Bengaluru, April 2 -- Tesco Plc, one of the UK's largest retailers, was rocked by an accounting scandal and reported its worst annual loss in 2015. Its cash coffers were nearly empty, and there was a need to transform the business to get more cash.

Enter Sumit Mitra. The former BT Group managing director was brought in by the British retailer in 2017 to head Tesco Business Solutions, the technology centre arm. His sole mandate was to drive change. Today, the company has one of its oldest running global capability centres (GCC) in India and employs about 5,500 people at its Whitefield office in Bengaluru.

Dressed in a black Hugo Boss t-shirt, Mitra spoke to Mint over a video call on 20 March about Tesco's in-house centre and the work his...