Tech Mahindra Ltd expects to launch about five pilot projects on 5G services by next month and execute big projects on the new generation network from 2019-20, said a top executive of the software services firm. “My personal belief is that by September, we would launch (5G pilot projects). Tech Mahindra will be launching its complete service offerings along with its partners,” said Tech Mahindra CEO C.P. Gurnani in Hyderabad.
“We expect within this financial year to do about five 5G trials and hopefully in the financial year, starting 1 April 2019, we will be executing some big projects,” he added. “My (Tech Mahindra’s) appetite is very, very large and the opportunity of 5G is very large.”
Gurnani also said Tech Mahindra hopes to garner over $100 million as revenues from blockchain technology during the current fiscal.
“By the year-end, I would think is that it will become significant ( revenues) by my standards. That means I am talking of $100 million+. By somebody else’s standards it may not be significant.... We are in 90+ countries. Tech Mahindra is going to spend a lot of its energy and time on skill development.We don’t have a India-based platform for blockchain. China has Neo. Korea has its own. Why would not we have our own?,” said Gurnani.
Tech Mahindra has a R&D team of about 150 engineers in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. It recently said it would invest 100 million Canadian dollars over the next five years on a Centre of Excellence based out of Toronto, which would work on Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain. It also signed an MoU with the Telangana government for setting up India’s first “blockchain district” in the state.