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Episode 122 · Enterprise · 34 min

Twenty-five cities to earn a name

Ascendion is a two-year-old startup living inside a 25-year-old services business: same clients, same engineers, a new name and an AI-first pitch. Its growth-marketing head argues the rebrand was itself the product: leadership walked into every single office on a 25-city road show, and only on that foundation does the claim of 65% more developer productivity get a hearing.

AI & machine learning Marketing & brand Hiring & talent

Deepthi Muthuraman

Head of Growth Marketing, Ascendion · with Vishal Krishna

34:09

Said in this episode

▶ 7:21

65%

Claimed lift in developer productivity

Muthuraman's figure for what Eva+ does once gen AI is infused across the software development cycle. It is a vendor-stated number, not an audited one.

▶ 7:21

~50%

Faster time to market on deployment

Stated alongside the productivity figure, and echoed separately by the recruiting team's claim of saving almost half its time using gen-AI platforms.

▶ 10:10

6,000

People across India, Mexico and the US

The number that surprises the host, who expected a thirty-person team from a two-year-old brand; Mexico came online only last year.

▶ 33:05

1,500+

Ascenders already gen-AI enabled

Internal talent trained on generative AI, with every new joiner mandated to reskill; the figure is stated as 'over 1,500 plus'.

▶ 15:28

25 cities

Road show to launch the name

Across the US and India, with leadership entering every office; the brand-establishment phase ran six to eight months and closer to a year.

▶ 6:22

1,600 → 2x

GCCs in India, and the doubling

Vishal cites a report (heard in the captions as 'Zeno', most likely Zinnov) putting India at about 1,600 GCCs, doubling in two to three years; later in the same conversation the base figure is quoted as 3,000.

The brief

The argument in sixty seconds

Muthuraman's claim is that a brand is infrastructure, not decoration. Ascendion was carved out of a 25-year-old parent, a staffing and IT services business the host names in conversation as Collab, with the clients, the revenue and the engineers already in place; what it lacked was a name people could belong to. So the first year went almost entirely into the name: a two-to-three-month workshop that pulled a tribal 'A' out of the Avengers and Doctor Strange, then a 25-city road show across the US and India in which leadership walked into every single office to explain why. Only on that foundation does the second argument sit: that Ascendion is now an AI-first, platform-led company rather than a body shop. She frames enterprise gen AI as three crises: speed, meaning can you reskill fast enough to adopt; trust, meaning why would anyone hand a new provider their AI work; and velocity, meaning free the maintenance budget so innovation has room. Eva+, the in-house platform that infuses the whole software lifecycle from coding to deployment, is her proof, at roughly 65% more developer productivity and about 50% faster time to market, with the recruiting team saving half its time on gen-AI tooling of its own. The company is around 6,000 people across India, Mexico and the US, more than 1,500 of them already gen-AI enabled, with a Mexico near-shore office and a just-opened Chennai AI studio. The stakes are the GCC wave, India's roughly 1,600 centres set to double, and whether an Indian delivery organisation can sell transformation instead of headcount.

Worth your time if you are

Marketers handed a rebrand and no new product

Services operators trying to shed the body-shop label

GCC leaders deciding whether to build or buy gen AI

Engineers wondering whether gen AI eats their job

Women re-entering tech after a career break

Episode map

Where the conversation travels

Every block is a chapter, coloured by what it's about. Click any of it to jump straight to that minute on YouTube.

AI & machine learningMarketing & brandHiring & talentGCCs & servicesSaaS & enterpriseLeadership & org

