Welcome back, you're watching Business 360. U.S. President Joe Biden today has warned of possible cyber attacks by Russia as the war in Ukraine enters day 27. Now, with COVID-19 accelerating digital adoption of companies across the world, is the order of the day? Companies need to fortify their digital networks against potential attacks. And one of the companies driving digital transformation in the global era is digital consulting giant Publicis Sapient. The company has big plans for India as well. And joining me now is the global CEO of Publicis Sapient, Nigel Vaz. Nigel, always a pleasure. Many thanks for joining us here on CNBC TV18. You know, I know that you believe that digital transformation is not a tangential idea anymore. It's an existential idea. And it's only gotten more valid, this theory of yours, this hypothesis of yours, through the course of the pandemic. So let me start by asking you what that's meant for you as a company and what it now means more so for your clients.
Well, thank you for having me, Shereen. It's great to be on. And, you know, when you think about the point that you just made about it being existential, right, that's exactly what we're seeing. So whether you're a bank or a retail business or a healthcare business or indeed a government, you have to fundamentally reimagine yourself for a world that is incredibly different than the world of only two or three years ago. And so what we're seeing is folks wanting to understand the impact of blockchain to know that the food that you're eating is coming from the same farm to your table. They want to understand the impact of AR and VR on immersive gaming, but also retail experiences. And all of this means that, you know, people are asking more fundamental questions like, why do I need to go into a bank account? Or why does trade finance have to be so complex? And all of these things effectively mean that whether you're an automotive business or a retailer, digital is the only way you get to goals like sustainability, how you drive growth, how you find more profit through efficiency in the business, or indeed create better experiences for customers.
You know, 2021 was a good year on the back of everything that you've just articulated to us, Nigel, with the Publicis Group becoming the world's most valuable agency group, the most valuable holding company, and to a large measure driven by the kind of growth and the kind of performance that you were able to deliver at Publicis Sapient. Now, as we look ahead into 2022, how much of this do you believe is sustainable? How much growth do you anticipate coming in? What is the kind of headroom that you see from here on?
Look, when you think about Publicis Group fundamentally, right, Publicis Group is fundamentally in two businesses. One business is connecting consumers from an advertising and marketing perspective to brands and getting those brands, messages and promises delivered to consumers. And on the other side, it's in a very different business through Publicis Sapient, which is leveraging the power of data and technology to fundamentally transform these brands and these businesses to deliver on the brand promise they're making. So what we're seeing in our results, frankly, is both of these businesses, one through the power of Epsilon and Identity, helping Publicis get the right message to the right person, to the right channel on the right device. And on the other side, through Publicis Sapient, fundamentally transforming businesses to be more relevant from a digital perspective. And our results, like you said, reflect that. So as I look forward, I see opportunity for us to both go from strength to strength in the core advertising and marketing business of Publicis Group, but also a huge amount of opportunity for Publicis Sapient to continue to demonstrate the kind of success we've seen over the last few years.
So let's talk about India and your plans for India. Clearly a strategic market for you, both in terms of the clients that you service, but more importantly, also as a hub for talent. So what are the hiring plans? What are the investment plans? What are the expansion plans as far as India is concerned?
So I think first and foremost, I think, you know, Shireen, as you rightly said, for us, you know, India is a hugely strategic part of the company. But unlike many of the businesses that think about India as an offshore location for them to advance a particular capability or particular part of their business, for us, India is a broad extension of Publicis Sapient. So from our engineering capability, which is, you know, world leading, which is driven in huge part by the engineering prowess of our teams in India through experience and strategy and consulting and design, all of these capabilities, product, are represented in India. So we think about the ingredients of digital business transformation as being speed and speed essentially is an acronym of five things. So the S is strategy, the P is product. So essentially going from the value hypotheses to the product that is constantly evolving, not a project that begins and ends. The E is experience, so how you design and create new products and services. The next E is engineering. So how do you create products and services which differentiate and create value as opposed to IT, which used to be about risk and cost. And then the D is data and AI. So how you're constantly iterating on your business. So when we think about our plans for India, we think about these speed capabilities that are what differentiate us in the market with our clients, but also which are what is representative of the capabilities we have here. So our strategy for India is actually twofold. First, to take the office to our people. So we went from having three large offices in India pre-pandemic to today operating in more than 80 cities. And more and more what we're doing is continuing to ensure that we create opportunities for people to work where they want to and how they want to and ensure that by bringing in new people into the workforce and our company, we can broaden the scope of the work and impact we create. The second is, of course, continuing to hire. We've hired more people in India over the last year than we have over the previous three. And we're continuing to see that kind of trajectory going into the next year. We expect over the next few years to double our workforce in India from 10,000 to 20,000. And I feel like we're going to see this kind of growth come across all of our speed capabilities. Engineering, which continues to be the dominant capability for us on a global basis, is also the dominant capability for us in India, where we compete against the startups and the DevOps and cloud firms and the API development firms, but also increasingly against businesses that think about hiring talent into captive organizations, which means that they have to focus on a single industry and a single problem. Us being able to create an environment where our folks are able to one day solve problems for a global investment bank in New York sitting in India, the next day solve problems for a French retail business sitting in India, and the third day work to build a digital city in the Middle East sitting in India means that we're an extraordinarily attractive workforce as digital business transformation becomes the biggest imperative for CEOs in their own priority.
You know, Nigel, since you point out that digital transformation is the single biggest imperative for CEOs, and that is among the top priorities on the CEO dashboard, what are you now seeing in terms of spending, especially in the codification that you just articulated for us on the speed capability index, if I could call it that? What kind of spending would you expect as we look ahead into 2022 and beyond, given the fact that this is no longer a luxury but a necessity for most corporate boardrooms?
You know, I think it's a really good and important conversation to get into because I actually feel like digital transformation used to be a short for IT, right? That's what digital transformation was. Digital business transformation, which is the focus of Publicis Sapient, we believe is the fundamental reimagination of business. And when you think about it like that, if you're a CEO solving a sustainability issue or you're focused on climate change or you're thinking about how to make your organization more diverse and inclusive, technology and the way in which you transform your business has a key role to play, right? And so what you're seeing is digital business transformation spend showing up as spend on sustainability because people are thinking about reuse and how to eliminate paper and packaging. If you look at energy companies, they're thinking about how to modernize the grid and instrument the grid so that we actually know when power cuts occur, how long the power is going to take to come back. Because clearly, you know, Uber can tell us how long our car is going to take to get to us. But when the power goes out, which I know happens in India, but also in many other parts of the world, very hard to get a view on when the power is actually coming back. All of this is showing up as spend in modernizing the grid in climate change and sustainability, but powered ultimately by digital business transformation.
You know, I remember reading an interview that you gave previously, Nigel, where you talk about how many of the clients that you work with are going through this phenomenon where there's a large stuck in the middle. You know, so the top layer of the organization does want to move forward and the bottom layer of the organization is looking for inspiration and is aspirational. But there's a large chunk that's happy with the status quo and stuck in the middle. How much has changed through the course of the pandemic? Is the stuck middle left stuck today?
Yeah, I think there's a huge realization, I think, over the course of the pandemic, both at the top of the organization and the bottom, I think, where you had the strategic need to change and the desire to want to see change that actually in the middle, you now have to find new mediums