Bahwan CyberTek in 2018: Developing dt360

By Robert Burgelman, Sheila Melvin
2018 | Case No. SM290 | Length 22 pgs.

Bahwan CyberTek (BCT) was an IP-enabled technology company founded in 1999 by Sheikah Hind Bahwan (Hind) and S. Durgaprasad (DP). Over the years, it had grown into a global provider of innovative software products and services and had become a $275 million group with more than 2,950 business and technology professionals. BCT was privately held, based in Chennai, India, with operations in the United States, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. BCT had worked with more than 1,000 customers, including Fortune 500 companies, and delivered its innovative software solutions to companies in North America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

In 2016, BCT began to seriously ponder how it could carve out an identity for itself in the digital space, thereby leveraging and capitalizing on the great and growing amount of knowledge it had created. “From day one we were building our IP,” said Hind, “and that is why we are consolidating all our knowledge in the separate company, and that is the company that will go public or get investors: dt360. It is already registered as a separate company. So we have now restructured and are moving forward.”

In addition to establishing a home for its growing IP, BCT also wanted to build an entity that could best deliver transformation value to its clients along with the capability to scale fast with state-of-the-art and emerging technologies. And, it wanted to enable its own workforce to embrace these new technologies, thereby keeping them current and relevant in the rapidly evolving market.

So, with these multiple potential benefits in mind, BCT officially established dt360 (the name was intended to represent digital transformation across 360 degrees) as a wholly owned subsidiary in late 2017. In 2018, BCT’s top management was considering the strategic and organizational challenges they confronted in further developing and leading the newly formed company.

Learning Objective

This case concerns “globalization from the other direction.” It helps students focus on developing a profitable growth strategy for a high-technology company founded outside the U.S. but keen on deploying its intellectual property embodied in advanced software and services to help U.S. customers realize significant economic value. To that end, the case also asks students to evaluate the alignment of dt360’s organization structure with the growth strategy.
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