh crore in March 2022, compared with ₹8.26 lakh crore in March 2017. As of December 2022, the group’s market cap stood at ₹20.87 lakh crore. Total debt (excluding cash and bank balance) reduced from ₹3.62 lakh crore in March 2020 to ₹2.8 lakh crore in September 2022.

According to data sourced from the Tata Group, net debt (excluding lease liabilities) fell to ₹1.23 lakh crore in March 2022 from a peak of ₹1.54 lakh crore in March 2017. Return on equity improved to 21.4% from 11.4%. While Chandrasekaran dealt with many of those issues, there were some he couldn’t address. The group’s intent to sell/separate loss-generating steel mills in the U.K. did not materialise. The 4,000MW Mundra power plant, built at a cost of ₹18,000 crore, also continues to incur losses since its commissioning 10 years ago.

Focusing on the Core

As Chandrasekaran enters his office on the fourth floor of Bombay House, headquarters of the Tata Group, on a Thursday morning at 9.15 a.m., he’s fresh from another marathon in Iceland, having run 42 km around Reykjavik as temperatures dipped to 12°C. His love for marathons began in 2008 to fend off hereditary diabetes and has taken him to Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, New York and Tokyo.

Chandrasekaran participates in four races every year — full and half alternatively — but practices round the year, getting up daily at 4 a.m. “The practice is not for running every marathon, but for the state of readiness,” he says. “Sometimes I work on strength. Then I reduce the distance. Sometimes I work on distance,” he adds, while sipping a dollop of milk foam on a double macchiato from the Tata Starbucks outlet at Bombay House.

The vastly diversified Tata Group’s DNA gels well with Chandrasekaran, the long-distance runner. Both settled on focusing on the long term when he took charge as group chairman. His immediate priority was strengthening the balance sheet of group companies by reducing liabilities. The result? Tata Steel reduced net debt by ₹50,000 crore to ₹54,504 crore in two years until June 2022. Tata Motors is focused on creating cash flows to turn net debt free by March 2024. Tata Power also announced debt reduction of ₹25,000 crore by raising equity capital in the renewables business. Though it received first strategic investment, the power producer hasn’t succeeded in reducing debt.

“Simplification is a journey and we have done a lot, but there's still more to do. Same with synergy. We combined the strength of group companies for building businesses like consumer products, defence and electric mobility,” says Chandrasekaran. Unlisted Tata Autocomp Systems was not making money and had very little business. Group companies, including Tata Motors Passenger Vehicle (PV), Commercial Vehicle (CV), EV and JLR, started working with Tata AutoComp and it turned profitable, says Chandrasekaran.

“Tata Technologies grew revenues by 48.24% in FY22 as we collaborated extensively with group firms in automobiles (TML, JLR, Tata Autocomp) and aerospace (Air India, Tata Advanced Systems),” says Warren Harris, MD and CEO, Tata Technologies. Tata Motors tied up with Tata Power, Tata Chemicals, Tata Autocomp, Tata Motors Finance and Croma to build e-mobility ecosystem Tata uniEVerse.

Amalgamations continue unabated in steel. Recently, Tata Steel announced the merger of subsidiaries — Tata Steel Long Products, The Tinplate Company of India, Tata Metaliks, The Indian Steel & Wire Products, Tata Steel Mining, S&T Mining Company and TRF — with itself. It had earlier merged erstwhile Bhushan Steel, acquired for ₹35,000 crore through the bankruptcy process in 2018. In the same year, the group also integrated Tata Housing Development, with Tata Realty and Infrastructure.

In food and FMCG, Tata was present across multiple entities, including Tata Chemicals and Tata Global Beverages. Chandrasekaran stitched together a food and beverages focused FMCG business under Tata Consumer Products by merging the consumer business of Tata Chemicals (Tata Salt and Tata Sampann pulses) with Tata Global Beverages (TGB), formerly Tata Tea. Today TCPL has a market cap of ₹70,000 crore, compared to TGBL's market cap of ₹9,000 crore in 2017.

While building the e-mobility ecosystem, Tata Motors separated its passenger vehicles business — Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles — from the commercial vehicles business and incorporated Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Ltd (TPEM) as a subsidiary for R&D, design and manufacturing of EVs. Private equity investor TPG Rise Climate, along with ADQ, invested ₹7,500 crore for 11-15% stake in TPEM. Of the total, Tata Motors has already received ₹3,750 crore as the first tranche.