01Cold open: a brand, a platform, a painter 0:00 Vishal frames the conversation as three things at once: Ascendion as a brand, the gen-AI work it takes to clients, and the guest's life as a painter and how art shaped her as a leader. 02A two-year-old startup inside 25 years 1:00 The paradox up front: a 25-year-old organisation containing a two-year-old company, born when exponential growth made a separate brand necessary. The name was settled in a workshop, with a tribal 'A' drawn from the Avengers and Doctor Strange. 03Which industries, and what actually got built 3:02 Spun out of the parent the host calls Collab, Ascendion sells into financial institutions, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and automotive, including a healthcare system automated to filter customers by treatment history and recommend from it. 04Speed, trust, velocity: the AI-first pitch 4:35 Ascendion positions itself as an AI-first, platform-based ally selling against three client crises: the speed of adoption, the trust needed to hand a new provider AI work, and the velocity freed when maintenance stops eating the innovation budget. 05Eva+ and the 65% developer number 7:05 The in-house platform Eva+ infuses the whole software lifecycle from coding to deployment, which Muthuraman puts at roughly 65% higher developer productivity and about 50% faster time to market, plug-and-play wherever a client's gen-AI journey already is. 06Naming Eva, and who it was built for 8:35 Eva was the team's first platform, built before Ascendion had its own name and christened by crowdsourcing among the ascenders; it went to American clients first, with India as the near-term extension. 076,000 people, Mexico near-shore, Chennai studio 10:10 Not the thirty-person outfit the host expected: roughly 6,000 people across India, Mexico and the US, a Mexico office launched last year as the near-shore play, and a week-old Chennai AI studio where clients come to see demos. 08Delivery here, demand there, reskilling everywhere 11:37 Sales sits in the US while delivery and support run out of India and Mexico, and as GCC demand pulls work back to India, the whole talent base is being reskilled, because gen AI is a foundation someone still has to build on. 09The 25-city road show 14:43 With client relationships already intact, the launch task was recognition: sponsored events and a 25-city road show across the US and India in which leadership walked into every office to explain the name, running six to eight months and closer to a year. 10What clients ask for behind closed doors 16:10 A meeting the week before with a financial corporation, where the ask was straight from the horse's mouth, meaning transformation, faster turnaround, work done quicker, and the reminder that once gen-AI concepts are ready you still need people to scale them globally. 11Four industries, four deployments 18:00 The substantiation: personalised healthcare recommendations off predictive analysis of customer behaviour, real-time race-car performance with pit-stop changes and 3D renders, a digital onboarding system for a post-COVID cruise line, and personalised e-commerce ads off past sales data. 12Marketing a target that moves every quarter 20:05 The hardest part of the job is latency. Requirements change every month or quarter, and by the time marketing has understood and implemented one, the market has moved; gen AI is now what lets campaigns and go-to-market ship faster than the drift. 13Zero to a hundred clients, sort of 22:10 More than a hundred clients in two years, but Muthuraman refuses the zero-to-one framing, since the business, the clients and the work were already running; the first year went entirely into making people associate with the new brand. 14Born remote, named in a workshop 24:15 She joined during COVID when the company was 60 to 100 people across the US and India and the positioning was not yet defined; the naming ran a two-to-three-month workshop off vision, mission and belief, aiming at a deliberately un-boring brand young engineers would want to join. 15Landscapes, acrylics and a changing Bangalore 26:35 The black sheep of a finance-and-HR family started drawing classes at eight or nine and now paints landscapes in acrylic, a meditation zone that, she argues, is the same muscle marketing uses to bring a story alive, before a detour on Bangalore's quiet-town-to-live-wire arc. 16Kashmir to Kanyakumari, circles and Ascend Again 29:17 Hiring runs from freshers to mid-level across tier-2 and tier-3 cities on the belief that skill beats postcode, people belong to 'circles' rather than departments, and the Ascend Again campaign retrains women returning from career breaks, part of the 1,500-plus ascenders already gen-AI enabled.

Takeaways

Ideas to carry out of this hour

The rebrand was the year's actual product

Ascendion did not launch into a market. It launched into its own existing book of business, with clients, revenue and engineers already in place. So the deliverable for year one was recognition: sponsored client events, and a 25-city road show across the US and India where leadership physically entered every single office to explain why the name changed. Muthuraman puts the establishment phase at six to eight months and closer to a year, and treats belongingness, clients and talent both feeling attached to the name, as the measurable output.

▶ 14:57 ▶ 15:28 ▶ 15:56

Enterprise gen AI is sold against three crises, not one

The pitch is structured as speed, trust and velocity. Speed is the client's adoption clock, answered by a talent base being reskilled and upskilled so the gap closes. Trust is the harder one, because AI is new enough that enterprises hesitate to hand a fresh provider the work, and the answer is an owned platform plus people trained on it rather than a slide deck. Velocity is the budget argument: automate the maintenance and mundane work, and the money and headroom for innovation appear.

▶ 4:50 ▶ 5:04 ▶ 5:36

Use it inside before you sell it outside

Muthuraman's credibility test for an AI-first services company is internal adoption: recruiting, HR, finance and marketing all run on gen-AI tools, with recruiting reporting close to 50% time saved on engaging and deploying talent. Eva+ carries the same logic into delivery, infusing the software lifecycle from coding through deployment for a claimed 65% developer productivity gain and roughly 50% faster time to market. If you don't use it, the argument goes, you have no business selling it.

▶ 7:05 ▶ 13:41 ▶ 14:10

Gen AI is a foundation, not a headcount cull

The fear she hears, from stakeholders and from copywriters, is that gen AI means fewer people. Her counter is that it supplies only the base layer: boilerplate code appears instantly, but someone has to build on top, and the teams that scale are the ones that make the model a digital companion rather than a threat. The people who adapt grow; the ones who don't are the ones who lose.

▶ 13:09 ▶ 13:27 ▶ 14:27

Delivery geography is being rewritten in three places at once

Sales sits in the US where most of the business is, core engineering and support run out of India, and Mexico was added last year as the near-shore layer, closer to US time zones and with talent available. The newest node is a Chennai AI studio, an innovation lab where clients come to experience demos. And the GCC wave is now pulling demand back the other way, with clients based in India wanting the business done in India.

