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Discover how Mahindra Group’s Bristlecone is leveraging a 24 per cent year-on-year growth and strategic AI investments to pursue a billion-dollar valuation in the competitive supply chain services market.
IMAGE: Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com
Key Points
- Bristlecone, a Mahindra Group firm, achieved 24 per cent year-on-year topline growth.
- The company launched “project unicorn” with the ambition to become a billion-dollar valuation company in a few years.
- Bristlecone has expanded its sales team and offerings, focusing on ERP supply chain, data analytics, AI, and product engineering.
- Strategic investments are being made in assets, frameworks, and IP to accelerate implementation times for supply chain products over the next two years.
- High-tech, manufacturing, and life sciences segments are key growth drivers, with AI interventions contributing 10-12 per cent of the company’s topline.
Mahindra Group firm and pure-play supply chain services provider Bristlecone has seen its topline grow 24 per cent year-on-year amid its ambition to become a billion-dollar valuation company, its managing director and CEO Lakshamanan Chidambaram has said.
He also said that the company is bringing its deep expertise to enable its customers in the chosen markets to develop a more resilient supply chain in the wake of the prevailing geopolitical situation.
Bristlecone’s Growth Trajectory
Acquired by Mahindra Group in 2004, the AI-powered supply chain services provider specialises in helping organisations create higher-performing environments and deliver positive customer experience through its expertise in the domain.
“We have grown 24 per cent year-on-year, which clearly shows that the interventions we’ve done are working. We have also opened 15 new Fortune 1,000 logos. So, we are setting it up for growth for the years to come,” Chidamabaram, who moved from the US to India to helm Bristlecone last July, said.
He said in this period the company has taken a slew of initiatives, including launching project “unicorn” that aims to make Bristlecone a billion-dollar valuation company in a few years.
“We have doubled the size of the sales team and increased the range of offerings, but the core focus remains on the supply chain,” he said.
Expanding Global Reach And Service Offerings
The company has a presence in three global markets, with the US as the largest, followed by Europe and India, and offers services to four segments: high-tech, retail and consumer goods, manufacturing, and life sciences, according to Chaidmabram.
“These are the verticals we focus on. And the range of services we provided earlier was ERP supply chain; what we have done now is ERP supply chain and data analytics. We’ve strengthened Artificial Intelligence (AI) and product engineering in a very big way to widen the range of offerings without losing focus on the core ERP supply chain model,” he added.
“(Though) AI projects are not large projects unlike SAP implementation projects. It’s a few million dollars (business), but it establishes you as a thought leader, and then you are able to drive a lot of downstream business,” he said, adding that the revenue from AI intervention would be about 10-12 per cent of the company’s topline.
Strategic Investments In AI And IP
He said that the company has invested significantly in creating assets, frameworks, and IP that will help accelerate implementation times for SAP or any of the supply chain products that it works on.
“Over the next two years, 10 per cent is going towards building accelerators, frameworks, and IP (Intellectual Property) -infused accelerators and building out a set of products. In the medium term, it will make sure that a good portion of our revenue comes from this segment, delinking it from people and making it more IP-driven,” he said.
Driving Innovation And Resilience
The high-tech segment, driven by the data centre and semiconductor boom for AI, remains the growth driver going forward, followed by manufacturing and pharma/life sciences, Chidambaram said, adding that the company upgraded a client’s forecasting model with AI, significantly improving prediction accuracy for tens of thousands of SKUs.
Back home for the parent Mahindra Group’s plant in Pune (Maharashtra), he said, Bristlecone implemented AI, AR, VR, and computer vision across thousands of machines in achieving 99.99 per cent uptime and a 30 per cent reduction in manufacturing energy consumption.
He said that there are a lot of things that now make it unpredictable for enterprises globally to operate, adding, “so in our chosen markets we are bringing the deep expertise that we have gained to enable our customers to develop more resilient and predictable supply chains.”
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