The focus was on strengthening the core to make companies financially fit. “I used to say: fitness first, performance next. We are pretty much done as we fixed balance sheets and set the growth strategy of all companies,” says Chandrasekaran.

Janmejaya Sinha, chairman, BCG India, says Chandrasekaran had to establish himself with result-oriented actions as he rose through the ranks. “He earned respect through transformational initiatives, which gave him greater autonomy in experimenting with new ideas. He did it without noise,” says Sinha.

Chandrasekaran says enhanced financial independence allows companies to leverage emerging opportunities. Tata Steel is looking to enhance its portfolio with new materials and green steel (mostly recycled steel). Tata Consumer Products (TCP) is building a large FMCG business by acquiring assets such as Soulfull and Tata SmartFoodz from Tata Industries and investing in research & development (R&D). It is also in talks to buy packaged water firm Bisleri for ₹7,000 crore. Tata Power is pivoting to renewables with a pledge not to invest in new thermal power plants. Tata Motors, which lost out in the internal combustion engine (ICE) car market, has pounced on the EV opportunity ahead of competition, emerging as the largest player in electric cars.

Chandrasekaran inspires people to work together, says Hemendra Kothari, chairman, DSP Group. “He is excellent in overseeing and thinks ahead of time. Even if he has a call at 10 in the night, he will get up early and not miss his run. It symbolises his unwavering commitment.” According to Kothari, the group’s mindset changed after Chandrasekaran took charge. “Tata executives I meet now are enthusiastic about business. The group has turned agile and aggressive,” he says.

Re-arranging Tata

Over decades, the Tata Group started or acquired similar businesses under different entities, leading to over 100 companies. For example, different parts of the defence business were handled between Tata Motors, Tata Advanced Systems and Tata Power. It had two airlines — Vistara & Air Asia (now three since the acquisition of Air India in January 2022). There were six major businesses in steel. FMCG was spread between Tata Chemicals and Tata Global Beverages, and real estate between Tata Housing and Tata Realty.

Soon after taking charge, Chandrasekaran began with ‘3Ss’ (Simplification, Synergy and Scale) and ‘3As’ (Aspiration, Accountability and Agility) to lead the transformation. He told CEOs in one of his earliest briefings that the group must focus on six themes — Indian consumer, formalisation of economy, sustainability, digital and technology, nation building and supply chain resilience.

Tata Motors is focused on a three-phased architecture approach for EVs. Shailesh Chandra, MD, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, says it plans to launch 10 EVs in five years. “Gen 1 products instilled confidence in customers. With Concept CURVV, we will introduce the first product under Gen 2 EV architecture. We have also unveiled the AVINYA Concept — a pure electric vehicle, based on Gen 3 EV architecture.”

Where business models were proven, scale was the next logical step. “Croma, Westside, Zudio and Titan’s brands are opening new stores. Tata Steel is acquiring companies and investing in greenfield capacities. Tata Motors is expanding capacity from manufacturing only 20,000 electric vehicles to 47,000 in a quarter now. The capacity is much more. The same is happening in power,” says Chandrasekaran.

With TCPL, the group looks to create an FMCG major like HUL or Nestle. Sunil D’Souza, handpicked by Chandrasekaran to head TCPL as MD & CEO, says the transformation will happen in a phased manner. “We start by strengthening our food and beverages portfolio and then expanding into adjacencies as a first step,” he says. The group is being selective about where it wants to play, considering the massive addressable market, and chance to win in that segment.

Meanwhile, Tata’s grocery plans will be executed by BigBasket. The online grocer, in which Tata Digital acquired 64% stake in 2021 for ₹1,591 crore, plans to open 400 physical stores in Tier-1 cities. Market leader and rival Reliance Retail is rapidly expanding its footprint in the space, and has announced the acquisition of Metro Cash & Carry, in addition to taking over 830 Big Bazaar stores which failed to pay rent.

Critics, however, point to delays in execution of retail and FMCG expansion plans by the group. “While Mukesh Ambani’s firm was aggressively expanding its foothold, the Tata Group was reluctant to increase stores as they wanted to prove business viability before putting in more capital,” says a Bangalore-based executive, who works for Tata’s joint venture partner.

