Tesco HSC to pump $500,000 into incubation unit

T-Garage hopes to mine start-ups for ideas to enhance productivity

Tesco HSC (Hindustan Service Centre), the only technology service hub of Tesco, the world’s second largest retailer, has decided to spend $500,000 for T-Garage, an in-house start-up incubation centre.

In an interaction with Deccan Herald, Tesco HSC Group Director and Chief Information Officer Vinod Bidarkoppa said T-Garage will help the company to anticipate technological advancements for future growth. “We constituted T-Garage in 2014 and brought in start-ups in and around Bengaluru and succeeded in incubating around 10 companies. It will help us to understand their thought process and ideas. The funding will last for five years.

Tesco selects companies via ‘Umbrella Auspices’, a hackathon held thrice annually,” said Bidarkoppa.

He also said that as part of the programme, startups are nurtured inside Tesco and taken to various other incubation centres in India. HSC provides about three-fourths of the technology and innovation know-how to the global stores and businesses of the Cheshunt, England-based grocery and general merchandise major.

HSC’s focus is on delivery of products and platforms and deploying infrastructure applications.  Research is also done on robotics and internet-enabled clothing, besides wearable devices and mobile apps.

The centre is the driving force for Tesco in technology, property management, financial control for UK and Central America, commercial buying and administration, business services (digital marketing, payrolls, webanalytics), besides Tesco Labs which undertakes innovative product development.

“About 70 to 75 per cent of our global technology is managed and developed from Bangalore and it has multiple components. Mainly, we develop world-class products and platforms to be deployed across many countries. A big part of the work is for brick and mortar and digital businesses. We are also running our technology footprint and estates across all countries 365 days and 24 X7, including application and infrastructure estate,” he said.

Tesco Labs, an important pillar of Tesco HSC, is the innovation arm that is thinking, piloting and deploying futuristic innovations. A few of them are deployed as products to improve customer experience which include scan-as-we-shop, electronic labels, and queue depth check system.

The centre brought in changes by introducing elements of the DevOps model, a new shift in the industry, where retail will marry software engineering with IT operations.

“We combined the development/engineering organisation and the support organisation into a single one called Design, Development and Run (DDR) in 2014. This brought dramatic changes to the organisation,” he said.

It also changed the methodology of the organisation into agile. “Our Holy grail is making changes every day and releasing it to production so that customers get the benefits. We also do not want to have any locked up capital so that we can pass on the benefits to customers,” he said.