Having adopted a bania approach to turn around Firstsource Solution, acquired in 2012, Chairman Sanjiv Goenka said that the group would scout for further buys in the IT scape once it consolidated FSL’s position by December 2014.
“Definitely we will buy over course of time,” he said in response to a query at a press meet here. The group was hoping that 30 per cent of its profit next year would accrue from the IT segment. Currently, the IT segment contributed 20 per cent of the profit of the group.
He said that the bania strategy of cutting costs while focussing on profits helped the company improve its margin post-takeover in October 2012.
“We reduced unwanted costs and we shed debt,” he said.
FirstSource was a high debt company when it was taken over with a debt-equity ratio above 1:1. This had now been reduced to 0.3:1, Mr. Goenka said.
Debt stood at $114 million, and the company is working to becoming debt-free in three years. He said that the company had achieved success by winning four new orders.
Bids (called sales pipeline) made during 2013-14 amounted to $372 million in March 2014 compared to $279 million in March 2013.
The company also shut down high cost centres, going in for low cost locations overseas.
FSL is a business process management company with over 27,000 employees in 46 delivery centres spread across the U.K., the U.S., Ireland, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and India.
The company offers solutions in banking, financial services, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications and media verticals.
