'MNCs, Indian cos to collaborate with rivals by 2025' | Economic Times

Multinational companies as well as Indian firms across sectors, including retail, manufacturing, insurance and healthcare, will collaborate with rivals by 2025, a study by the TCS Thought Leadership Institute showed.The institute conducted a survey of 1,200 CEOs and senior executives across North America, UK, Europe, APAC and Latin America.Out of the surveyed firms, the study identified some as ‘Leaders,’ or firms that reported higher-than-average gains in revenue (over 65%) and net profit (over 73%) in their industries between 2015 and 2019.These companies constituted up to 29% of the survey.The study also identified firms that are ‘Followers’ which had higher-than-average decreases in revenue (-15%) and net profit (-36%) in their industry between 2015 and 2019.‘Leaders’ are more willing to collaborate with competitors, according to the ‘Where, How and What Leaders Will Compete with in the New Decade: Findings from the TCS 2021 Global Leadership Study.’“Clearly, most “Leaders” realize they must collaborate extensively with competitors to be key players in digital ecosystems. Lower performers still regard competitors as enemies to avoid. “Leaders” also anticipate that more of their revenue will come from purely digital offerings compared to “Followers,” it said.Krishnan Ramanujam, president and head of business and technology at TCS, said, “There are many other industries in which we see competitors collaborating, either for market access, or for better economies of scale, whatever may be the reason, we see this happening across the board.”While fewer than half of the Indian companies surveyed said they would collaborate with competitors, a third (34%) said they plan to increase collaboration by 2025 and 10% respondents said they will decrease it.Ramanujam said that there were two broad trends reflected in the survey – servitization and business-to-business (B2B) companies increasingly catering to their consumers directly.Servitization is a shift from a company selling just products to selling their product as-a-service. “One is B2B companies coming up with ‘As-a-Service’ offerings. A trend that also suits their end customers because nobody wants to spend on capex. They want to do things in a small way, deliver proof of value, and then go on to increase their investments and so on. The second thing that we also see is that many B2B companies now want to get into B2C or direct to consumers,” he said.Indian companies also believe learning/upskilling/reskilling will be the most important characteristic of corporate culture by 2025, the study said.The study also showed that despite growth in digital opportunities that business leaders expect through 2025, most are “underestimating the amount of innovation they will need to compete this decade.”