Communication as Infrastructure: Why Dialogue Is APJ’s Real Advantage

Tech Mahindra’s most consequential innovation in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region is not a new platform or product. It is the decision to treat communication as infrastructure. APJ is home to more than 23 major languages, dozens of dialects, and profoundly distinct business cultures. In such an environment, leadership does not belong to those who merely translate messages, but to those who redesign how organisations listen, speak, and adapt—at scale.

The Dialogue Paradox In APJ

The global economy is calling for more dialogue precisely when it has become harder to understand one another. The world is struggling to collaborate across political, cultural, and technological divides. Nowhere is this tension more visible than in the Asia-Pacific and Japan.

A single regional strategy must span consensus-driven boardrooms in Tokyo, direct negotiations in Sydney, and relationship-first conversations in Jakarta. In this context, translation alone is insufficient. When “yes” can signal agreement, polite acknowledgement, or silent dissent, the real risk is not linguistic error; it is strategic misalignment. Actual dialogue in APJ is an engineering problem: how to design systems that are fluent not only in language but also in hierarchy, context, and what remains unsaid.

Communication As Infrastructure

Tech Mahindra approaches this challenge by treating communication as core infrastructure—on par with cloud, networks, and cybersecurity. The aim is not to make APJ sound like a translated version of another market, but to build systems that allow each geography to communicate on its own terms.

The Bahasa Indonesia initiative with Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison illustrates this approach. Together, the organizations are building Garuda, a large language model for Bahasa Indonesia and its dialects, with the explicit goal of preserving the language while enabling inclusive digital services. This is not just localisation; it's foundational infrastructure for banks, telecoms, and agencies to build services that communicate naturally with citizens. Behind this effort sits a deeper recognition: communication styles vary as much as languages do. Japanese business culture values consensus and nuance. Australia prioritises directness and speed. Indonesia relies heavily on trust, repetition, and community validation. When solution interfaces, workflows, and AI assistants are designed around these realities—rather than global defaults—adoption follows.

The Indus Approach: Technology That Listens

If Garuda reflects commitment to a single language, Project Indus represents a broader philosophy of listening at scale. Launched as India’s own large language model, Indus supports Hindi and dozens of Indic dialects and is designed to operate efficiently on commodity hardware. Its significance lies less in benchmarks and more in its construction. Indus is built bottom-up, incorporating contributions from small towns and villages, continuous evaluation by native speakers, and feedback loops rooted in everyday use. It treats listening not as a feature, but as a design principle.

This approach is reshaping how enterprise solutions are deployed across APJ. A standard global CRM template may assume email-first communication and individual decision-making. When those assumptions are replaced with local insight, the outcome changes materially:

• In Japan, relationship managers require tools that track consensus, respect hierarchy, and evolve decisions over time.
• In Australia, teams favour concise dashboards, mobile-first alerts, and direct, action-oriented language.
• In Indonesia, microfinance officers need offline capability, voice interfaces in local dialects, and mechanisms to capture community endorsement within workflows.

The operating model is iterative: Build → Listen → Adapt → Rebuild. Over time, systems move from being translated products to becoming native participants in local business dialogue.

Academic Dialogue As An Innovation Engine

Dialogue does not occur only between companies and customers. In APJ, universities act as structured listening posts—places where emerging communication norms surface before they reach the market. This approach aligns closely with global calls to invest in people and deploy innovation responsibly. In Japan, academic collaborations test fintech experiences for cultural resonance, challenging assumptions about information density, hierarchy, and risk communication. In Australia, research into rural connectivity surfaces constraints such as shared devices and intermittent access, directly shaping conversational design for telecom and banking platforms.

The result is a talent pipeline fluent in both code and culture—professionals, capable of asking the most important question in global innovation: Will this make sense here?

Growing Local Voices As A Strategy

This is why Tech Mahindra’s talent strategy in APJ is, at its core, a communication strategy. Local teams are not simply executing global roadmaps; they are continuously refining them. In Indonesia, engineers working on Garuda shape data-curation standards and user-experience decisions, informed by linguistic nuance and cultural context. Over time, this embedded expertise becomes a competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate.

Communication In Action

Across sectors, the pattern repeats. In banking, core systems may remain consistent, but how technology speaks varies sharply. Japanese interfaces emphasise transparency and procedural clarity. Australian experiences prioritise speed and simplicity. In Indonesia, financial decisions are often communal, favouring shared views, group goals, and local-language prompts. In telecom, the effect is immediate. Voice-based AI systems operating in Hindi dialects reduce cognitive load for rural users. In Indonesia, prepaid customers receive offers in familiar language and channels, mirroring everyday communication habits. The network is the same; the dialogue is not.

Toward Technology That Understands

The next step is technology that treats cultural context as a first-class signal. AI systems must adapt their tone, density, and workflow structure to local norms—without requiring enterprises to build separate products for each market.

Language models such as Indus and Garuda demonstrate that systems can be trained not only to process multilingual data but to reflect how people reason, persuade, and disagree within specific cultures. Achieving this responsibly requires continuous feedback loops and strong governance, ensuring cultural learning never comes at the cost of individual rights.

Dialogue As A Competitive Advantage

By building language models that preserve local voices, cultivating academic and community partnerships, and empowering local talent to challenge global assumptions, Tech Mahindra has positioned communication as strategic infrastructure. The result is simple but powerful: global leaders can hear APJ markets clearly, respectfully, and at scale.

If innovation is to be truly global, then the dialogue that drives it must be as well.