▶ 10:10 ▶ 10:40 ▶ 12:06

Skill beats postcode, and the org chart is a set of circles

Hiring deliberately went into tier-2 and tier-3 cities from the start, on the stated belief that skill matters more than the name of a city or a college. The company now has people working from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Internally, staff belong not to departments or practices but to 'circles', communities of practice that carry mentorship, upskilling and cross-team work. The Ascend Again campaign extends the same logic to engineers, mostly women, returning from career breaks: retrain, then redeploy.

▶ 29:49 ▶ 30:21 ▶ 31:19

Painting and positioning are the same muscle

Muthuraman was the black sheep in a family that expected finance or HR, and started drawing classes at eight or nine; she still paints landscapes in acrylic and calls it a meditation zone that opens her mind. Her claim is that this is not a hobby adjacent to the job but the same faculty the job needs: marketing is taking the journey of customers, employees and brand and bringing that story alive. The tribal 'A', the Avengers reference and the refusal to be a boring engineering company all come out of that instinct.

▶ 26:49 ▶ 27:04 ▶ 27:19

The numbers, drawn

What the episode measures

Every figure below was said on air, with timestamps included and caveats kept.

What Ascendion says gen AI bought it

% improvement claimed

All three are company-stated figures said on air, not independently verified: 65% developer productivity and 'almost 50%' faster time to market on Eva+, and 'almost 50% of time' saved by the recruiting team using gen-AI platforms.▶ 7:21

The GCC base Ascendion is aiming at

GCCs in India

Vishal's citation of an analyst report: about 1,600 GCCs in India today, doubling in two to three years. Treat as approximate: later in the same conversation the base is restated as 3,000, and the captions garble the research house's name.▶ 6:22

Three crises, one answer

how the AI-first pitch is structured

Muthuraman's own framing of the enterprise buyer. Her credibility test is internal adoption: recruiting, HR, finance and marketing all run on gen-AI tools before any of it is sold outside.▶ 4:50

Where the work actually sits

four nodes, and which job each one does

The host expected a thirty-person outfit. Mexico is the near-shore layer for US time zones, the Chennai studio is where clients come to see demos, and clients based in India increasingly want the work done in India.▶ 10:10

Worth keeping

Lines that stay

It gives you the basic foundation — and you need to make gen AI your friend, your digital companion. It's the people who learn to adapt to this who are going to grow.

▶ 13:15

Our leadership went into each and every single office and explained the journey of why Ascendion.

▶ 15:42

We wanted people to fall in love with this brand, because we knew where it was going to go.

▶ 25:03

We were not very particular that we hire people only from the metro cities, because we believed skill is more important than names.

▶ 30:26

Marketing is all about bringing that story alive — the journey of the customers, the employees, the brand. Art really helped me there.

▶ 27:25

Clips that travel

Short on time? Start here

Enterprise buyers evaluating an AI services partner

Speed, trust and velocity

The whole commercial argument in three minutes: the AI-first positioning, the three client crises it answers, and the 65% productivity claim that follows.

4:35 → 7:36 · 3 min ▶ Watch clip

Services operators planning delivery geography

Six thousand people, three countries

Why Mexico became the near shore, what a Chennai AI studio is for, and how a two-year-old brand already carries 6,000 people.

9:54 → 11:37 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Engineers and writers worried about their jobs

Gen AI is a foundation, not a cull

The clearest statement of the adapt-or-lose case, plus the internal proof: every function, including recruiting and marketing, already runs on the tools.

12:54 → 14:40 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Marketers handed a rebrand and no new product

Twenty-five cities to launch a name

The mechanics of establishing a brand that already had customers: road shows, every office visited, and a year spent on nothing but recognition.

14:43 → 16:10 · 1 min ▶ Watch clip

Talent leaders hiring outside the metros

Kashmir to Kanyakumari

Circles instead of departments, tier-2 and tier-3 hiring on principle, and the Ascend Again programme for engineers returning from a break.

29:17 → 31:40 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Glossary

The jargon, unpacked

Eva+

Ascendion's own generative-AI platform, infused across the software development cycle from coding to deployment; the name was crowdsourced internally, and the auto-captions render it 'Eva plus'.

GCC

Global Capability Centre: the offshore engineering, data and operations arm a multinational runs in-house in India rather than buying from a vendor; the segment both sides treat as the growth market.

Near shore

Delivery from a country close to the client's own time zone rather than halfway around the world. It is Ascendion's stated reason for opening in Mexico to serve the US.

Circles

Ascendion's internal unit of organisation: communities of practice that replace departments, carrying mentorship, upskilling and cross-team project work.

Ascenders

What Ascendion calls its own people; 'Digital Ascender' is the companion tooling built for them.

Ascend Again

The company campaign that hires back engineers and developers, mostly women, who took a career break, retrains them and redeploys them into delivery.

Plug and play

Muthuraman's term for how Eva+ is sold: dropped into whatever stage of a data or gen-AI journey the client is already at, without a long analysis of legacy data first.

Crisis of trust

Her framing for the enterprise buyer's hesitation to hand a new provider its AI work, answered with an owned platform and trained people rather than a pitch.

Connections

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EP 167 · Enterprise

Full transcript

The whole conversation, searchable

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