Xebia is driving enterprise-scale digital transformation: Varun Jain

Founded in 2001, Xebia was the first Dutch organization to embrace the agile way of working, with gurus like Jeff Sutherland. Since then, we have grown from a Java company into a full-service digital consulting company with 5,000 professionals working on a worldwide ambition.

Varun Jain, Global Head, BFS, Xebia, tells us more about solutions for the BFSI segment. Excerpts from an interview: 

DQ: Can you provide an overview of Xebia and its role in the industry?  

Varun Jain: As a global IT consulting firm, Xebia works on several innovative technologies, including data engineering, cloud solutions, Generative AI, and Intelligent Automation AI. Xebia has transitioned from traditional IT architecture specialists into a full-service partner in digital transformation in the last two decades. To fulfil the shifts in markets, we work towards enabling organizations to use technology seamlessly while ensuring real business outcomes that matter. 

With extensive consulting and engineering capability in Retail, Insurance, Banking, and Healthcare industries, we strive to do more than just deploy new technologies. We focus on building AI-driven applications, cloud infrastructure, and process automation. We strive to provide real outcomes instead of just deploying technologies. As thought leaders, we foster a culture of learning and reskilling to remain relevant in forward-looking, fast-changing industries.

DQ: What is your current business focus in India given the evolving landscape of the IT and ITeS sector?

Varun Jain: Xebia is driving enterprise-scale digital transformation by delivering world-class IT architecture, AI-driven automation, and cloud-native solutions to global clients across the US, Europe, and the Middle East. As businesses shift beyond traditional IT services, we focus on building execution-first, AI-native IT frameworks that ensure scalability, efficiency, and long-term resilience.

India is at the core of this strategy, enabling enterprises to modernize legacy IT, automate decision intelligence, and deploy AI-powered service models that drive tangible business outcomes. Xebia ensures that global organizations can seamlessly adopt next-gen IT frameworks, accelerate innovation, and execute AI-led transformation at scale, making IT a true competitive advantage.

DQ: Can you talk about your focus verticals? How do you see AI transforming these verticals?

Varun Jain: Xebia serves across industries. However, we particularly focus on BFSI, Travel and Retail. We help them achieve business outcomes through the adoption of AI, automation, and digital platforms.

In BFSI, financial institutions are deploying new technologies to engage customers, optimize operations, and ensure compliance. Through conversational AI and cloud platforms, banks are improving the customer experience and automating processes to reduce underwriting and other operational inefficiencies. 

Solutions such as Salesforce aid in fostering CRM and enhancing customer relationships due to improved customer interaction.

Retail is changing as companies begin using technology for demand planning, supply chain modernization, and the creation of personalized experiences. Companies use automation and actionable insights to react to changing consumer behavior, manage inventory, and provide seamless digital experiences.

Transformation encompasses more than just adopting technology; it also requires proper implementation and governance, as well as a focus on achieving business outcomes. At Xebia, we partner with organizations to ensure that there is real value in using AI and automation, that they work effectively, and that competitive advantage is sustainable.

DQ: Can you share some use cases to elaborate?

Varun Jain: Deep learning was used by Xebia to enhance turnaround times for aircraft at one of the busiest airports. By utilizing computer visioning and precise data, the airport was able to increase on-time departures by 15%. After migrating core processes to the cloud with integrated AI risk management, a global bank in the financial services sector was able to enhance operational scalability by 30%.

The bank was able to adopt higher transaction volumes under strong security measures alongside their development. A leading marketplace of floriculture was able to enhance its demand forecasting accuracy, predicting demand 5% more accurately than prior and reducing excess inventory due to real-time data pipelines. 

In all situations, we work to ensure the data is correct, AI can work without disruption, and there is active oversight in place to meet business goals.

DQ: Specifically, for the BFSI sector, how will AI ensure cost-efficiency?

Varun Jain: AI is aiding the banking industry in further improving security, engaging with customers better, and making more informed financial decisions. A global bank was able to reduce fraud by 35% using real-time anomaly detection, allowing for significantly improved risk management without needing more manual work. 

Operational costs are also being reduced along with the response time due to AI-powered chatbots, which allow employees to work on more important issues relating to the clients.

Financial institutions are beginning to incorporate AI into centralized data lakes for both live and historical data analysis. AI technologies seem to be increasing the quality of underwriting decisions and decreasing the chances of defaulting on loans. 

At the same time, AI-powered compliance automation is improving the quality of regulatory reports, reducing the effort needed to perform highly detailed audits, and enabling faster responses to new regulations.

DQ: Where do you see the BFSI sector headed in India with the rapidly changing technology?

Varun Jain: The BFSI sector in India is undergoing a significant transformation, moving past traditional IT automation. It is now adopting a cloud-native, AI-driven edge banking system to address the growing demand for digital transactions and real-time financial services. 

The advancement of AI-driven risk models in financial institutions notably enhances the automation of customer analytics and compliance, thereby significantly boosting the agility and decision-making capabilities of regulators. 

The rise of agentic AI provides us with real-time insights that improve our proactive risk management strategies, enabling us to foresee customer needs and successfully mitigate risks. Conversational AI has transformed self-service capabilities, enabling AI-driven compliance tools that allow banks to adeptly manage the constantly changing regulatory landscape without adding to their operational burden. 

Banks need to focus on sustaining their competitive advantage through the establishment of a digital, adaptive, and scalable infrastructure that fosters ongoing innovation. Today, our focus goes beyond just efficiency; AI enables us to attain hyper-personalization, promote inclusion, improve real-time decision-making, and cultivate trust. 

We must acknowledge that the responsible integration of AI and the principles of ethical governance are equally crucial to the technological progress we pursue. The future of India’s banking sector will heavily depend on data-driven finance, an expanding digital customer base, and the smooth incorporation of AI to provide tailored banking services.