Moreover, the group does not have scale in areas such as real estate and NBFC. Tata Capital has all loan products, but lags leaders such as Bajaj Finance and Shriram Finance. Recently, Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani also announced their NBFC plans. The consolidation of financial services is incomplete as well. Tata Motors’ car loan arm is still outside the NBFC ambit of Tata Capital.

Homing in on Sustainability

“The group’s transition will be strengthened with sustainability, wellness and safety. It is playing out across the board with EVs, renewable energy, new materials and chemicals, among others,” says Chandrasekaran. “We are changing the business model to transition towards sustainability. Tata Motors will make more EVs than ICE cars in 2030. Tata Power will produce significantly more renewable power than thermal,” he adds. The sustainability focus aligns well with the group’s economic interest and Chandrasekaran terms it as the fourth ‘S’ in his strategy.

A project called ‘Alingana’ (embrace), launched two years ago, is driving sustainability. It has a detailed plan for every company to get to net carbon zero by 2045.

Thermal power plants owner Tata Power has to play a major role in the sustainability plan. Praveer Sinha, CEO & MD, Tata Power, says it is transforming into a customer-centric organisation with a view to enhance the renewables portfolio. “We ventured into EV charging solutions, solar pumps, rooftop solar, home automation and microgrids. We are also building solar cell and module manufacturing capacity in India… Tata Power targets to grow its renewables portfolio almost four times to 20GW over the next five years,” he adds.

Achieving sustainability targets will require use of new technologies. Tata Steel is working with start-ups on carbon capture, either for use within the system or converting into methanol or ethanol for commercial purpose. “We are working on ways to use biomass and hydrogen in steel making,” says T.V. Narendran, MD & CEO, Tata Steel. “We believe the best way to make steel in the U.K. is by leveraging scrap." The steelmaker wants to build electric arc furnaces in India and the U.K. to switch production to recycling scrap steel, considered a greener process.

While pursuing sustainability, companies will cash in on core competencies. Tata Chemicals, after selling its consumer products business, is focusing on expanding soda ash and sodium bicarbonate capacity. The company has invested in other areas — prebiotic and specialty silica. Next-tier companies Tata Elxsi and Tata Communications are focusing on their core strengths — product design and network solutions, respectively.

A.S. Lakshminarayanan, MD & CEO, Tata Communications, says the company reimagined customer engagement to deepen the relationship, and increase wallet share. “We brought focus on digital platforms and solutions and improved efficiencies through automation,” he says. The balance sheet is now enough to invest in growth ambitions, he claims.

Creating New Assets

While at TCS, Chandrasekaran realised the importance of building an India-centric supply chain much before friend-shoring became a talking point. It was the Russia-Ukraine war and the China-West faceoff that accelerated shortages in semiconductors and EV batteries, forcing developed countries to go for for sourcing goods from friendly nations. Chandrasekaran prepares to turn such geopolitical adversities to the group’s advantage.

The creation of assets is aimed at being a bigger part of the global and domestic supply chain. “We created companies for precision electronics manufacturing, 5G technology stack and digital SuperApp. We are building a world-class airline and a battery manufacturing plant. These are the businesses of the future,” says Chandrasekaran.

Some businesses — 5G equipment, semiconductor and electronics and EV battery — will form part of global supply chains and Tata companies will play crucial roles as global suppliers, he adds. Supply chain, says Chandrasekaran, is the 5th ‘S’ in the overall strategy. “Our aspiration is not only for supplying to our companies or the country, but for the global market,” he adds.

A new battery company has been formed under Tata Sons, separate from the battery packaging business under Tata Autocomp. “We want to become a formidable player in precision electronics manufacturing and most of the semiconductor value chain. I don’t know today whether we will be in the entire semiconductor value chain or 80% of it, but we will be a significant player. The group is committed to be a large player in telecom technology, not consumer services,” says Chandrasekaran.

For 5G, Tata Sons acquired a controlling stake in Tejas Networks for nearly ₹1,890 crore in 2021. Tejas later acquired 64.40% in semiconductor firm Saankhya Labs for ₹284 crore.

“Being a runner, Chandrasekaran has truly mastered pace and stability by steering Tata Group companies to a new turn by incorporating ESG and technology, while focusing on financial performance,” says Cyril Shroff, managing partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas.

