Xebia: a perfect amalgamation of digitisation and technology

Xebia was started in 2001 by Daan Teunissen and a group of senior Java specialists in The Netherlands. The idea was to explore and create new frontiers in Technology.  Since then, it has grown from a company with a handful of employees based out of the founder's home into a $100 million global company. Xebia India (Xebia Global Services) was set up in India in 2006 to cater to the increasing demand from across the globe for niche software development. 

Over the past 7 years, Xebia has been aggressively spreading its footprint and expanding globally to the Middle East, the USA, UK, and other cities in India like Pune and Bangalore. These are mini Silicon Valleys of India and we have a substantial presence here. 

Anand Sahay, the Co-Founder, and CEO of Xebia Global Services believe Xebia is making a mark in technology. Xebia is trying to be one step ahead of what businesses need and offer the latest technologies as advantages for their customers. They are a young firm with access to growing markets and rising awareness. They understand that they are favorably placed to leverage new and emerging technologies and quality human capital.

He is proud of their skilled personnel, not just strong techies, but entrepreneurial too. They are going above and beyond the call of duty in Covid times. While work from home wasn’t a new adjustment for Xebia, but it is the first time that so many have had to mandatorily avail of it. Every employee has done their fair bit to make this transition smooth for themselves and their teams. Anand proudly says “At Xebia, we create a wealth of capabilities, in tune with what the world needs tomorrow.”

Xebia’s Tech Expertise

Xebia’s tagline says it all “creating digital leaders.”  Simply put, it means that Xebia is at the forefront of adopting cutting edge technology. The idea is to help customers create products and business models which are differentiated and digitally enabled.

Xebia is enabling Digital transformation by focusing on accelerating software development using cutting edge tools and processes. This enables businesses to leverage the strength of technology and remain at the forefront of their business. With Xebia’s strong passion for in-depth technology in combination with Lean, Agile, and Scrum practices, they ensure that “Digitalisation” is embedded in the fabric of the organization’s ecosystem resulting in sustainable and inclusive development for all stakeholders. 

Their services and solutions address Digital strategy, Agile transformations, Scaled architectures, DevOps & Continuous Delivery, Big Data & Data Science, Cloud infrastructures, Agile software development, and  Agile software security to enhance customer experience and provide an edge to customer’s business. 

Anand is a huge believer in customer intimacy and that sentiment drives all the value that is created at Xebia. The only sustainable way to ensure that customers stay is to make sure that the people who come to work for Xebia understand tech and its possibilities too. 

Investing in the current and future workforce 

Xebia through its education business unit - Xebia Academy Global, runs state-of-the-art training facilities across the globe. It provides training on emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Cloud, Everything Data, Agile Frameworks, and Full Stack Development. It also emphasizes bringing out tangible solutions that are aligned with the needs of the student through programs and interventions in graduate engineering colleges. Xebia also updates current educational literature and sponsors learning labs and software licenses in many universities such as Thapar, UPES, SRM & JECRC.

The company believes that through a collective force of academia and Xebia’s tech expertise, it can revolutionize the art of pedagogy. By engaging in meaningful collaborations, students and academics will be able to channelize their scientific pursuits and will help students to be industry-ready after they complete their academics.

What does Xebia do? 

Xebia supports both the Offshore and Onshore model of delivery. Saying that would have been so relevant in non-COVID times, but now Anand keeps it simple. He says “We deliver. Period.” 

The focus is on providing solutions using the right technology and the right practices. The idea is to help the customer differentiate themselves from their competition.

Anand does this crazy thing here. He is big on innovation and imagination.

Xebia encourages its people to work on new ideas and the latest and upcoming technologies to foster a culture of innovation. If the idea is commercially viable, he helps it to spin it off as a separate company (a mini startup) within its Holding Company. Xebia provides the right kind of support to achieve scale and profitability. Companies like XebiaLabs were formed based on the above premise and spun-off to operate just like any other start-up. 

Xebia’s clients

From Aviation, Banking, Healthcare, Retail, to E-Commerce industries, Xebia enables them to expand their footprints on a global scale. These sectors are embracing digital transformation to bring a paradigm shift in their customer experience.

Clients in the banking sector want to digitalize their processes, improve mobile and online banking applications, and build an innovative payment system to remain in close connection with their customers. Airline companies are looking for ways to enhance the customer experience across the entire travel value chain—pre-booking, reservations, price optimization, loyalty programs, in-flight experience — and use analytics to provide improved customer experience by rolling out programs that could provide a fillip to their businesses.  This approach has helped Xebia garner long-term association with various prestigious Fortune 500 clients.

What is the coolest about Xebia?  

True knowledge workers find Xebia an inspiring place to work where they are challenged by peers. In Xebia it’s not just about working on the technology, but about harnessing the collective creativity and innovation to create something new; it’s about making a difference!  

Our open work culture, flat hierarchy, flexible work timings, provides a “growth-based environment”. You choose at which rate you want to work and grow. No, it’s not an euphemism for long hours.

Xebia lays great emphasis on the personal development and growth of its people, investing heavily in the knowledge sharing and refinement of skills, through various knowledge sharing programs like Xebia Knowledge Exchange (XKE), XTR, Blogs. People are free to choose the training that would aid and enhance their potential, from anywhere in the world! XKE provides a fortnightly forum to learn and share the latest and greatest in technology. Techies are encouraged to blog, write books, and participate in new and emerging technology events. 

To encourage our female employees and to increase their headcount, we are running an initiative #SheTalksTech. Under this, we are organizing a mentorship program where all women professionals can discuss with an experienced Xebian about their aspirations, areas of interest, challenges faced, and support required to grow professionally. 

Is any of this corroborated by the industry? 

In the last 15 years, Xebia has been recognised many times - the PwC High Growth Award, Computable Best Business Case, Deloitte Technology fast 50 Awards, the Great Place to Work and Cool vendor by Gartner award. Xebia has been ranked amongst the top companies in the strategy category in the latest application release automation report by Forrester. Xebia also got featured in the IT market clock for Mobile application development (Report by Deloitte). Xebia won at the NATC Awards 2019 - Our Big Data team won the Technology Excellence Award in the Emerging Technology category. 2020 saw Xebia being awarded the Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence Solution of the year by TechPlus Media.

Disclaimer: The views, suggestions and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Forbes India journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.