UST Global has been recognized by APAC CIOOutlook Magazine as the recipient of “Top Government Technology Companies in APAC,” based on our proprietary methodology, reflecting its position in the industry. This profile has been developed by the APAC CIOOutlook research and editorial team based on insights from an interview with Hari Chandrashekaran.

UST Global
Powering Citizen-Centric Digital Transformations

Hari Chandrashekaran, VP and Global Head, Public Sector

Governments today are increasingly opening up to digital transformation that is citizen-centric and agile. However, the ROI aspect and the service-oriented nature of a solution dictate the viability of investing in it. “ROIs can be in terms of monetary value as well as social relevance in the form of acceptance by citizens,” says Hari Chandrasekaran, VP and Global Head, Public Sector of UST Global. In tandem, government administrators are constantly struggling to identify the most pressing issues in their states and envision a project to resolve the problems. Following the citizen-centric approach, UST Global bridges the gap between administrators’ approach and the actual problems in a state, assisting governments to carry out projects successfully. “We bring in the right proposition with a futuristic approach that will yield the desired ROI for governments.”

Founded in 1999, UST Global specializes in six next-generation digital services—design, cybersecurity, mobile, social, analytics, and cloud. “The acceptance of a service and its stickiness is closely driven by understanding what the customer needs are and how an IT company can fulfill them. This is where our Design focus comes into play,” says Chandrasekaran. The company has devised a ‘design for happiness’ (D4H) framework that focuses on user-experience and converts end-user pain points into bliss points. The company’s assurance of its services is evident from its focus on cybersecurity that covers three aspects— securing the infrastructure, cyber threat assessment (internal and external), and cyber attribution.

We bring in the right proposition with a futuristic approach that will yield the desired ROI for governments

“In addition to this, we also have an enabler function wherein we help customers build in-house cybersecurity capabilities.”

The smart city is one of the areas where UST Global has a large part of its focus on. The company assists governments in getting different departments with varying level of maturity in IT adoption and service automation on a single page. One such use case was that of digital transformation of 377 urban local bodies (ULBs) in Madhya Pradesh (India) that were at different levels of maturity with respect to IT adoption and digital literacy. UST Global successfully carried out the herculean task of implementing a straight-jacketed approach for automating urban administration (both citizen services as well back office automation) in the state as a whole. Powering the lives of 70 million people, UST Global created an ERP platform where all the 377 ULBs were brought under a unified digital system. Now, the residents of these ULBs can easily pay their property tax through their phones from anywhere in the world. Alongside smart city, UST Global is also powering government efforts toward the automation and digital transformation of state owned organizations such as those in education and healthcare sectors.

With a strong partner ecosystem and the approach to manage lesser customers to avoid diluting its ability to deliver, UST Global aims at bringing forth the best solutions to the market. Chandrasekaran believes that the future of IT is moving toward a decentralized environment called “uberization” or aggregation where smaller niche players are partnering with larger players to address customer needs. “UST has the expertise to identify such value-adding partners and periodically invests in them to strengthen our delivery portfolio. We are agile and nimble at enforcing change,” says Chandrashekaran. From a cybersecurity standpoint, the company is jointly working with governments to create security experts. “Cybersecurity awareness will allow citizens to embrace digital platforms and mechanisms that will further open up new business opportunities for us.”

Another key area where UST Global is focusing on is the transformation of online assessment and hiring processes in the public sector. “Digital profiling is becoming important to understand the data of an assessee. This is where the future of digital assessment will be, and that is where our focus lies,” concludes Chandrasekaran.