Tavant encourages unorthodox thinking and empowers employees to pitch new ideas

Soma Tah

Tavant Technologies, a specialized software solutions and services company which is more known for its mortgage domain knowledge, technical expertise is one among those few companies which believes in nurturing a strong culture of innovation within the organization.

Employees in the company are empowered to generate, develop and pitch different ideas. In a recent customer event at Bangalore, Tavant showcased a bunch of solutions which are ideated and developed by its employees in-house and the best part was that it was not restricted to their core area of business.

For instance, it showcased an innovative agro-solution, where a robot can estimate yield, identify pests and visualize third-party prescriptions through image-processing and field-data analysis.

Abhinav Asthana, Director of Products, said, "We encourage ideas and invest in solutions that will disrupt the way the industry works. The ideas that flow in and the response we get are amazing. Unorthodox thinking, innovative ideas and impactful solutions that disrupt the industry is what we nurture."

The company encourages and incubates ideas within the company through its Innovation Café initiative, which is an initiative for seeding the development of path-breaking solutions that are ahead of the industry.

Elaborating on the initiatives further, he said, "We have a portal where employees are encouraged to submit any ideas that will improve things within the company or any solution that will make life easier outside. More than 100 ideas have been submitted in the last year and we have selected 10 plans which will have immediate action plans. The selected ideas are then assigned to sponsors who will facilitate the execution of the same in collaboration with the author of the idea."

It also runs hackathons providing employees the opportunity to try out new ideas and collaborate with other people in a fun environment. Software developers, UI/UX designers, analysts and subject-matter-experts collaborate intensively on software projects to code a unique solution from scratch around a problem or idea.

To nurture the innovation culture among employees, it runs different self-paced and instructor led training programs as well. The company recently launched the Tavant Mortgage University modelled on top global universities to provide domain and technology training to employees in the mortgage domain.

The company currently employs over 2,000 people globally, and more than 80 per cent of its employees are either engineers and developers or working in other technical roles.

The Tavant workforce in India plays a major role in the company's innovation goal. A large pool of its talent base in India consisting of subject matter experts, analysts, architects and developers work in close collaboration with the global teams and customers across the globe.

The company has recently come up with a new 50,000 sq ft R&D and engineering facility in Noida that will focus on building innovative technology solutions for targeted verticals. Designed to cater to millennials’ work style, the centre has a capacity to accommodate more than 500 employees.