Cathy Chandhok-Leveraging Meaningful Interactions to Enable Enhanced Customer Experiences in the Digital Landscape

Infogain is a human-centered digital platform and software engineering company based out of Silicon Valley. The company envisions business outcomes for Fortune 500 companies and digital natives in the fields of technology, healthcare, insurance, travel, telecom, and retail, and CPG by using technologies like cloud, microservices, automation, IoT, and artificial intelligence by focusing on accelerating an experience-led transformation in the delivery of digital platforms. Infogain is also a Microsoft Gold Partner and an Azure Expert Managed Services Provider (MSP).

Showcasing Engineering Excellence to Deliver a Meaningful Impact

Infogain's motto, "Engineering Business Outcomes" showcases its engineering excellence and mission to deliver meaningful and measurable solutions to drive impact for the clients. This year, the company has been recognized as the world's second-fastest-growing engineering services provider. It has also been positioned as the Star Performer and the Major Contender in the Everest Group's Software Product Engineering Services PEAK Matrix assessment for 2021, and has also has been accoladed as the Major Contender in the PEAK Matrix assessments for next-generation quality assurance services and digital interactive experience (IX) services for 2020.

A Brilliant Leader

Cathy Chandhok, the Chief Marketing Officer at Infogain is the one who is leading the company with top marketing practices. Since the completion of her MBA from the University of Michigan, Cathy has focused on brand management, digital marketing, and marketing tech. At Infogain, she leads the development and execution of the company's marketing by focusing on customer trust and thought leadership. As the CMO, her role is to focus on improving customer experiences, anticipating market trends, and delivering on Infogain's value proposition as a human-centered digital platform and a software engineering company.

Her teams are located all across India, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the US to easily orchestrate marketing strategies that promote digital transformation and platform-based solutions to the Fortune 500 companies.

Each Role, Each Place that Taught a Lesson

Cathy expresses that over the years, her professional journey has been a combination of different places. With each important step, a city also had a prominent role to play. She started from Copenhagen in global product management where she built the campaign analytics function at one of the big three in Detroit, and now she is crushing executive management, general marketing, branding, and communications here in India.

Working in cross-cultural environments for decades together enabled Cathy to efficiently serve different markets in India by envisioning things from a global point of view and Her teams are located across India, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the US to orchestrate marketing strategies that promote digital transformation and platform-based solutions to Fortune 500 companies and thereby crafting messages which resonate with the customer's unique needs.

Additionally, collaborating and learning from great minds in various industries like Infogain's CEO, Ayan Mukerji has inspired her to focus better on corporate and solutions strategy, world-class operations, and incisive organizational moves.

Components that Make a Successful Transformational Leader

Cathy opines that transformational leaders should not put off tough decisions and they must learn to align their decisions with clearly defined vision, values, goals, and objectives.

Cathy feels that anyone can take risks, but transformational leaders take calculated risks that rely on their instincts and o their team's intelligence. Hence, she claims that aspiring leaders should always seek new ways to respond to the constantly changing business environment as they will always be surrounded by competitors.

Working Together with Customers to Enable Innovation

Cathy trusts in working together with the clients from the early stages of strategy by constantly asking them "what if?" and "why not?" and believes in simultaneously co-creating a vision of digital platforms delivering meaningful customer experiences. By working at this 100k foot view, the team can understand the interdependencies and roadblocks impeding the clients' progress towards digital platforms. "This bird's-eye view is the perfect spot to sense market needs and design solutions that achieve superior outcomes for the clients" comments Cathy.

Keeping Abreast of the Industrial Revolution

Cathy remarks that the rapid technological advances in digitization have been reshaping the business landscape, supercharging performance, and enabling the emergence of new business innovations. The industry is witnessing the advent of the fourth industrial revolution or "Industry 4.0". The fourth industrial revolution is essentially a digital revolution, and a revolution of technological breakthroughs, such as RPA, AI, blockchain, and the internet of things. All of this accelerated massively during the pandemic and that acceleration is only increasing. This tech-driven revolution will force many companies to change their operating paradigm, from being manpower-intensive to being technology-centric. Further, digital transformation will be a critical driver on how companies will continue to deliver value to their customers in a highly competitive business environment, with artificial intelligence (AI) being a central enabler of digital transformation in several industries.

According to her, amidst this massive change, the human element remains key to effective leadership. Some principles, such as those described in "Anatomy of Peace", remain constant. Certain other aspects have also changed, since effective leaders devote more time to understanding an employee's personal wants and aspirations, making unprecedented accommodations to empower team members to contribute in new ways, from new workspaces, and at flexible times.

Envisioning a Future with Growth and Development

India is at the center of global attraction for information technology and is considered a knowledge powerhouse. In the last decade, India has emerged as an IT hub for global software companies and has also become the world's largest sourcing destination for the IT industry. As the size of India's digital economy is increasing, IT companies are establishing their centers in Tier II and Tier III cities which is further enhancing the growth and reducing the existing disparities. Currently, Infogain is focusing on digital innovation, platform innovation, and platform foundation. Recently, as the company joined the private equity network of APAX Partners, the team is looking forward to exploring more business opportunities and is already in preliminary talks with a few companies. Further, its focus also remains on building senior leadership that will help the company grow at 20-25% in the coming years. Infogain remains committed to achieving meaningful outcomes for both the customers and employees. The company is excited to be with them on their individual growth journeys.

Words of Wisdom for the Emerging Leaders 

Cathy advises emerging leaders to value time and to spend it wisely, like money. "It is crucial to identify the activities that will make the biggest impact, then to work smarter to get them done. Every year one's goal should be to contribute 10% more as compared to last year" adds Cathy.

She asserts that focusing on developing a personal learning plan for the year and spending 5 to 10 hours a week working on that plan will help one grow. "Create a vision board to envision yourself in job roles that require more responsibility. Maintain a good work-life balance and take regular breaks to enjoy time with your family on vacations, etc" concludes Cathy.