 Live, from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Informatica World 2016. Brought to you by Informatica. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Peter Burris. Okay, welcome back, when we are here live in San Francisco for Informatica World 2016. This is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Peter Burris, our next guest is Abshik Choudhury, who's the manager of information systems at Indian Oil Corporation, LTD. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. So tell us about your business, first of all. I'm fascinated by this. So what is the company? How does it operate? What's the business model? Give us a quick update on that. So John, we're basically a downstream company into oil. And we actually do a little bit of refining, more of a refining as well. So we operate, we sell the products in the Indian markets. We have the largest refining capacity in India. We also have greener initiatives now. We're going ahead into those areas as well. We are actually getting into petrochemical businesses as well in India. So we are the largest enterprise from oil perspective. What's the relationship with the government? Is the government regulated? Is it part of open? You guys set the price and how competitive is it? Can you just quick go over a few? So the government has 80% stake in the company. So it's basically a government company. 20% is there with the markets out there. As far as pricing are concerned, we now are living in a deregulated pricing regime. So yes, I mean the companies have technically the companies can take their own call on the pricing as well now. So what's the challenge with data? Obviously there's a lot of things to look at. Data run the business. IoT and now wireless is now booming. And I know we have an office in India and growth and tech exploding. How and also there's areas that need internet access and other forms of connections. So there's more pressure on energy than ever before. How does the data fit into all of this? So let me first get into the initiatives that the government is trying to push in here. What happened was that with the new government formation approximately two years back, their focus was more on to IT into the public sector companies in India. And that's where the digital India came in. Now with that initiative what happened was they wanted to open up a new arena of transparency with the consumers out there. And every bit and pieces of the businesses which touched lives in India, they wanted to open up to them. And then to do so, they wanted to use the technology. So we were actually mandated to do a lot of things. Here digitizing a lot of processes that were there. One of the major initiatives that the government pushed was in our LPG business, which is basically the liquefied petroleum gas cylinders that are being sold in India. So what happened was that every household in India had an LPG connection. And these bottle gases were actually being sold to them at a dual pricing. So the market had two prices for the same product, which created a lot of interest in the market. So they wanted to get away with that first. And that's where they actually introduced a scheme called Pahal. What was that called? Pahal. Pahal. Yeah. What's that? So that's basically, they wanted to bring that product under one price and the intended subsidy, which is the government subsidy, would go directly into the consumer's bank account, right from our systems to their account. For that, they wanted to use, so there was another flagship program for the government, which was called the UIDIA, which is the Aadhaar, or let's say unique identification number, which was being given to all the citizens in India. They wanted to use that system for transferring these into the bank accounts, the subsidy into the bank accounts of these consumers. So that's the system that we wanted to bring in, and we were actually fortunate to bring it as probably a three to four months' time into this. So I'm fascinated about, obviously India is a very, very populous country. Some say it's the most populous country on the planet. And it faces some very interesting, a number of very interesting infrastructure and socioeconomic problems. A different group of individuals once told me that every day 100 million people are migrating into and out of Delhi and Mumbai every single day, which is just mind boggling to me. It's the entire population of the Western US, west of the Mississippi, descending upon LA and then leaving at the end of the day. Is your business also thinking about how to optimize energy consumption across that entire group? What role does petrochemical, the oil business play in thinking about the entire needs of a population that's that diverse and that large and with those kinds of needs? So what we actually, yes, I mean that's one of the biggest challenges that we face when it comes to IET in the company because you have people moving from one place to the other. The identification numbers of these actually change from one place to the other. There are business processes which are stale for long, never being reviewed. So what essentially happened was that, these consumers had to wait for a longer time to get basic commodity services that was required. We wanted to change that and for that what we're doing is we're actually bringing in everything into one umbrella. So that's where we're actually trying to implement a CRM system as well. So you have one identification across the company. You move from one place to the other. You get self-service through these self-service portals that we have now. You want to get LPG connection at a different