The business with Apple will be crucial for the supply chain. As the U.S. firm looks to diversify its sourcing beyond China, Tatas want to win more business from the world’s most-valued mobile phone maker through facilities like the one at Hosur. It plans to rope in one of Apple’s contract manufacturers and expand capacity by increasing worker strength to 60,000. Tamil Nadu already houses facilities of iPhone contract manufacturers Foxconn and Pegatron. According to latest reports, the group is in talks with Wistron Corp to buy the latter’s facility in Karnataka for manufacturing iPhones for ₹5,000 crore.

For the development of hyperloop technology, Tata Steel signed an agreement with deep-tech start-up TuTr Hyperloop in December. The venture will focus on challenges of design and materials selection.

Bringing together a team of tech experts from TCS and other firms, Chandrasekaran built Tata Digital, which owns SuperApp Tata Neu. In August 2019, Tata Sons appointed TCS veteran Pratik Pal as Tata Digital CEO. The SuperApp offers fashion and lifestyle products of Tata CLiQ and Westside, electronics portfolio of Croma, groceries from BigBasket, flight tickets of AirAsia India, health check-ups of Tata 1mg, luxury stay at Taj hotel and 5-star meal of Qmin.

The SuperApp is set to boost the business of Trent, Infinity Retail, TCP, Titan and Voltas, besides finding buyers for financial service products of Tata Capital, Tata Asset Management, Tata AIA and Tata AIG. RIL is also working on building a SuperApp similar to China's WeChat and Alipay.

So, what will be the next phase of the new businesses? Once the new business models are proven and cash flows are in sight, the Tata Group will look at strategic investments from global players and offering shares to the public, somewhat like Reliance which scaled up the telecom business under Jio before offering equity to partners such as Facebook and Google who together invested ₹1.52 lakh crore in FY21. “Every new firm has got a business case. They should operate at the best metrics that a sector can operate on,” says Chandrasekaran. The group is looking at an IPO of Tata Technologies to raise ₹4,000 crore.

BCG’s Sinha says new businesses will be evaluated based on the megatrend they ride. “The other questions will be who are the people leading the businesses; what the business architectures are, and the kind of capital available,” he says.

Correcting Legacy

In 2016, previous group chairman, late Cyrus Mistry had pointed out five “legacy hotspots” of the group — Indian Hotels Company (IHC), Tata Motors passenger vehicles business, Tata Steel Europe, Tata Power Mundra and Tata Teleservices — in his letter to Tata Sons’ board after he was ousted. Chandrasekaran spent some of his initial years finding solutions for these trouble spots.

In the first five months in office, Chandrasekaran attempted a turnaround in the telecom services business — Tata Docomo — but soon presented a case to close down the rapidly bleeding business. It paid around ₹50,000 crore to settle spectrum dues and buy back partner NTT Docomo’s stake, and sold the loss-making business to Bharti Airtel. “We were not a significant telecom player. We were at fifth or sixth. The company was financially weak and we did not have the right network. We were making huge cash losses… We had to take the call to solve the problem,” says Chandrasekaran. Tata Teleservices still has adjusted gross revenue (AGR) liabilities to the tune of ₹19,638 crore.

Indian Hotels, which owns brands such as Taj Hotels, Vivanta, Ginger and SeleQtions, had been struggling in its international operations. It sold off the iconic Taj Boston for $125 million in 2016. To turn around IHC, the management sold off non-core assets and wrote-off bad investments like Orient Express Hotels. A new management team was put in place with Puneet Chhatwal as MD & CEO. Besides launching a new branding for Taj, IHC focused on turning asset light to increase margins. It added capacity through management contracts and turned selective in owned/leased property additions.

Chhatwal says it turned around before the onset of the pandemic. “In the last two years, we signed 50 new hotels and opened 27 new ones, adding over 5,500 keys. It is on its way to build a portfolio of 300 hotels, clocking a 33% EBITDA margin, with one-third EBITDA share coming from new businesses and management fees by 2025-26.”

Tata Motors also took drastic steps. It tried to revive its passenger car business with facelifts of old cars and changing CEOs. After all experiments failed, it shut down production of Nano in 2018 and phased out popular models Indica and Indigo as demand plummeted. The Sanand factory, built in 2010 for Nano, was lying underutilised for years until production lines were converted to make Tigor and Tiago, and later the more successful EV version of both. The Tatas also bought the nearby plant at Sanand from U.S. carmaker Ford to meet future EV requirements as demand grows.

