A Week in India: Global Teams, Growth, and What Gets Built When You're in the Same Room
By David Nicholson, Global CEO
Most of how Tektology operates day to day is virtual. Our teams in the UK, India, Australia and beyond work together every day across time zones, passing projects between geographies, building on each other's thinking, sharing what we are seeing in our local systems. It is one of the things that makes us what we are.
But there is something different about being in the same room.
This week Michael O'Connor , our Australian Principal, Kanika Goel , our Associate Director in the UK who supports the India team, Genelle Aldred who supports us with Strategic Comms, and I spent time with our team in Gurugram. We talked about projects, about clients, about where the business is heading. We covered BD, training, the work we are doing in healthcare globally, and what an expanding India presence could look like. And we shared a lot of meals.
It was a week that reminded me what global feels like when it is working.
It also reinforces something important about India's place in Tektology. This is not simply a support location or an extension of teams elsewhere. It is a critical part of our 24-hour brain, as Aniruddha described so well in his own Perspectives piece, a talented team in the heart of Gurugram, contributing capability, insight and energy to the whole business.
The talent and ambition here are fantastic. So is the innovation. India is solving problems at a scale and pace that are deeply relevant to the rest of the world, particularly in digital care, citizen enablement, population health, technology adoption and service innovation. You see it in the conversations, in the work, and even in the built environment around us, smart workplace systems, digital access, sensors, building automation, resilient infrastructure and rapid failover even through torrential storms. This is a place moving forward quickly, with solutions and experience that can sharpen the work we do elsewhere.
I can speak from my view but this is what the team had to say:
Anubhav Jain captured the mood of the week: "It's been great having David, Michael, Genelle and Kanika over here in India. The energy is infectious. We had great one-on-ones, great training sessions and great food, and we'll have more dinners and lunches over the next couple of days. It's great to have you all over here, and we'd love to have you come more often. The sessions, the guidance, having David and Michael sit just next to us, it's really great."
Aniruddha Vishwekar said: "It's always great to have someone right in front of us and speaking to us, rather than having them virtually every day. The BD meetings and the sessions have been really valuable. And the fun part was trying out new cuisines with everyone."
Vishal Tiwari saw the practical value of it: "It's great to have everyone over, because you can ask them about the projects directly. They are right beside you. I did get the opportunity to talk about the projects I've worked on with David. That was amazing, to get his thoughts and real-time inputs from him."
Kanika reflected on the timing: "It's really great to have Michael, David and Genelle here, because we've been able to touch different aspects of the business. We've been able to get behind a lot of training that is much required in India at the minute. It’s also a good moment for us to be here, because we have started to open up some conversations for business in India. I think the time is ripe, and I'm really excited to see how we grow here."
Michael, looking across the room from his own side of the global team, captured something I felt too: "It's been fantastic working with the team. We don't get to see them face to face very often. So being able to spend time with them, talk about all things global, healthcare and digital, it's been fantastic. We're always happy to have the India team over in Australia too. It just makes the environment so energetic."
Genelle who ran training sessions added: "This was my first time in India, and being in the room with the team I'd only ever known online or over email was a real privilege. Tektology has remarkable talent across every country it operates in, and when we spend time together, all of that comes alive in a way virtual working can't quite match. And the food deserves a special mention! The team made sure we tried just about everything we mentioned liking, and probably a few things we didn't even know to ask for. Breaking bread together adds to the togetherness. The team in Gurugram are emerging as leaders in their own right, and that's the kind of team you build a global future around."
And one final reflection from the team that stayed with me from Ritik Raj: "It's nice to have senior leadership in India. You get a lot of learning from them, and sometimes you have a face-to-face chat and get a micro as well as macro perspective on what's happening in the industry."
What it tells me about Tektology
These visits are not a luxury. They are how the team gets reinforced. And we get to see the depth of capability we are building in our regions. This is how a global firm stays one firm, rather than offices that happen to share a name.
What I see in Gurugram is a team that is ready for more. The capability is there. The energy is there. The appetite for growth is there. And the work we are starting to see in India tells us the timing is right.
That is the trade-off that makes a global model valuable. India brings talent, technical capability, energy and innovation. The UK, Australia, Canada and other markets bring their own expertise, experience, client problems and hard-won lessons from complex health and care systems. The point is not that thinking flows one way. It is that each geography makes the others stronger.
We have built Tektology around the idea that good thinking can travel. That a problem worked on in London at 5pm can be picked up in Sydney overnight and developed further in Gurugram by morning. That insight from one geography can sharpen the work happening in another. That is the model that makes us able to do work of real consequence in complex, high-stakes environments.
But the model only works if the people running it know each other. If they trust each other. If they have shared a meal and a meeting and a difficult conversation in the same room.
That is what this week in India is about.
David Nicholson is Global CEO at Tektology, where he works with governments and health systems on large-scale transformation, particularly at the intersection of capital, digital and operating model redesign.
Alongside his role at Tektology, he is Chair of the Independent Digital Group and a member of the Independent Technical Review Panel for the UK’s New Hospital Programme.
David brings deep experience from senior roles across public administration, including Deputy Secretary positions in health, justice and central government in Australia, where he led system-wide reform, major capital programmes and digital transformation initiatives. His work focuses on translating strategy into practical system change — particularly in complex, high-stakes environments.