Tech Mahindra is evolving.

As part of Vision 2027 – a three-year transformation strategy – the company has refreshed its brand, positioning itself as a future-ready company while building on its existing heritage.

Leading this refresh is none other than Peeyush Dubey, Chief Marketing Officer of Tech Mahindra.

This rebrand, he says, has focused on “evolution” – taking the natural next step for a brand that already has deep trust from its customers.

“Great brands tell a clear story, and our story is one of purposeful evolution,” he said upon the announcement.

“Our research affirmed the deep trust in the Tech Mahindra name and our Mahindra heritage, so our goal was not to change the narrative but to sharpen its focus.”

Reinforcing a company’s messaging is one of the things Peeyush says he enjoys most about his work in the marketing industry.

“Marketing gives you the opportunity to shape perception, create preference and influence growth simultaneously,” he says.

“What I truly appreciate is the combination of creativity and commercial impact. At its best, marketing can simplify complexity, create emotional connection and help a company express clearly why it matters.” 

More than a communications exercise 

With more than 25 years of marketing experience, Peeyush has worked across many different stages of business transformation – from building up categories and brands to reframing large global organisations.

The biggest takeaway from this experience, he tells Marketing Chief, “is that repositioning cannot be a communications exercise”. 

Instead, it has to be felt across the entire business – connecting business strategy, customer experience, employee belief and market perception. Because of this, Peeyush says that a brand refresh “must begin with truth”.

“You have to understand what is distinctive about the company, where the business is headed and what customers and employees genuinely value,” he explains.

This ‘truth’ can help strengthen internal adoption and ensure that a brand remains consistent – both of which Peeyush has said are crucial when leading a global rebrand. “Internal adoption is as important as external expression,” he says.

“A new brand comes alive only when people understand it, believe in it and use it to guide everyday decisions.”

But this has to remain consistent. 

“A brand is built through hundreds of connected experiences, not one campaign or one launch moment,” he says. 

While making sure a brand is aligned with “hundreds” of connected experiences may seem like a challenge, Peeyush says that he looks at marketing transformation across three connected dimensions: brand, demand and expand. 

“Brand creates meaning and preference. Demand connects marketing more directly to growth. Expand helps growth of the most important clients,” he says.

“Technology, data, AI, content, talent and operating models cut across all three. 

“The key is not to transform individual channels in isolation, but to redesign how the entire marketing system works together.”

For a company with more than 50 sub-brands, ensuring that the entire marketing system works together requires a strong central brand – which, at Tech Mahindra, hinges on heritage. 

“The starting point is clarity around the role of the master brand,” he says.

“A strong brand architecture should create coherence without eliminating the distinctiveness of businesses, capabilities and propositions.

“For Tech Mahindra, our heritage is an enormous strength. The Mahindra name carries deep associations with trust, purpose and long-term commitment. 

“The opportunity is to build on that heritage while expressing it in a way that is contemporary, globally relevant and culturally adaptable. Global consistency and local relevance are not opposites. The core idea should remain consistent, while its expression must be sensitive to the market, audience and cultural context.”

“Experience also teaches you that transformation needs both patience and urgency: patience to build credibility, and urgency to create momentum.”

Earning trust 

But a strong brand is nothing without trust.

“I used to think attention was the scarcest currency in marketing. I now believe trust is even scarcer,” Peeyush says.

“It is relatively easy to create visibility today. It is much harder to earn credibility and sustain belief over time.”

This shift represents the rise of a more discerning audience that values tangible results – with marq’s Brand Consistency Report finding that 68% of businesses say that brand consistency was a “major contributor” to revenue growth of 10% or more. 

“What shifted my perspective was seeing how quickly audiences can distinguish between what a brand says and what it consistently does,” Peeyush says.

“That has made me believe even more strongly that marketing cannot be separated from experience, culture and reputation.”

This commitment to building trust has played a key role in shaping the company’s approach to new technologies, particularly as Tech Mahindra begins to find innovative ways to bring AI into the development of its marketing strategy. 

“We are looking at AI across the entire marketing value chain, from intelligence and audience understanding to content development, personalisation, campaign optimisation and productivity,” Peeyush says.

“Within the team, our approach is to combine experimentation with responsibility. We want people to use AI, learn quickly and redesign workflows, but not simply automate existing processes. 

“The larger opportunity is to ask how marketing itself should work differently in an AI-first environment. My view is that AI will not reduce the importance of creativity or judgment. It will increase the premium on both.”

But earning this trust from audiences – whether that’s from building a new brand strategy or investing in new technologies – requires deep trust from behind the scenes.

“The strongest marketing organisations are deeply connected to business strategy, and that requires close alignment across the CXOs,” says Peeyush.

“The CEO helps ensure that marketing is anchored in the direction and ambition of the business. The CFO brings rigour around investment, measurement and value creation. When these relationships are based on trust and shared objectives, marketing can move beyond short-term activity and become a genuine long-term growth lever.”

Guiding modern marketing teams

When a marketing team has the support of its organisation behind it, it has the opportunity to build new and innovative marketing campaigns and strategies – which Peeyush says is “the most exciting part” of his role. 

“I enjoy building things that did not exist before, whether that is a new brand platform, an experience, a partnership, a sports league, a sonic identity, a strategic narrative, or a fresh way of taking the company to market,” he says.

“The most rewarding moments are when an idea moves from a blank sheet of paper to something that employees, customers and the market begin to believe in and make their own.”

According to Peeyush, creating this industry-shaping work comes naturally when teams are encouraged to prioritise personal and professional growth.

“I believe a leader’s job is to help people discover and become the best version of themselves,” he says.

“That means giving team members opportunities that stretch them, creating the confidence to take risks and building an environment where they can deliver work they are genuinely proud of. I have found that when people grow, teams grow and the quality of the work follows.”

Building a confident, high-performing team of marketers, Peeyush says, requires both “ambition and humility”. 

“You should set a very high bar for the impact you want to create, while remaining open to learning, listening and changing course,” he says.

“For me, the best leaders combine a strong sense of possibility with the humility to know that they do not have all the answers.”