In steel, Chandrasekaran tried merging Tata Steel Europe with Thyssenkrupp, but failed because of European Commission’s regulatory objections. An attempt to sell off the profitable Netherlands business to Sweden’s SSAB did not fructify, and the company separated the loss-making U.K. from the Netherlands business and requested British government support for turning the Port Talbot plant into a scrap recycling unit. It produces 3-4 million tonnes of steel in the U.K.

“We believe the best way to make steel in the U.K. is to leverage scrap,” says Narendran. Recycling scrap is a long-term sustainable business. Procuring scrap typically constitutes 70% in recycling. With the U.K. being one of the biggest scrap exporters globally, raw material is readily available. In India, Narendran has put together a plan to increase capacity up to 47 MT from 20 MT using the land at the existing facilities in Odisha, as Tata Steel awaits a pick-up in demand.

Tata Power’s Mundra power plant has been jinxed since commissioning in March 2013. It has not been able to even recover working capital as imported coal prices went past estimates while electricity was capped at ₹2.26 per unit. The Supreme Court allowed Tata Power to renegotiate tariffs, but only Gujarat and Maharashtra agreed to revise. Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan didn’t agree to the revision. Tata Power approached the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, which decided to fully compensate power producers using imported coal and run at full capacity to meet demand during an energy crisis.

Chandrasekaran also took over at a time when the Tata Group's aviation firms were losing money. While Air Asia and Vistara were still making combined annual losses of ₹4,200 crore in FY22, Tata Group bought state-run Air India for $2.4 billion last year, regaining ownership of the airline started by the group in 1932.

Chandrasekaran is now looking to bring all airlines under one roof and run them as a single unit. “We will keep the Air India brand. We already announced the integration of Air Asia and Vistara. The legal process has started. Integration will happen. The problem is, decisions can be made, but execution takes time as there are legal processes, regulatory approvals and people integration involved,” he says. Tata’s airline portfolio will have both full services and low-cost offerings. “Both Air India and Vistara are well placed to compete with the best in the world. We will benchmark ourselves to the best. It is not a copy model,” he adds saying Air India will turn profitable. “It is a big opportunity. We will expand globally and domestically.”

Restyling Cashcows

In the decade until 2020, only a handful of Tata companies were holding fort while others struggled with debt and losses. The ₹20,773-crore dividend and buyback yield from TCS, India’s second-most valued company with a market capitalisation of ₹12.74 lakh crore, contributed over 90% of Tata Sons’ revenue in FY22.

But, after the pandemic, geopolitical tensions and recession fears in developed economies, there are challenges ahead for TCS. It recently revamped its organisation structure to align more closely with customers with an aim to achieve $50 billion (over ₹4 lakh crore) in revenue by 2030. It was restructured into four groups — business transformation, incubation, enterprise growth and new business models. The company garnered $25 billion in revenue and over $5 billion in profit during FY22. In the third quarter of FY23, TCS posted a profit of ₹10,846 crore on a revenue of ₹58,229 crore.

Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO & MD, TCS, recently told analysts that in the medium term, TCS has confidence in the U.S. and U.K. markets, but Europe is taking time to recover. “The U.S. and U.K. markets account for about two-third of TCS’ business. We are quite comfortable. In Europe, we have a strong presence on the ground. We should be able to navigate Europe well compared to other players,” he says.

Another consistent performer, Titan is facing cyclical headwinds as well, thanks to a sudden spike in gold prices. It has raised concerns over its jewellery business (Tanishq), which contributes 85% to overall revenues and has a 6% market share in a highly fragmented industry. Titan has transformed into a lifestyle company, expanding into eyewear, perfumes, saris, bags, sunglasses and wearables, besides jewellery to counter seasonal volatilities.

In Chandrasekaran’s second term as chairman (Tata Sons board renewed his term for another five years in February 2022), the focus will be on reaping the benefits of the belt-tightening in the first term, leveraging new opportunities in emerging industries and encouraging legacy businesses to transition to cash in on opportunities thrown up by contemporary technology across sectors. It will be a case of building on the strong foundation.