VENKAT GIRI BABU
UNDRU

After a long time away from LinkedIn, I'm excited to be back — and I couldn't think of a better moment to return than right now.

Because what's happening at the intersection of retail, supply chain, and technology is genuinely one of the most exciting shifts I've seen in 20 years.

Think about what's changed in the last 3 years alone:

• →Real-time inventory visibility has gone from a "nice to have" to a survival requirement
• →Fleet and warehouse operations are now being run off live data platforms, not yesterday's reports
• →The gap between a retailer's digital experience and their physical supply chain is finally closing

We used to talk about "digital transformation" like it was a destination. It's not. It's infrastructure now. The retailers who figured that out early are widening the gap every quarter.

I've spent the last several years deep inside this shift — building and running the cloud-native platforms and operational programmes that make real-time supply chain intelligence possible at Fortune 500 scale.

That's the work I love. And it's the conversation I'm looking forward to having more of here.

Originally posted on LinkedIn · April 2025

When I took over the PepsiCo infrastructure portfolio at Cognizant, the delivery team had 80 engineers. By the time I handed it over, we had 200+. Spread across North America, India, and multiple time zones. Running a $13M annual programme. With zero major escalations.

People ask me: how do you scale a global team without losing quality, culture, or control? Here's what I actually learned.

1. Structure before headcount

The biggest mistake I see leaders make when scaling is hiring first and organising second. We did the opposite. Before every ramp-up wave, we defined the operating model — the pods, the ownership boundaries, the escalation paths. When a new engineer joined, they knew exactly where they fit. Confusion is expensive at scale.

2. Invest in your Layer 2 leaders

As a programme director, you can't touch every engineer. Your senior managers and team leads are your real multipliers. I spent a disproportionate amount of time developing that layer — coaching them on client communication, decision-making under pressure, and how to run a review without me in the room. That investment compounded.

3. Governance is not bureaucracy

At 80 people, you can manage by presence. At 200, you manage by system. We built a tight governance cadence — weekly leads sync, bi-weekly delivery reviews, monthly executive QBRs. Every meeting had a clear owner, a fixed agenda, and action items that were tracked. It felt like overhead at first. At scale, it was what kept us aligned.

4. Culture doesn't scale automatically

Culture at 80 people is personality-driven. At 200, it has to be intentional. We were explicit about our values: ownership, transparency, client-first. We recognised them publicly. We called out drift when we saw it. The team knew what we stood for — and that held even across time zones and geographies.

By Venkat Giri Babu Undru · May 2025

Eighteen months. No escalations from the client. A managed services contract renewed without a competitive rebid. And a team that trusted each other enough to surface problems internally before they became crises.

That result didn't happen by accident. Here's the framework behind it.

Make accountability a system, not a personality

Most delivery teams rely on a few high-performers to catch everything. That works — until it doesn't. We built accountability into the operating rhythm instead. Every issue had an owner, a resolution date, and a visible status. The system did the chasing so the managers didn't have to.

Kill the blame culture before it starts

The fastest way to stop people surfacing problems early is to punish them when they do. From day one, we separated problem-reporting from performance evaluation. If you raised an issue early, that was a positive signal. If it got escalated to the client because you sat on it — that was a different conversation entirely.

Run tight, predictable executive reviews

Our monthly QBRs with PepsiCo IT leadership followed a fixed format — SLA performance, incident trends, upcoming risks, and initiatives in flight. No surprises. The client saw us as predictable, transparent, and in control. That trust is what got the contract renewed without a rebid.

Proactive risk management, not reactive firefighting

We maintained a live risk register reviewed weekly at the leads level. Risks that were amber got a mitigation plan within 48 hours. Nothing sat. The team understood that the goal wasn't to look good in the review — it was to have nothing surprising to report. That mindset shift is everything.

By Venkat Giri Babu Undru · June 2025