Tata Play integrates Zycus’ AI-powered negotiation tool for tail spend procurement

New Delhi: Tata Play has integrated Zycus’ Autonomous Negotiation Agent (ANA) into its procurement processes. 

The move will shift how the company addresses tail spend, the portion of enterprise purchases often considered too fragmented or low in value for strategic management.

Zycus’ AI-driven technology now in place, Tata Play is among the early adopters in the media and entertainment sector using autonomous negotiation tools to manage indirect procurement. The tool, ANA, is designed to handle multiple supplier negotiations, draw on previous interactions, and support decision-making in tail spend, an area typically sidelined in conventional procurement processes.

"This isn’t just about incremental automation,” said Jaswinder Saini, Vice-President and Head of Supply Chain Management at Tata Play. “Zycus’ ANA fundamentally changes our sourcing approach. We’ve shifted from manual tail-spend firefighting to strategic, large-scale negotiations, speeding up decisions, maximising savings, and enabling our procurement team to focus on higher-priority tasks."

According to the company, the deployment is expected to impact Facilities Management in particular, with projections of a 15% reduction in costs and increased productivity through automation of low-value transactions.

Zycus’ ANA runs on the Merlin Agentic Platform, which employs Agentic AI to conduct independent, structured negotiations at speed and scale.

Aatish Dedhia, Founder and Chief Executive of Zycus, said, “Tata Play’s strategy demonstrates what we call ‘deep value procurement.’ It’s not merely about controlling costs, it’s about revolutionising organisational perspectives on procurement. With our Agentic AI platform, Tata Play isn’t just keeping up with future trends, they’re shaping them.”