With business process outsourcing (BPO) segment witnessing de-growth for the past two years, HCL Technologies has decided to transform it into business plus service platform and call it Business Services. This was disclosed by Vineet Nayar, Chief Executive Officer, in an interview with this correspondent over telephone on Thursday.
Under this, the company would offer integrated platform along with people as a business package and charge the clients on a per transaction basis. As a step towards this, HCL Technologies, had acquired a leading U.K.-based BPO provider Liberata Financial Services (LFS) to provide comprehensive end-to-end administration and customer services for the life insurance and pension industry. The company's insurance practice would be strengthened by LFS' core capability to manage complex transactions. It had decided to invest $30 million in eight quarters in transforming the BPO business.
Mr. Nayar said the company was also planning to set up capability centres in Chennai, Bangalore, Noida and Hyderabad. These centres would act as a special force to create a global capability to compete with the skill sets in the U.S. and the U.K in the SAP and Oracle platforms. It proposed to recruit 1,000 engineering graduates with skill sets in SAP and Oracle platforms. They would be trained by capabilities consultants of HCL, Axon of the U.K.
On IT markets in Europe, he said there had been no significant growth in the continent. The two main reasons for the static growth were currency impact and macro economic environment. There had been a significant growth in the U.S. and Asia Pacific. HCL was confident that in the long run, Europe would be a big market, as there was large untapped potential compared to the U.S. and Asia Pacific. This would be an advantage for HCL over a period. Continental Europe had contributed 10-15 per cent to the overall revenue from Europe for HCL. Nordic, France and Germany were the major revenue contributors compared to other economies in Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, where it was nil.
On the domestic front, he said the company was looking at end-to-end projects in the power and insurance sectors. On the government side, it was looking at select projects, he added. The turnover of HCL Technologies rose by 18 per cent plus during the year ended June 30, 2010, to Rs. 12,565 crore from Rs. 10,591 crore in the previous year. The performance would have been better but for the negative growth of 12.5 per cent in the BPO (business process outsourcing) segment. The IT services division (both software and infrastructure) grew by 22.4 per cent year-on-year.
Net income was marginally higher at Rs. 1,302.70 crore against Rs. 1,277.70 crore. Earnings before interest and tax were higher by 12 per cent at Rs. 2,071.80 crore against Rs. 1,857.30 crore.
The company had net headcount additions of 10,341 and the total stood at 64,557.
