The global leader in Process Mining and Process Intelligence, Celonis is significantly expanding its presence in India. The Munich-headquartered data processing company, which offers software as a service (SaaS) to improve business processes, is scaling both its GCC and domestic customer base in India. Moreover, the company, founded in 2011, is strengthening its regional Centre of Excellence (CoE) and growing the Celonis Academic Alliance community. In fact, India has emerged as a critical hub for Celonis. Its Bengaluru office, which opened in 2021, hosts close to 200 team members.
Celonis has appointed Kaushik Mitra as vice-president & head, India Go-to-Market. Mitra will lead the company’s expansion in this fast-growing market, by driving strategic growth initiatives, deepening customer and partner relationships and scaling business operations.
“Under Mitra’s leadership, Celonis is perfectly positioned to help organisations, including large Indian enterprises (G2K+), GCCs and GSIs, leveraging ‘process intelligence’ and AI to unlock billions in value,” says Malhar Kamdar, chief customer officer & President, Celonis India. “We are committed to investing in India and enhancing our capabilities there as we scale. Mitra’s deep expertise in the SaaS domain and proven industry leadership will be instrumental for growth”.
“With India advancing its ambitious digital transformation agenda, Mitra will play a pivotal role in helping our current and future customers harness the power of process intelligence, to optimise operations, drive efficiency and make AI work – supporting these organisations in their journey toward greater resilience and innovation,” adds Kamdar.
“Enterprises are under increasing pressure to maximise efficiency, reduce complexity and generate RoI from their AI investments,” acknowledges Mitra. “Celonis is uniquely suited to help companies respond to challenges and to reach their goals by providing the visibility and insights needed through Process Intelligence and AI. I look forward to growing our presence in India, deepening our partnerships and delivering value to our customers.”
Mitra brings over 25 years of leadership experience in the IT industry, having held key roles at Oracle, Sify Technologies and Microsoft. Recently, he served as president & business head, Sify Technologies, as also senior director & pillar lead, SaaS, Oracle, where he played a critical role in expanding Oracle’s Applications business in India.
Global innovation hub
Celonis has established a global innovation hub in Bengaluru, called Celonis Garage, to foster innovation and talent. It is strengthening its partnerships with Global System Integrators (GSIs) and consulting firms in India to support enterprise AI and digital transformation. The company is actively growing its Celonis Academic Alliance community in India, fostering collaboration between academia and industry. Celonis has raised $1.77 billion from investors like Accel, 83NORTH and Qatar Investment Authority, with a valuation of $13 billion. In India, the company has invested over $100 million and plans to double its work force in the coming years.
In India, the company works with leading brands that have global capability centers (GCCs) in India, such as Dell Technologies, Wells Fargo, Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Merck and ABB. Celonis also partners with the largest global consulting firms and system integrators (GSI) in the country, such as Capgemini, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC and TCS among others.
“We think the best of the best talents are here in India, the centre of excellence,” observes Carsten Thoma, president, Celonis. “Unlike most of the GCC who typically move their back-office operations – HR, finance, legal – here. We have moved none of those yet. We've actually moved technical expertise, product expertise, product innovation because India for us is a talent pool. It is where we have the largest number of process intelligence practitioners in the world. We actually have started investment in India already four years ago”.
“This is why we're proud, for example, that India has the single largest number of active learners on our platform,” adds Thoma. “India has the single largest number of practitioners because when you put together GCCs, the partners, the academics, that community is the largest in the world already”.
The Celonis Process Intelligence Platform uses industry-leading process mining and AI technology and augments it with business context to give customers a living digital twin of their business operation. It is system-agnostic and without bias and provides everyone with a common language for understanding and improving businesses. Celonis enables its customers to continuously realise significant value across the top, bottom, and green line.