A Japanese tech giant reinvents itself in India

Tokyo. Photo credit: Wikipedia

“It was about 12 years ago that I started working with Indian partners,” Masayoshi Tamura recalls. “I fell in love in India, with India.”

He was taking trips to the subcontinent for Hitachi, the Tokyo-headquartered company he joined in 1986.

He became known inside the Japanese tech giant as one of its India experts. He advanced to become general manager of the Indian branch of the Digital Solutions and Services Group and moved permanently to Bangalore in 2012, later on to Delhi. He’s now firmly in India’s tech establishment, as seen in Masayoshi’s role as co-chair of the Japan Council of NASSCOM, an Indian trade association for the IT sector.

India booms

Hitachi is perhaps less of a household name than Japan’s other corporate behemoths, like Sharp or Sony. But it’s huge, with a global employee count above 330,000.

It makes electronics, things like air conditioners, projectors, TVs, and hard drives, but most of what it does is invisible to consumers like you and I. It has to do with industrial equipment, automotive parts, railways and trains, IT systems, power plants, and other infrastructure we tend to overlook and take for granted.

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The division Masayoshi leads in India is small, consisting of only 20 people. They consult with local clients and build IT solutions for the Indian market, usually on top of other Hitachi systems. They’ve recently been working on a data storage concept for Indian hospitals, introducing a safer and at the same time more energy efficient way to store and access patient data, Masayoshi explains.

The firm needs India’s youth and human resources – not to mention its huge economic potential.

Localizing existing Hitachi products to fit Indian clients’ needs is just one part of it. Most of the time, custom solutions are needed, and these are produced together with local partners and subcontractors.

Masayoshi sees his work as part of the Japanese corporation’s culture of bottom-up-innovation.

“Social innovation for social infrastructure is the company’s ultimate goal,” he says.

“India is a very good environment for new projects – here we can do experiments. By working and using design solutions in India, we can apply them elsewhere,” Masayoshi adds.