place. You just need to give a call. Nothing changes for you. We have an online KYC being done. So they can actually go online, fill up the KYC. And the next day you get a connection. So you don't even, we're actually trying to move to a regime where you don't even have to visit the distributorship to get a connection now anymore. So India is a net importer of oil. In fact, I don't think you guys produce much oil, do you? No, no, we don't. Yeah, so you're a net importer of oil. We were talking earlier with Jerry Held. Jerry Held is one of the luminaries in the database marketplace. Been a real friend of the Cube and has come on multiple times to talk about some of the challenges in data management and some of the trends in database management, et cetera. And we talked about how data is bound to time. That we can look at systems that tell us something about the past and systems that tell us something about the future. But also, a lot of the technologies that we focus on are systems that tell us something about right now, things that are doing something in real time. You have to marry together. The reality is, as India, not being an oil producing nation has to buy at an optimum price. Has to know how much to buy at that optimum price. So the future is crucially important to you, even as you're making decisions about how to allocate that limited supply that is bought on a daily basis across the entire country. Tell us about the role that big data is playing as you think about what to buy and how to distribute it across, again, something country-like India. What we've done is we've actually divided this into different product lines for us. So one of the product lines is an LPG which gets imported into India. The other is the crude which gets imported. Now, essentially, the crude which gets refined is actually the petrol and the diesel which actually goes into the market. There are certain special products which come out of that column, but then the chunk of the volume which comes out is basically the petrol and the diesel. So what we did was, since LPG was more an organized sector for us in India, we actually base, we converted our systems into a real-time consumption pattern. So we actually know sitting here today how much is the LPG consumption that has happened till yesterday night. Or for that matter, our real-time analytics will tell you till now what is the pattern that's there. And over a period of time, we've collected this data as well so that the forecast happens accordingly. So LPG is pretty much set, but then when we're talking about petrol and diesel, there was never a mindset within India to capture the secondary sales that was happening out of these gas stations in India. That's pretty much now changing. Now, we've already taken up a lot of projects, bigger projects on this, where we're actually capturing now or trying to capture the secondary sales that's happening out of these gas stations. So that's where we are actually working on the IoT space where once a person comes here, unlike in the US, right? So these gas stations are actually, again, manned gas stations. They're not self-serviced gas stations. So what happens is that, again, there's a lot of interest out there. So we need to have control systems which do that. One of the things that we are actually doing on this space is that we are actually capturing the data on a real-time basis direct from these devices, the dispensing units that are placed. And it comes to a central site over here. We do a real-time analytics on that particular data. We also have business processes which control this. So we put in controls as well on these streams of data that are flowing in. And then based on, let's say, the business decisions based on those data, again, the acknowledgement flows back to these devices. So that's how something which we are working on. We've already, there are three phases in which we've started this. One was the sourcing of the data from these devices. We already have an automation system which is running. We wanted to source this data on a real-time basis. We've done that. That's live in production for us. The second is we've included this into the future RFPs as well. And the third thing which you're actually primarily working with Informatica through a project called Stratus, is we're trying to build in a uniform platform where it's just more of a plug-and-play where you actually install a site and day one it's under that system. So that's something which is really cool for us. You guys are changing potentially the future of retail for the consumer experience in India with this idea. Yes, John. I mean, believe me, by the time we actually, we would be finishing off, or let's say, these systems come into a maintenance mode, we would be actually changing the way retail businesses is being done in India, at least for the oil industry. What we are saying is that over a period of time, we would be coming out with our own wallets. We would be integrating the system with the loyalty programs out there. So every penny that you actually spend on our gas stations, you would not only earn points out of it, but you can actually burn those points into other product lines of companies. You can take an old line kind of the LPG and then the petrol and refinery stuff, which is complicated, modernize it with the analytics, the streaming and the real-time processing informatica, and essentially create some ability to get all that data in. And so I got my notes here, I was making a note here. You guys have done the largest cash benefit program recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as a direct benefit