Sweet Smell Of Success

For most of us perfumes and tech are a world apart. But not for Alfred Muthunathan. He uses artificial intelligence, data science, brain mapping and algorithms to create a whole new olfactory experience. 

“My favourite perfume is YSL Y. While it has a spicy punch, the lavender has a calming influence.

These reflect my personality as I am usually very calm and composed,” he says.

To remove this human prejudice, Symrise, a company that he worked for, used electroencephalograms (EEGs), for fragrance testing. Devices with electrodes were placed on a subject’s scalp to record their brain’s electrical activity when they smelled a fragrance. Muthunathan says that using tech to get unbiased feedback ensured the company could deliver a great product. 

Symrise specialises in the development, production and distribution of fragrances and flavourings among other things.

Muthunathan’s penchant for using technology to find customer-centred solutions is partly due to his education and his tech background.

His parents laid a lot of stress on education. Both were educators themselves. While his mother was a district education officer, his father, a PhD, was a college principal. From a very young age it was drilled into his head that education was the gateway to success.

They were willing to sacrifice comfort and move out of Marthandam, their hometown in Tamil Nadu, so that Muthunathan could attend a better school in Nagercoil. Later they fully supported his decision to study agriculture at Allahabad University. In those days not many in their circle left home in south India to study in north India. Muthunathan still recalls the 56-hour train journey on the Ganga Kaveri Express, the only available train back then.

“After graduation, I had two options—do a Master’s in agriculture or consider something in technology,” he says. Since his bosom pal was pursuing a career in information technology (IT), Muthunathan followed suit and completed his Master’s from the Madurai Kamraj University.

Switching Lanes

Life as a techie was not as rosy as he thought it would be. As a consultant with firms such as NTT Data and Cognizant he travelled extensively to handle projects in France, Spain, Italy and the United States.

“I was literally living out of a suitcase and that is when I decided that I needed stability to devote time to my young children and wife; something that the tech consulting industry did not provide me with,” he says.

He also needed something more stimulating and the projects he was offered in India were not challenging enough. So, when in 2010 there was an offer from Levi Strauss, he took it up and moved to Singapore. A couple of years later he switched to Symrise.

It was at Symrise that Muthunathan found his feet. His background in agriculture and IT segued easily to push his career forward. He helmed some transformational changes in the company with the help of tech. For instance, a fair amount of human bias typically creeps in during fragrance testing. Someone who likes chocolate will detect its notes in a fragrance and prefer it to a citrusy aroma, which is not what a company expects from its testers.

Similarly, it launched an artificial intelligence (AI) perfumer bot with IBM Research called Philyra, which crunched through tonnes of formulas and old data, spotting patterns and cooking up fresh combos. Basically, it is like having a scent-savvy sidekick that helps perfumers uncover cool new scents, experiment with fresh ingredients and even jazz up classic fragrances.

Tech Transformation

In 2017, he moved to the United Kingdom to take up a position at CPL Aromas. Upon joining the company, Muthunathan discovered that it was far behind its peers in terms of technology and transformation. “The technology stack was outdated, cloud was unheard of while automation and AI were not even part of the internal thought process. Core tech elements like cybersecurity, networking and wide area network were present in bits and pieces,” he recalls.

Getting down to business, he started building blocks and putting in place a delivery engine that could keep the lights on and let things run on its own. He then went about identifying the right tech partners, such as Sonata Software, who could support CPL Aromas’ digital transformation journey.

Once the foundational layer was set, Muthunathan set his sights on the operational applications. CPL Aromas has three core applications—enterprise resource planning, product management software and factory management software—with several smaller applications built around them. He decided to upgrade these on-premises applications with software as a service (SaaS)-based ones and migrate them to the cloud to shave off the costs of managing huge servers and data centres.

“I broke down my digital transformation journey into three-year plans. In the first one, we focused 
on stabilising applications and identifying the right partners. In the second, we innovated and migrated them to SaaS and the cloud. The third three-year plan now pivots on automation, innovation and acceleration, so we are moving business processes into robotic process automation,” he says.

His team leveraged tech significantly throughout with the right kind of partnerships. For example, while Microsoft launched its AI-powered analytics platform Fabric in May 2023, CPL Aromas had partnered with the tech giant to be part of its pre-launch pilot.

Any technology is only as good as its utility and ease of use. While AI has made inroads into every aspect of the company’s processes, Muthunathan is well aware that the only way these processes can succeed is if they have a human-centric design.

Hence, CPL Aromas has a business support organisation that draws people from different divisions into the IT team. As the link between business and IT, they are the foot soldiers who drive the company’s technology initiatives into real-time business plans.

Multifaceted Man

It helps that Muthunathan rarely shies from picking up any gauntlet thrown his way. Three years ago, CPL Aromas’ chief executive Chris Pickthall felt that the company’s customer service needed an overhaul. Muthunathan took ownership of redesigning the process. He analysed how the division should work, deduced the processes that could add value, eliminated irrelevant ones, standardised processes and reassigned responsibilities.

In 2021 at the peak of Covid, the company did not have a global head of production or manufacturing. For a year, he took on this responsibility in addition to his role as chief information officer (CIO). Ask him why and he unassumingly claims that it is because this aligns with his belief that digital transformation should coagulate business and tech goals.

According to Fortune Business Insight, the global perfume industry was valued at $48.05 billion in 2023 and is projected to touch $77.52 billion by 2032. The surge in demand for beauty and wellness products globally is fuelling this growth, prompting companies to innovate using technology to cater to consumer needs. Essential oils with long-lasting aromas are particularly sought after, and companies like CPL Aromas are increasingly leaning on tech for fragrance creation to drive the market’s expansion.

In 2021, CPL Aromas introduced AromaSpace technology that combines headspace analysis with perfumers’ creativity and expertise. Explaining how it works, Muthunathan says that the company conducts research using EEGs to capture the smell that can trigger a person’s memory. It also uses technology for encapsulation (a process to slow down the release of the active compound). “We capture these smells using the headspace technology and balance it with the wellness quotient to create unique fragrances,” he says.

An Eye on Sustainability

Sustainability is a priority for Pickthall and a key point of discussion at board meetings. One of the company’s mission statements is to achieve zero waste to landfill by 2030. Once again, it is leveraging technology to reduce waste and produce fragrances sustainably.

The company constantly works with its purchasing vertical to identify responsibly sourced materials and also looks at sustainable natural raw material palettes, which perfumers use to create fragrances. These raw materials need to be tested multiple times, and systematically upgraded, to ensure they are suitable for different types of skin and fabric and adhere to regulatory requirements.

“We are also working closely with Microsoft to reduce the carbon footprint of our servers by moving our machines into the cloud. This will help reduce our power and energy consumption,” Muthunathan says, adding how tech is a key piece of the sustainability jigsaw.

Life Beyond Work

Muthunathan admits that he works with a single-minded focus once he has identified a mission. At one point, he thought that he should become a CIO by 45 and he pursued that goal relentlessly and became a CIO when he was just a year shy.

“Having started as an application consultant, I started expanding my horizon by learning about networking, hardware infrastructure and cybersecurity on my own,” he says.

But he does not subscribe to the all-work-no-play lifestyle. In fact, as a certified football coach, Muthunathan manages an under-15 grassroots football team and devotes most Saturday mornings to training these youngsters and getting them to play matches.

He is also a trustee of the Cambridge City Food Bank, a charity that works on food security. He has tried to instil these values in his 21-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son. Seeing them participate in community activities makes him realise that his decision to shift gears to move out of consulting roles and into a stable job was the right one.