Mani Thiru

Practice Director - Digital Transformation at Cognizant

Sydney, Australia

@ManiThiru | LinkedIn Profile

What exactly is your role at Cognizant?

I head the digital consulting practice for Australia. I work with a motley crew of pirates, hipsters, self-confessed geeks and artists passionate about creating great experiences for customers (of our corporate clients). The technical lingo would translate that as digital advisory and transformative delivery by a multi-disciplinary team of strategists, technologists, designers and data scientists. Our clients sit in varied sectors - financial services, retail, life sciences and higher education and grapple with differing challenges. While we have a framework for navigating complexity – no two days are the same! Our work is steeped in customer centricity and design thinking; typically we start very low tech with paper and pencil sketches - ideation and conceptualization, then move through rapidly to mock ups and prototypes before advancing to implementation and delivery of IoT, Robotics and SMAC enabled solutions.

You are truly a global resident having lived and worked on several continents. Why has this been the case and what key lessons have you taken to heart as a result of this?

Global resident sounds very glamorous! It wasn’t always a choice. I was born in the UK, but my heritage is Srilankan. The civil war displaced us, we were bombed out of our home like thousands of others; but were fortunate enough to find new beginnings. And I was truly lucky – I grew up in the sunny savanna lands of a post-colonial Zimbabwe in an era flush with hope and abundance. Undergrad studies found me in New Zealand before work opportunities took me across to Amsterdam and Sunnyvale, California working for then start-up, NetApp.

Lessons taken to heart are aplenty – but the one thing that is always strikingly clear to me, no matter where I sit down to coffee (a daily ritual!); from Dubronovik to Delhi and from Cape Town to Cornwall – underneath, we are all the same. Our driving needs are the same. Constructs like language, religion, and politics might be different – yet we laugh the same, we hurt the same.

And at some level, regardless of our title or position in life – we desire to be loved and aspire to be happy.

I operate in the belief that there exists a common bond between us all, and even if it’s not always immediately visible – we are connected. And it is through this connection, through our interaction with each other that we discover our own wondrous qualities. My humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound in yours. My understanding of this from a young age was shaped by “Ubuntu” – a traditional African philosophy that offers us an understanding of ourselves in relation with the world; that we are part of a greater whole.

How would you describe the business cultural differences between Bay Area, Amsterdam, and Sydney?

Well, for starters you can cycle to work in Amsterdam! And it’s perfectly normal to kiss your European colleagues in greeting. It’s extremely egalitarian in the Netherlands; it didn’t matter where you sat in the pecking order - people spoke their minds very openly. And there were no limits to the conversation; it could easily well cover the quality of coffee beans in the kitchen to company strategy and the latest political antics of the government. That’s a big no-no in the States; you stick to business topics. And people are far more careful when it comes to banter between males and females. But the pace of work on the east and west coast of US is frantically exciting particularly in the Bay area. You can’t fail to feel the entrepreneurial, innovative buzz on any one of the tech campuses in Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Mountain View. And while there is hierarchy to navigate, there’s room for mavericks with merit. Australia feels a lot like a mix of pom and yank cultures.

You started your career with the intent to take up medicine. What led you to pivot to technology and digital?

The younger version of me had slightly misguided, if noble aims – when you grow up on hand-me-downs, there is always a great desire to give back, connect with and care for people as an instinctual response. But at a very visceral level, I fast discovered I couldn’t handle lab dissections, blood, tissue and gore….then there was a morgue visit one day where I was an epic wreck. I short-circuited by stepping out with a Bachelors in Physiology and threw myself into a post grad with business and technology. I wanted in on those brick-y Nokia mobile phones and boxy ThinkPads which weighed a ton. I figured there’d be a way to give back other ways too.

You are passionate about the consumer experience. What drives this?

I believe beauty, good design, and elegance have an energetic impact on us. Even if we don’t always consciously register it. A product, a service offering, any experience has the potential to delight. Mary Meeker talks about this. Walter Isaacson notes that innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. And philosopher-psychotherapist Pierro Ferrucci writes: “Beauty is a primary principle that touches all parts and functions of our being. It opens us to the world and brings harmony to our relations with others”. Viewed from this lens, consumer experience is ripe for disruption.

You are a board member of the Bundanon Trust. Can you provide an overview of this organization and your involvement?

Bundanon Trust supports arts practice and engagement with the creative through its residency, education, exhibition and performance programs. It is the living embodiment of Australian treasure and artist Arthur Boyd – and his vision to nurture creative endeavor and to share Bundanon’s spectacular landscape while preserving the natural and cultural heritage of its site. As someone who has a deep appreciation for art, music, ecology and the confluence thereof – I was beyond delighted when I was appointed by the Federal Minister for the Arts to the Board earlier this year. I feel very privileged to serve on a Board that includes an extraordinary array of accomplished individuals from the arts, education, business and legal backgrounds. My primary contribution is on all things digital.

Who do you consider to be strong women leaders in the FinTech space?

I’ll tell you about my three favourite women at this point in time; they hail from corporate, humanitarian and politics and might not be immediately thought of fintech leaders.

• Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president for retail and online stores. It’s not just the financial results achieved by Ahrendts that make her a great leader. She is a fan of creative design, a huge advocate of the power of positive energy and the benefits of team working over a shared goal.
• Arundhati Roy took the literary world by storm 14 years ago with her Booker prize winning The God of Small Things. Since then she’s become a fearless activist who promotes social justice, sustainability and feminist principles. She is the embodiment of speaking truth to power – and regularly speaks about structural conditions, entities and globalization impacts that maintain systemic injustice in her homeland India and beyond.
• Angela Merkel - What I admire most about her is her inclusive style of governance which she describes as think, consult and then decide. One of Germany’s most popular leaders; she’s unafraid of making tough decisions; Greece austerity measures, meeting with the Dalai Lama despite China’s public protest, expression of shame for the Holocaust during a speech to the Israeli Knesset and more recently her stance on the European refugee crisis. It takes fortitude to confront these matters and “Mama Merkel” does it with laudable grace and dignity.

What do you see as the 3 leading future trends for FinTech?

I could talk about AI & machine-learning, evolving blockchain technology, open source or any of the amazing emerging innovations set to usher us into a new era. But ultimately (for me), it’s going to be down to re-imagining the experience (payments/ lending/ fund management…etc).

 

About Cognizant:

Originally founded over two decades ago as a technology arm of Dun & Bradstreet, Cognizant is a global provider of technology and business services, helping companies “run better” by improving performance efficiencies as well as “run different” by driving innovation and business transformation for the needs of the future. A juggernaut that leverages the reach of a global workforce of ~220,000 employees, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000 and the Fortune 500. We’re proud to have been named among Fortune magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies for seven years in a row and recently by Forbes among the World’s Most Innovative Companies.

In the Fintech space, the Payments Practice is one of the largest with 9000+ associates in services spanning across the value chain; Digital Acquiring/Issuing, Payment Security , HCE Payments, Real Time Payments, Block Chain etc. We’re engaged with most of the major processors, networks, issuers, acquirers, money transfer providers and a host of leading solution providers in the digital payment ecosystem including ACI, FICO, Bell ID, Fund Tech, Encap, OnDot, Ripple Labs, BitPay.