Technology is no longer a support function, it’s core to business and value creation: Priyadarsanie Ramasubramanian, Tesco Technology

As the Director of Engineering at Tesco Technology, Priyadarsanie Ramasubramanian brings not only deep technical expertise but also a powerful voice for greater gender representation in STEM. In this insightful conversation, she shares how Tesco Technology in India has evolved from a cost-focused support centre to a global innovation powerhouse, and how the company is placing a strong emphasis on building AI-first capabilities. Most importantly, she speaks candidly about the gender gap in tech leadership, the structural and societal barriers women face in rising through the ranks, and why real change demands focused development programs, conscious inclusion, and redefining the idea of work-life ‘balance’.

How has Tesco Technology in India evolved over the years to support Tesco’s global operations, and what role does technology play in this evolution?

Let me start with some good news—Tesco has had a fantastic financial year. Our strong focus on value and quality, combined with market-leading product availability, has led to higher customer satisfaction and increased market share. We’ve also seen the highest shareholder satisfaction, which reflects the trust in our continued innovation and pricing strategy. Tesco Technology has played a crucial role in enabling this success.

Looking back, Tesco Technology in India started in 2004 as more of a back-end service centre focused primarily on cost arbitrage. Our initial role was to support backend operations. Gradually, we began building business knowledge, and by around 2012, we moved into design, development, and full end-to-end ownership of products.

By 2025, the story will be very different. We are now a core part of Tesco’s global technology capability. For instance, I am based out of India, have teams across the globe and am fully accountable for supply chain engineering. We’ve moved from cost arbitrage to capability arbitrage, and our teams now lead product vision and delivery end to end. It’s been a rewarding journey to witness and be a part of this transformation.

Given the rapid technological shifts, India has evolved from a global BPO hub to an innovation centre. How do you approach talent retention and development in this changing landscape, and how challenging is it to find the right skill sets for emerging technologies?

As I mentioned, the kind of skills we look for are quite different, we go into the market to attract capable technologists. The first step is a strong, standardised vetting process. We’ve clearly defined what we look for in terms of skills, job descriptions, and interview processes, ensuring the same bar is maintained whether we’re hiring in the UK, India, or Central Europe.

We’ve also calibrated our assessors to ensure consistency. That helps us bring in great talent. But retaining that talent is another challenge.

At Tesco, we have a well-defined career path. All job levels are clearly laid out so colleagues know how to progress. They can self-assess to understand what skills they need to move to the next level. Alongside that, we do structured talent planning with our people partners, offering training, mentorship programs, and career development.

We also place strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion. We run returnship programs and women development initiatives to boost representation in STEM roles.

Tesco is a very people-focused company, and that’s one of our biggest strengths. Many join Tesco Bengaluru not just for exciting work, but because of our culture. There’s always a couple of Next-What-Teams (NWTs) thinking about what more we can do to build future capabilities.

Can you elaborate on some of Tesco’s recent digital transformation initiatives and their impact on operational efficiency?

Sure. Before diving into our digital transformation initiatives, it’s important to remember that everything we do is driven by business goals. At Tesco, we focus on four key strategic priorities, and technology plays a crucial role in enabling each of them.

Our aim is to redefine the value we offer and become our customers’ favourite. For instance, we’ve developed platforms that optimise commercial gross margins by enabling price flexibility and automating price changes. We’ve also built robust systems for managing promotions, which help us reduce administrative effort while rolling out competitive and timely offers. We are also deeply committed to the planet, so reducing waste is a major focus.

We strive to serve customers whenever, wherever, and however they choose. This includes major improvements in our online presence. A good example is Woosh, our on-demand grocery delivery service, which allows customers to get groceries delivered in as little as 20 minutes. It’s now rolling out across many stores.

Our loyalty program, Clubcard, provides a strong competitive edge, powered entirely by digital capabilities. We recently celebrated 30 years of Clubcard and currently have over 23 million users. The program uses AI-driven insights to offer personalised rewards and campaigns, all managed seamlessly behind the scenes through our digital platforms.

We constantly look for ways to cut operational costs and boost productivity. Our underlying retail platform handles a billion API calls daily and scales significantly during peak periods like Christmas. We’ve built our own Tesco tills platform which helps us roll out innovative features to help our customers. We’ve also launched Scan As You Shop, which lets customers scan items while shopping, giving them real-time basket visibility. This has been rolled out in Central Europe as part of our global retail platform strategy.

Additionally, we’re deploying robotic automation in our Peterborough depot to optimise stock flow from suppliers to stores. We’re also investing in beefing up and building secure platforms to protect both our customers and colleagues.

So overall, technology is deeply embedded in our operations, enabling smarter, faster, and more sustainable ways to serve our end customers.

