India uses tech to overcome challenges

Mehul Kapadia is the vice-president of Tata Communications and managing director in charge of the Formula One Business of the firm. F1, one of the most technologically advanced sports in the world, holds races across five continents and 21 countries. Here the Tata Comms chief explains why they chose the Indian tech giant and how the year 2016 has been a good one.How is Tata Communications working with F1 as the Official Connectivity Provider We started with Formula 1 in 2012 so this is our fifth year of relationship with them. F1 is a fantastic global sport, goes to emerging markets, cutting edge of technology, with new things happening across the board - whether it is getting the car go faster or improving fan experience.From Tata Communications standpoint, we thought that this was a brilliant capability showcase for us.For Formula One management, the company that Bernie Ecclestone runs, we provide a whole layer of services. From connectivity services from all the race tracks back into their offices in the UK. All the locations are connected by us.On top of that, we give them a lot of manage hosting and data centre services to host the right infrastructure. What that package allows them to do is very efficiently transport voice data video seamlessly from the racetrack back to any part of the world.It also helps with a lot of remote operations. They are using 335 times of what they were using when we came into the sport. The scale of growth has been phenomenal. They have started doing remote operations from the UK.How are Tata Communications' products used in F1 The biggest thing that Tata Communications provides is an assurance of reliability. They bank on us for so many of their services that they need a partner like us who can ensure things work.Since 2013, we have started working with the Mercedes FM team, the year Lewis Hamilton also joined them. They used to be No. 4 back then and now they have been world champions back to back for four years. With them as well, we help them connect from the race track to their factory in the UK.Another aspect is our work with broadcasters on the racetrack. But the biggest aspect is that it is an innovation platform for us. What we are trying to do with them is test out technology ahead of time so that as it becomes mainstream, it can be adapted and deployed.How is F1 of particular benefit to the company Live sports is one of the biggest drivers of content. It's just the sheer scale - as the visual imagery starts getting better for 4K screens, the content is also pushing boundaries. For a sport that goes to such diverse locations, it is an even bigger challenge.To be able to do it in that kind of an environment, with compressed timelines but absolute reliability is something that can be tested out as proof of concept and then it can be brought into the mainstream. For viewers, it's a simple ultra-definition program but if you see the work that goes behind it is massive.Once you do it for sports, it goes on to impact all enterprises - whether it is a bank wanting to do trading on remote exchanges or an IT company wanting to deploy software globally or manufacturing company doing production of parts in any part of the world, it is this kind of seamless connectivity that actually helps you do it better.So the F1 partnership keeps us very honest and ahead of time. They are on the cutting edge of technology, they push the boundaries and we do as well and together there is always something magical that comes out.How do you see the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) shaping up in India The good thing about the India market is that technology adoption now really happens pretty much simultaneously to the rest of the world.India probably has adopted technology to overcome all the obstacles of infrastructure we have had otherwise. Hence whether it is concepts like Big Data or IoT or AI or VR, we are there. The important thing is to figure out the applications of all of these; the ingredients we as a company can provide. We provide the underlying connectivity, the cloud services that can help run Big Data. It is important to work closely with industry to create jointly the applications that can help, whether it is in education, healthcare, financial sector like banking or even VR entertainment.We use the F1 platform as a potential idea generation tool for such ideas.