Temus was founded to help build the digital future for Singapore and beyond through holistic transformation enabled by technology. Established by Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore, in strategic partnership with UST, a global digital services firm for Fortune 500 companies in April 2021, Temus catalyses digital transformation capabilities in a holistic manner. The firm is powered by a deep understanding of people and processes, to unlock social and economic value, and accelerate the present into the future.
The digital enterprise focuses on providing differentiated services to deliver disruptive change, daring to think bigger and taking on the greatest challenges. In an interview with Business Frontier, Rajesh Rao, Managing Director, Technology, Temus, opens up on how he engages creative, analytical and ingenious minds to help propel the business to greater heights.
Q. Tell us something about your initial days in the field.
I started my career at Infosys in the early 1990s, at the height of the technology boom. It was exciting to see new technologies develop and start-ups getting established. This experience led me to become a serial entrepreneur focused on transforming businesses with the latest technology.
As a serial entrepreneur, I focus on building a strong enterprise-wide foundation to ensure that they can scale rapidly, and maximising profitability without compromising employee well-being. I have applied this unique scaling methodology to grow multiple large businesses in Silicon Valley and the Asia Pacific.
Having witnessed and participated in technology changes from mainframes to Cloud and now Generative AI, I realised the importance of having a long-term vision, strong ethical values, and excellent team members who are better than you to build long-lasting organisations.
Q. What led you to join Temus?
My exciting journey of building and scaling start-ups led me to join Temus. To sum up, I joined due to three key reasons:
- Digitally transform our public sector agencies by helping them adopt the latest technologies and deliver real impact to society.
- Transform the workforce by upskilling non-technical team members to become digital experts.
- Build a local digital champion in Singapore, which will compete against the best in the industry by having strong domain/ technology experts, implementing the latest innovations such as Cloud/AI/ML, and redefining software development methodologies using Generative AI.
I was also deeply aligned with the company’s vision of solving the consulting execution gap by leveraging cross-functional teams comprising of Technology, Strategy, and Design experts. Temus has grown exponentially to more than 400 people and will continue this in subsequent years. The growth is testament to our strong leadership, culture of innovation, and collaboration.
Q. Can you describe your primary responsibilities within the organisation?
I am the Managing Director of Technology at Temus. My role is multifaceted and covers growing the business sustainably. I am involved in winning new clients and overseeing project delivery from end-to-end. This includes bringing new service offerings to customers and building the right technology capabilities.
In a nutshell, my role can be summed up as:
- Building the right team and culture to take Temus to the next level.
- Identifying how new technologies such as Cloud/Generative AI can transform business and how the solution can be implemented with minimal risk to customers.
- Building strong partnerships with Hyperscalers and SaaS solution providers to integrate their innovations into Temus service offerings.
- Mergers and acquisition activities i.e. identifying potential companies to acquire and integrate with Temus.
I am very passionate about using Generative AI technologies to create new business models and redefine software development life cycle processes. I look for ways to scale up our service deliveries through playbooks, reference architectures, reusable components, and automation tools.
With regards to acquisitions, we expanded our technology modernisation capabilities through the acquisition of DreamCloud, one of Singapore’s largest Outsystems delivery teams and pioneers in the low code space. We also acquired Decision Science Agency which brings valuable AWS skills to Temus.
Q. What are the most exciting and challenging aspects of your job?
Temus is a fast-growing technology company set to reach a headcount of 1,000 digital talents rapidly. We have also grown our client portfolio by covering a wide range of public and private sector projects across industries, from insurance to telecommunications. Our exciting journey has just begun. We are now focused on scaling up Temus by building up the right team with strong values, continuously innovating to leverage cutting-edge technologies, and innovating delivery life cycles to take up larger and more complex transformation engagements.
Our teams constantly face new and different challenges every day. This requires us to assess problem statements critically from multiple perspectives and create a customised solution each time. While challenging, it intrigues me as I get to collaborate and lead workshops with senior executives to create new ideas, solutions and understand how they will positively impact businesses.
Another exciting part of my job is using Generative AI technologies both for client projects and improving internal processes. We use it to create new business models for various industries and also re-imagine software development life cycle to produce higher quality and more secure applications using less engineering resources. This allows us to scale our business and break the correlation between revenue growth and hiring people.
Since the day I delved into the digital industry more than 30 years ago, new technologies and developments constantly pique me. It drives me to keep learning and overcome evolving customer challenges every day.
Q. What principles have helped you stay ahead of the curve?
I have followed five principles in this regard for the last three decades:
- Surround yourself with a diversity of skilled team players who are extremely talented.
- Always think of customers whenever applying new technological tools.
- Ethics and strong values are the foundation for growth.
- It is better to sacrifice short-term gains for long-term benefits.
- Be a lifelong learner of technology, business models, and problem-solving.
I combined these principles recently when I built a new practice for a SaaS product implementation. Employing diverse individuals and long-term learning, we created a talent ecosystem consisting of a core team of SaaS platform experts, a supporting team of Temus talents, and a back-end implementation team from offshore vendors. In doing this, we realised the importance of recognising different skills and matching them accordingly for optimal performance in the long run.
Q. As a leader, what core strategies do you employ to manage a team?
Similar to the principles that helped me stay competitive, I have a list of core strategies that have immensely helped with managing my teams. These include:
- Embrace diverse skill sets and perspectives, they can drive innovation and intra-team progress.
- Have clear guidelines and objectives towards relevant business goals.
- Do not micromanage. Give the time and space to teams to explore their creativity in problem-solving.
- Practise regular feedback sessions for consistent improvement.
- Create a conducive environment that educates and fosters innovative capabilities of new tech-based solutions.
- Encourage hands-on learning when implementing solutions.
- Challenge high-potential teammates by giving them projects that can accelerate their growth.
Q. Looking ahead, what changes or trends do you anticipate in your field?
Generative AI (GenAI) is a changemaker in creating new business models that challenge traditional organisations. GenAI’s capacity to drive automation and augment capabilities will be crucial in helping businesses re-prioritise manpower for more complex and impactful business challenges. It is even changing the way we function at Temus, as we work to incorporate some of these AI tools to supercharge developer productivity across the software development lifecycle.
Another big opportunity is to actively solve cloud adoption challenges such as migration barriers and ineffective cloud architecture because they hinder enterprises from getting cloud benefits such as cost reduction, hyperscaler innovation, and incorporating new business functionality. We are solving these challenges using Cloud Value Realisation, a framework consisting of FinOps, application modernisation, and automated end-to-end processes. This ensures business applications are optimised before migrating into the cloud. Consequently, enterprises will focus on deriving more value for their cloud investments over the next few years.
