Eminent CIO's Of India 2026

Building Technology That Reaches Everyone

 

Jaspreet Singh
Chief Revenue Officer ( Consulting ) -  Grant Thornton Bharat LLP

 

A successful digital strategy brings together smart investment decisions, secure and inclusive systems, and a culture that embraces AI as a tool for augmentation rather than replacement.

 

IT STRATEGY: Invest, Measure, Optimize, and Secure
Our IT investment strategy is built on diversification, continuous rebalancing, and disciplined action on underperforming initiatives. Every year, we assess our investments against two dimensions: business impact and operational resilience.

Anything that scores low on both gets retired or replaced. Instead of investing in isolated point solutions, we prioritize platforms that integrate well and scale with the organization. We conduct periodic value audits essentially asking if the investment is still delivering what we intended and if not, we course-correct it quickly and make space for what is growing. So, it’s a continuous cycle - invest, measure, optimize, and secure.

 

THE FOUNDATION OF TRUS: Security, Privacy, Inclusion
We have integrated security, privacy and digital transformation as one. A system that is secure but inaccessible to someone with a disability, or someone who doesn’t speak the dominant language, isn’t serving its purpose. On the security front, we have implemented zero-trust architecture, continuous monitoring, and AI-driven threat detection. On Privacy, we have adopted privacy-by-design which incorporates data minimization, encryption and consent management into the system.

Digital inclusion is a key priority where we design solutions that are accessible across different demographics. We optimize our platforms using lower data usage, offline capability, simpler interfaces which is affordable and accessible for all. Security, privacy, and inclusion aren’t compliance obligations but a foundation of trust.

 

Strengthen People’s Capabilities with AI
AI readiness is a culture shift and not just training and lessons. While introducing AI-assisted tools to our teams, we started by removing fear that their roles would evolve and not disappear, and we would invest in helping them evolve with it. Then we integrated learning into everyday work. We adopted a three-pillar approach - awareness, augmentation, and accountability.

First, on awareness, we conducted AI literacy sessions for both technical and non-technical teams to demystify AI and help people understand how it can create value in their day-to-day work. Second, augmentation, we embedded AI into our core workflows rather than treating it as a standalone capability. Third, accountability, we redefined roles to make AI adoption part of performance expectation and no longer optional capability. The objective is to strengthen people’s capabilities and not replace them.