Given Tesco’s advanced user interface, does AI or automation play a role in your supply chain operations, and if so, how does it enhance efficiency?

AI and automation play a significant role in our supply chain operations. Supply chain efficiency is all about science and precision. We can’t just pile up inventory to ensure availability—that leads to waste and excess stock. Instead, we’ve developed advanced forecasting algorithms that predict how customers will shop with us. These forecasts rely on big data platforms and machine learning.

We also solve complex combinatorial problems, like optimising stock availability, backroom capacity, labour, and ensuring our delivery trucks run full to reduce carbon emissions. These are classic operations research (OR) problems, and our Bengaluru technology centre is deeply involved in engineering these solutions.

Beyond supply chain, data science touches nearly every aspect of Tesco. From personalising search results, optimising home delivery schedules, driving price reductions, improving order picking, and transport logistics, AI is embedded in it all. If you think of six key areas—price optimisation, personalisation, operations, commercial decision-making, forecasting, and edge intelligence, AI is central to each of them.

Last year, we also rolled out an empathetic customer support chatbot powered by LLMs, which helped us better identify and resolve customer issues. Now, we’re even using LLMs to make sense of unstructured customer feedback.

So yes, AI, ML, and LLMs have seen massive adoption across Tesco, and at this point, it’s hard to find an area where data science isn’t making an impact.

Where does Tesco’s India centre in Bengaluru fit into the company’s global operations roadmap?

I’m not sure that question is entirely accurate because a large part of Tesco’s technology team is based in Bengaluru  and as I mentioned we operate truly like a global organisation.

We don’t really differentiate between the India centre, UK centre, or any other, it’s all about talent and capability. Of course, we try to be co-located where it makes sense. Some directorates have a stronger presence in India, while others are more concentrated in the UK or Europe. But fundamentally, we operate as one global team, and the talent in India continues to be a major strength.

What is your roadmap for the year, and what are your current focus areas?

We have some exciting & challenging initiatives lined up. Marketplace is a major priority. We’re enabling customers to access a wider range of products, not just Tesco’s own, but also those delivered directly by sellers. There’s a significant market share opportunity here, and it’s a fully tech-enabled platform. We’ve just taken the initial steps, and there’s a long journey ahead.

We’re also doubling down on personalisation because customers are at the core of everything we do. We’re building new capabilities that are omni-channel, automated, and real-time, so we can better use our customer data to serve them more effectively.

Another key focus is the continued rollout of our Woosh proposition, expanding it to more regions across the UK and eventually moving globally.

On the tech front, there’s a lot of focus on building the right platforms. We’re taking an AI-first approach, not just in product development, but also in upskilling ourselves as leaders and engineers.

In my area, we’re putting a lot of effort into security, observability, and exploring digital twins. It’s early days, but we aspire to visualise the entire end-to-end journey, from suppliers to stores—in a single view rather than jumping between dashboards. Simulating real-life scenarios through digital twins could be a game-changer.

Female technology leaders still remain relatively uncommon. Why do you think there is still a disparity in leadership representation when it comes to gender?

I’m one of the co-sponsors for diversity and inclusion at Tesco Bengaluru, so this question is very close to my heart. In technology, the gender gap begins right at the start, there are fewer women in STEM overall, and that reflects in the talent pool. At the entry level, we’re doing okay because we make a conscious effort. The bar remains the same for everyone, men and women, but we actively seek to increase representation.

The real challenge begins as women grow in their careers. Life responsibilities catch up. Personally, when I was younger, I felt the pressure to excel in everything, at work, as a mother, as a wife. Many women go through the same and end up dropping off because of this intense pressure to be perfect in every role.

I was fortunate to have someone tell me early on that I don’t have to be a superwoman, I can delegate, let go of guilt, and focus on what truly matters. It was simple advice, but powerful.

That’s why we’re now investing in focused women development programs, to educate, empower, and support more women as they rise through the ranks and ensure we don’t keep seeing this drop-off.

How would you advise aspiring women on navigating their careers without focusing on the idea of balance?

I believe “balance” is the wrong word, it implies giving everything equal priority, which isn’t practical. Instead, it’s about hardcore prioritisation and delegating the rest, even at home. For example, I would never delegate my child’s well-being, but I’m fine delegating tasks like cooking or cleaning. If the meal isn’t perfect one day, that’s okay. But if my child needs my time or guidance, that’s non-negotiable.

Same applies at work. Empower leaders and delegate but get hands-on when needed. It’s about knowing when to prioritise what, whether in personal or professional life. So for me, balance doesn’t exist. It’s all about clear prioritisation and also remembering to take care of your own well-being.