The great turnaround With the much-delayed amalgamation of Indian systems integrators Tech Mahindra and Satyam Mahindra finally formalised, the merged entity has now set its sights on becoming a $5 billion company by 2015. To reach that goal, the head of its MEA and Turkey business is looking to double Middle East revenue. Ben Rossi reports.
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hen Ramalinga Raju, the former Chairman of Satyam Computer Services, revealed in January 2009 that he had manipulated his company’s accounts by $1.47 billion, it shocked the business world. It was the biggest corporate fraud in India’s history. Had you predicted that the company would go on to be part of a $5 billion company by 2015, you would have been branded as crazy as Mr Raju himself. But such is business. Three months after the revelation, Satyam was acquired by Tech Mahindra, another systems integrator of similar size to Satyam. It wasn’t to be quite as easy as that, however. Tax and legal issues led to much toing and froing in the India courts, before the merger was finally approved and announced by the board of the companies
in March 2012. It would then be another 14 months before the two companies were legally merged. Both companies now have cause for cheer. The merged entity forges quite a formidable force in technology services, with revenue of $2.7 billion and a team of 84,000 professionals across 46 countries. What’s more, the company has now set its sights on a target of achieving revenue of $5 billion by 2015. Over in the Middle East, Africa and Turkey, G.B. Kumar has been tasked with helping this region play a part in that target. To date, ongoing projects in the region are worth in excess of $150 million, which Kumar aims to double in the next two years. “I think it’s an exciting goal,” Kumar says. “In a nutshell, the objective for the Middle East is to double our revenues in the next two years from where we are now.
“My frustration has been that we play in less than $10 million ticket size deals, but 90 percent of the share of the wallet in this region go into greater than $10 million deals, so I’m not even present. I need to break through that part of the barrier." www.cnmeonline.com
“Right now, we collectively support close to 1,000 engineers in terms of actual projects, between onsite and offshore for the Middle East, and the typical way we work is 60 percent offshore and 40 percent onsite in this region.” To achieve that growth, Kumar is looking at the inorganic and transformational initiatives which will allow the company to move faster than the market. Among the keys to that is the market Tech Mahindra is targeting. “On the enterprise side, we have typically played in deals which are less than $5 million in terms of size,” he says. “The way I see it, there is an invisible glass ceiling.” Last year, Kumar and his team scored some big managed services wins with Majid Al Futtaim Properties, Mubadala and Aspire, which did allow Mahindra to break through that ceiling. He believes deals like these are integral to achieving the ambitious targets, and speaks of his “frustration” with Mahindra’s position in the market. “My frustration has been that we play in less than $10 million ticket size deals, but 90 percent of the share of the wallet in this region go into greater than $10 million deals, so I’m not even present. “I’m trying to play in 10 percent of the market and trying to gain market share. First of all, I need to break through that part of the barrier. Then the playing field is much bigger than where we are sitting today. I think that time is now.” However, with the amalgamation finally formalised, Kumar believes Mahindra can now target a much bigger market. “The advantage I have with the merger of the two companies,” he says, “is there is no stigma attached to the name anymore. The size of the company justifies customers to invite us to the bigger parties.” On top of this, Kumar is keen to expand Mahindra into the large markets of Turkey and Saudi through a number september 2013
Computer News Middle East
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