transfer, affecting over 125 million households. That is pretty massive, congratulations. What does that mean, what's involved, how complicated is it, paint the picture. We only have two, three minutes. I mean, it's complicated. First of all, the scale of 120 million is pretty significant. But the data enabled that, right? You integrated it in. Yes, what we are basically doing is that primarily on the LPG business, right? So we're getting these data on a real-time basis. And then we put in systems or business processes, which actually decide whether the subsidy needs to get transferred to these consumers or not. What happens, the settlement that goes has to happen in T plus one time. So it goes into the bank, the settlement happens for the subsidy across all these riffle bookings that happen in India. So the sheer magnitude in which we operate makes it so large that till today, we've actually transferred more than 20 billion dollars into the Indian banking industry that was not there. You make a mistake, you lose a billion dollars. Where'd that go? I mean, you make a- Well, it's your currency. I mean, if you make a small mistake, the magnification of the consequences are pretty significant. So you got to be really careful. Yes, very, very. I mean, they put in monitoring systems there. We have a dedicated team, which looks into issues that come up. We have a dedicated call center, which looks into consumer complaints and stuff like that. We also have a lot of auditing agencies, which is sitting on these systems. So what they do is they regularly keep checking whether it's according to the government policies or not. Is there benefits coming out of this or we need to tweak the scheme a little so that it benefits the government as well? One of the things that just came in was that they're trying to link it with your tax payments now. So if you actually- You really take all your money. Yes. Hopefully they give it back. Yeah. So subsidy was never intended, John, for the rich. It's basically intended for the poor in our country. So what now they are doing is- Also efficiency for that matter, for that point. Yes. Is very important and transparency. Yes. So for transparency, we've actually opened up an entire, all of these systems are open in the public domain now. So somebody who wants to know can log in and see whatever is happening for his account. Earlier that was not the case. You guys have done the work. Okay, you guys done a lot of hard work and some of the things are popping for you on the benefit side. Foundation set, how far along are you on the IOT? You mentioned you got some IOT now. But give us the taste of how far in is it and what possibilities are still out there for you guys to build on top of the foundation. So John, what we are doing is we are trying to, right now what we are trying to do is we are trying to source the secondary sales coming out of these deals, right? So once we achieve this, we would be actually putting these data into the big data space that you would like to create. So what happens with me is that then, because this data which comes out of these gas stations would be humongous. Once we have this, we would actually have almost, since we control almost 70% of the Indian market, we actually know what is the consumption that India is having on a real time basis. And that's pretty much huge data. That's huge data. And you could turn that into benefit too for society. Yes, yes. So it actually has a chain reaction. You can actually plan your imports as well. You can plan your refinery. It's some weather data from IBM and you'd be all set, right? I mean, look at the weather, I mean, all kinds of new things are going to come out of the woodwork of this, right? Yeah, and not only that, John. So what it would also trigger a financial revolution around it. So we're trying to do as well. So there are a lot of money in India which is not in the financial backbone right now in India. So we're trying to put that, bring those money out of these systems and put it into the mainstream of the banking system. And with internet, you have other opportunities for economic revitalization, certainly from all over the country, opportunities. Yeah, so one of the examples that I would give for that economic advantage is that the government had, you know, of course I would put it to some extent to the crude prices as well. But then a lot of things earlier, government was provisioning somewhere around a billion dollar out of their budget for subsidies. This year it is nil. So you've taken the subsidies out and shifted them around? Yeah, so once that's there, that money is, can be- People are accountable, you can't hide anymore. Big data, you can't really hide the subsidies, you've got to know where it is. Is it working, right? Yes. So you get some efficiencies there. Fascinating case study. I would love to talk further. You have our cars, this is great. Once you kind of peel back the complexity of the oil and how it all works, it's really an amazing data story. Because you get a lot of complicated machinery there moving around, moving part. Yes, it is actually. But then we are trying our best to solve it as simple as it could be. Yeah, yeah. Hold on, hold on tight. Okay, thanks so much, abstract. Be coming on theCUBE, appreciate it. India Oil Company LTD here inside theCUBE sharing their big data efficiency and really changing hundreds of millions of households in India, great use of big data just to be getting IoT right on the corner. Appreciate your insights on theCUBE here, appreciate it. You're watching theCUBE live in San Francisco. We'll be right back with more after this short break.