AI isn’t a rat race; being first doesn’t guarantee success: Kunal Mehta, Arvind Fashions Limited
In an exclusive interaction with Express Computer, Kunal Mehta, CIO, Arvind Fashions Limited, offers a candid look into the dynamic world of technology in the fashion retail sector. Mehta discusses the intricate balance of evolving legacy systems while embracing cutting-edge innovations like AI, emphasising the practicalities over perceived glamour. He sheds light on how technology is not just supporting but actively transforming core business functions, from supply chain management to enhancing both customer and employee experiences, underscoring its pivotal role in the future growth of a legacy brand like Arvind.
Arvind Fashions is undergoing a technological shift. How challenging is that process?
It can be quite challenging in two key ways. Firstly, you have to live with your existing legacy tech stack. The organisation has already made significant investments in it and strives to make it work. Simultaneously, you must look forward to new technologies, aligning with the organisation’s strategy and its three-year growth plan.
The challenge lies in balancing these. Can we maximise the usage of what we already have and make it better, while also integrating new-age technology to work alongside it? My role is to be an enabler for the organisation, ensuring we can move forward. This involves carefully balancing investments, partnerships, in-house capabilities versus external expertise, and then building a strong business case to make things work. That’s the biggest challenge.
Being the CIO of a fashion retail company sounds fancy. Is it really?
It’s not fancy at all! All the fancy aspects are reserved for the buyers, merchandisers, and the stores where everything looks beautiful and nice. At the end of the day, my job is to ensure everything works, whether it’s the back-end or the front-end. You can’t have a situation where a customer in a store doesn’t get a good billing experience because IT is involved there. If scanning an article takes 25 seconds and generating a bill takes a minute, that’s the customer experience we’re providing. There’s nothing fancy about that; it’s bad. Today’s consumer is so smart and has hundreds of options. There’s likely a competitor right next door in the same mall offering a better experience. If we can’t match that, then what’s the point? There’s nothing fancy about being a CIO of a fashion company if I can’t deliver a fancy experience to my customer in the store, because that’s what’s expected.
Also, consider the employee experience. A store manager might have worked with other retailers in a much better technological environment. If I can’t provide that same level of employee experience, I’m losing out again. So, from that perspective, there’s nothing fancy about being in retail IT. It sounds very fashionable, but the job actually gets even tougher because of it. Especially now, you’re not just selling in stores; you’ve got e-commerce, marketplaces, and your own direct-to-consumer websites. Everyone expects everything in 10 minutes now. How do you enable all of that? That’s the difficult part. You have to manage supply chain systems, warehouse infrastructure, and the end-to-end supply chain from manufacturing to stores, including returns and all the associated complexities. Then there’s automating processes at the head office for efficiency, whether it’s HR systems, finance systems, or even internal IT and the turnaround times we provide to employees. These challenges are common across all organisations.
We’ve seen technology departments evolve from being “corner rooms” to now having their budgets integrated into the go-to-market strategy, from supply chain to everything else. So, how does technology factor into your supply chain and go-to-market strategy at Arvind?
Technology is right at the heart of it. While I can’t speak about specific projects we’ve initiated right now, they are going to completely transform our supply chain in the next year. It will be a complete transformation from where we are today to what we will become and it will result in a very different organisation once everything is complete. The good thing is that everyone, from the top leadership – the promoters, CEO, and CXOs – is very mindful of the role technology is going to play in changing things, making them faster, better, and more agile. This also includes improving productivity and, importantly, the overall work-life balance of employees.
There are activities that might take a person 12 hours a day. If I can change that and make it three hours a day, imagine the impact it will have on that person and their life. They will not only do that specific job better but also have time to pursue other things within the organisation. That’s truly the agenda, and that’s how I look at every activity and every project we undertake internally. The idea is always to see: am I saving cost, am I saving time, am I improving a process, or is the governance becoming better? For everything we do, I always ask my team to categorise it into these four buckets. If it fits, based on the project timelines, then we proceed. If it doesn’t fit, it goes to the backseat.
AI and digital technologies have been trending for the last few years. How is Arvind leveraging them especially in fashion retail, apps, and websites?
We have a separate digital team that handles most of the work related to our omni-channel presence, which includes our dot-coms and marketplaces. They do a great job. Our role, however, is to collaborate with them and truly enable the underlying systems, processes, master data, and ensure everything is available at the right time to whoever needs it. We are the integration touchpoint for everything in the organisation.
As far as AI is concerned, we’ve just started our journey. As I mentioned, it plays a role in part of our supply chain. Beyond that, we’re using it significantly in finance for robotics and process improvements. Those are the areas where AI is currently coming into play.
So, are you still testing it, or are you implementing it?
No, we’re implementing it. That’s happening now, absolutely. And then there’s the whole reporting aspect. We’re trying to centralise our entire reporting at Arvind, and we’re looking at how to leverage AI to make it more user-friendly, providing better insights and understanding of what reports or data mean to different businesses or functions. That’s a journey we’ve started.
Do you think it’s an “AI race”—who will implement it first?
AI can never be about who implements it first because every organisation has its own journey. If you’re a very mature organisation and far ahead, perhaps you’ll do things first. But there’s also a chance you might do it the wrong way or even fail the first time you start out. I can be the second mover and still do better than you. So, I genuinely don’t get into that “rat race,” and I don’t have a FOMO either, thinking, “If these five CIOs or organisations have done it, where am I?”
I am cognizant of the fact that we need to implement it to stay competitive, but you have to understand whether you’re truly ready for it as an organisation. You can invest a lot of money in technology, but are you utilising it? That’s the important thing. When I talk to many CIOs, they often talk about what they’ve implemented. I always ask: “What is the usage? Show me the usage; show me the success of what you implemented.” You might have had a great implementation, but are people using it? If there’s no usage and adoption of that technology, what’s the point? The money is down the drain. You can say you did a great job, but if your users aren’t utilising it, there’s no point in boasting about it. I always believe you should implement what will be utilised and ensure high adoption in whatever you do. That needs to be paramount. You need to have a business sponsor who stands up and says, “This is great.” To me, that is success.
As the CIO of Arvind Fashions, what would be your core objective for the next year?
Arvind is such a wonderful, long-standing, and aspirational brand. I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity at Arvind after working with other brands, especially now, as an organisation, we’re growing so much and achieving great things. I feel like I’m the lucky CIO who’s at the right place at the right time. We have great plans, and there’s significant sponsorship to implement a lot of technology, not just as an enabler, but to showcase to the world how Arvind and technology can go hand in hand, and what all we can achieve by doing that. So, my aspiration is to live up to those expectations and simply be a part of this wonderful success story and brand. That’s all you can hope for.
