Meet NTT DATA People
Mayur Gandhi
Global Head Technical Service Desk
Mayur Gandhi lives in Delhi, India with his wife and daughter, his mother and grandfather, which is for him an interesting dynamic to live in an intergenerational household, but not uncommon in India. In his free time, he has recently moved from playing indoor sports such as table tennis to outdoor activities such as cycling and loves nothing more than riding his bike around the local velodrome. He is an engineer by profession, and so likes to keep pace with what is happening in the world of technology, including using the internet of things in his home. He is currently the Head of Global Service Desk at NTT DATA Services, specializing in healthcare and banking services.
Enabling customers to maximize their business all over the world.
Tell us about an interesting project.
I want to talk a little about culture. One thing that I have been able to do in my work is travel, so I have travelled to many countries, all with diverse cultures. As part of my previous client-facing Delivery role, I once had the opportunity to visit a US hospital and hear from health care professions to help improve their processes. I overheard someone in a hospital saying, “If this COW fails, we’re all in big trouble”. I was very confused because coming from India I assumed the person was talking about a sacred animal. After the meeting I asked the person what she was referring to, and it was explained that COW means ‘Computer on Wheels’. This is just a funny story about a misunderstanding, but it’s things like this that I encountered on my trips overseas that helped enrich my knowledge of cultural differences that helped me grow as a person. Overall, those moments have greatly contributed to my understanding of people and culture, in a way that I couldn’t have got unless I worked at NTT DATA.
Describe a regular working day.
My practice area services 110 customers, has 2500 staff, and works with people all over the globe. In fact, we handle about 22 different languages. As my work is spread across a wide geography, I like to match my working hours to standard UK time. This means that generally speaking I log onto work in my home at about 9am UK time. This enables me to catch, East Asia, Europe, and USA all within my working day.
For me this is great because I can do all the things that are important to me outside of my work, such as cycling, having quality family time, shopping, and things like banking when everyone else is typically working. Then, I can go into my home office and do my job. This really offers me a great work life balance and suites my personal style very well.
Why do you like life at NTT DATA?
Originally, I worked for NTT DATA from 2006 to 2021 where I went through two large organizational changes, for Perot Systems, via Dell Services to NTT DATA. At the end of that period, I decided to branch out and try something different, but when I was approached by the senior leadership team to return to NTT DATA and run the Global Service Desk, I was thrilled to take up the offer.
For me NTT DATA is the perfect place to work because of a number of compelling reasons. Here we have a culture of mutual respect and integrity, which I haven’t experienced elsewhere. One example is with my practice area, where we hire a lot of younger people or new graduates. They typically stay with us for a while before moving onto other roles within NTT DATA. I see my job as one of nurturing talent in the same way I was within the company. It therefore gives me great pleasure to see people learn and grow and go onto bigger things all because they had the opportunity to work with my team. I’m very proud of that.
