Changing policies to attract tech talent: Avery Dennison’s Agrawal

Avery Dennison, one of the world's largest suppliers of labels, graphic tags and price tickets to the apparel industry, recently opened a digital acceleration centre in Bengaluru. Sanjay Agrawal, the company's IT Vice president, sat down with DH’s Lavpreet Kaur to shed light on how it was changing rules to attract tech talent and why it was betting big on the new centre in ‘India’s Silicon Valley’. Edited excerpts.

What do you hope to achieve through this centre?

Our vision is digitisation of the physical world and this centre is one of the many steps we are taking to make that happen. Starting from the 2D barcode on apparels, scanning which consumers can get the digital experience of the product, we are looking forward to strengthening our presence in the digital space. The digital centre was started with the aim to take the digital journey forward by enhancing the consumer experience, empowering them to make the right decisions, improving the brand experience, and making our processes digitised, efficient, and sustainable.

Tell us about your hiring and expansion plans.

Before the pandemic, the technology talent was only two people in Bengaluru. We didn’t invest a lot in technology. Now, we are ramping up as fast as possible and in the last 6-9 months, we have built a team of 50+ people. The funding across the organisation is moving from traditional business to digital business. So, as we continue to get digital talent, we will continue to invest in Bengaluru, which is our key technology hub. Alongside Bengaluru, we will also be looking at our digital centres in Dallas in the USA, and China. The Bengaluru centre is the largest of them all. We are expanding and I feel Bengaluru is the right place to attract the digital talent who will drive the digital journey.

Are you ready for digital talent? You got into trouble with trade unions recently over fair wages and jobs, right?

All the major research shows that the technology talent across the world is getting expensive. We had our policies in place, but for digital talent, we are now creating a lot of exceptions. This is the beginning of the journey, those policies (that won’t work for our digital talent) are going to be changed or revised. A good example is our expense policy, which is now completely different from what it was, for digital talent. So, the answer is yes! Those policies, we are adjusting. As we are moving towards a more digitised world, we are changing our traditional approach.

How has your India business changed? What are your future plans?

25 years ago, when we started in India, one could not even imagine having a 2D barcode in a grocery store, let alone digital evolution. That itself was a challenge that seemed intangible. Also, the Indian market is a cost-competitive market. Barcode technology became available in the Indian market only in 2010 and now, the use of RFID-enabled tracking shows how far we have come in adopting digital ways. Likewise, many other groundbreaking digital evolutions are getting acceptance in the Indian market as people are becoming more aware of sustainability. So far, we have been investing in the apparel industry for the major brands. In the future, our focus is also on the food industry, logistics, consumer goods, retail industries, and digitisation of stores to bring about the best consumer experience.