In conversation with Raman Mittal, To The New

In our conversation with Raman Mittal., he talks about the story behind To The New, the roadmap & future plans among other things.

Agency Reporter – What has been the roadmap of TO THE NEW since inception? What was the problem statement you identified?

Raman Mittal – Founded in 2008, TO THE NEW is a digital technology company providing Digital Transformation and Product Engineering services to ISVs, Consumer Internet, and Fortune 500 companies across the globe. Specialising in cutting-edge and emerging technologies, we design and build digital platforms and products with Cloud and Data at the focal point using Agile software development methodologies.

TO THE NEW started its operations at a time when organisations were slow in the adoption of digital technologies. Back then, going digital was perceived as a cost function rather than a brand differentiator like it is seen today. There was an imperative need to work with an agile partner who understands the digital ecosystem well.

For the first few years since our inception in 2008, we focussed on cutting edge technologies like Grails and NodeJs being used by product companies back then. Our penetration in enterprises was always deeper and faster as a result of TO THE NEW being ahead of the curve while expanding our offerings to enterprises and other service-led players.

Agility and being future-forward oriented have played a key role in us pivoting and adapting equally fast to new-age technologies and being recognized by our clients as a nimble brand as well.

Today, TO THE NEW provides end-to-end Digital Transformation to its customers. Our services include Digital Product Engineering, Cloud & DevOps, Data & Analytics, CX & Content, Digital Marketing, and Media Services & Solutions.

We work with well funded product companies like Motus and K+ as well as global enterprises like PWC, Seera Group, 3M and HDFC to name a few.

AR – What’s the size of the team? Why (How) the name TO THE NEW? What is the background of the co-founders?

RM – Our passionate team of 1400+ “Newers” is spread across delivery centres in New Delhi, Dubai, and New York.

Our name TO THE NEW corroborates with our ambition- to create and unleash new worlds of opportunity. And to do so with a new spirit and unique culture. Our logo is a rock, a metaphor for the birth of the newly formed brand- a new entity, still hot, still forming, bursting with energy.

Background of the co-founders:

• An IIT-Delhi alumnus, Deepak Mittal is the CEO at TO THE NEW
• With over two decades of rich experience in the IT Industry, Narinder Kumar is the COO and Co-Founder at TO THE NEW
• Satya Sharma is the CHRO and is one of the Co-founders of TO THE NEW
• Raman Mittal co-founded TO THE NEW in 2008. As the CMO, he spearheads branding and marketing at TO THE NEW

AR – How exactly is TO THE NEW different from other competitors? Who are the other competitors? How do you intend to stay ahead of them?

RM – With a people centric DNA, TO THE NEW carries the Agility of a startup and the maturity of a tech giant to provide its customers with a fine balance between quality, processes, and agility.

With Cloud & Data being the focus areas for us, we have a healthy mix of enterprise clients and product companies as our customers. Courtesy our association with product companies in the early years of formation, our experience with them has become our advantage while taking our offerings to a larger audience.

Our entrepreneurial spirit helps us actively seek change, rather than waiting for things to happen. This Product & Platform Engineering mindset helps TO THE NEW to continuously innovate and improve.

We understand the needs of the market and specialise in new-age technologies to offer best-in-class services to our customers. We offer niche skill expertise in Digital Transformation beyond engineering with our Digital Marketing and Analytics services. TO THE NEW’s right shore delivery model helps us cater to our customers globally.

Companies like GlobalLogic, ValueLabs, Xoriant and Impetus are healthy competition for us, so are the digital wings of large global enterprises like Deloitte Digital, Accenture Interactive and SapientNitro as some examples.

Coupled with people-centricity, our low attrition rate and being ‘right-sized’ has helped us differentiate ourselves, and this is what will help us stay ahead in the market.

TO THE NEW has been a consistent winner of the “Great Place to Work” award since 2015 and ranked #47 in the top 100 companies in India to work for in 2019. In a significant move last year, the company introduced ESOPs to all its employees from junior executives to senior management in order to promote the culture of inclusion and ownership.

We are a socially conscious company. Pahal, our CSR initiative, aims to support causes that impact life meaningfully and bring about a positive change.

AR – How did you acquire the initial few customers? (The story behind it)

RM – TO THE NEW has been very focussed in approach since its inception in 2008 by working on cutting-edge and emerging technologies from the word go. We started out with Cloud, Grails, and Agile at a time when the competition was low, especially when it came to players providing all three. Hence, finding our first few customers was easy. We knew our DNA would find the right fitment with internet and product companies, so our marketing and sales efforts were targeted.

Since the beginning, we established ourselves as thought leaders in our space by publishing content like blogs and whitepapers, along with case studies. TO THE NEW became well-known in the tech community with a great word-of-mouth in the market. As a result, we had our customers reaching out to us.

Having Cloud as a focus since the beginning helped, as our customers found it convenient to bundle other services with Cloud, especially at a time when there were not many Cloud Managed Services Providers in the market. Till date, our focus on cutting-edge technologies and Cloud are a major drawing point for our customers.

AR – What do you intend to do, going forward? (Future plans- Market capture, revenue, expansion, tech optimisation, etc.)

RM – TO THE NEW has witnessed rapid growth over recent years, and we are committed to moving forward with the same vigour. We are capitalising on new-age technologies like Cloud, DevOps, Data Engineering, Analytics & Data Science to drive Product Engineering and Digital Transformation for our clients. We believe that the year ahead will bring even bigger opportunities for TO THE NEW, and we are geared up for the same.

TO THE NEW is amongst the fastest-growing technology companies globally with a CAGR of 50% since 2017. We have clocked the revenue of INR 260 crore in FY20 and aim to post revenue of INR 350 crore in FY21.