Saturday, April 19, 2008

Tech Mahindra Plans Expanding Into New Markets

Chennai: Tech Mahindra, a software services provider focused on the telecom domain, plans to expand business into Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region and is eyeing contracts in the application development and maintenance and BPO space.

Telecom uptake in these regions has increased in recent times and the company is looking at offering services such as billing, customer relationship management and network management, said T. S. Krishnakumar, Vice President and Head, Chennai Business Unit, Tech Mahindra. It would target mobile service providers.

The company reported revenues of $648 million (Rs 2,592 crore) last year. Europe contributed about 65 per cent to revenues (with British Telecom being the major client contributing about 60 per cent to revenues) and US about 30 per cent.

WiMax investment

The company is also investing (less than 1 per cent of revenues) in WiMax technology as it believes this will apply in cellular-mobile communication in future. “WiMax trials are happening in India and other countries and we want to be ready when they go commercial,” Krishnakumar told Business Line.

The company plans to pursue large multi-year deals in future and is currently chasing a “couple of large deals,” he said, without sharing any details. Early this year the company bagged a five-year $350 million deal from British Telecom Group (BT) to provide services across the group’s retail, wholesale and global services. This was preceded in 2006 by a $1 billion deal with the same group to provide support and services to BT clients. Additionally, Tech Mahindra will look at transaction-based pricing deals where minimum revenue would be decided upon and services will be billed on per transaction basis and not on labour employed.

Additional centres

Tech Mahindra also plans to expand operations in India and is setting up additional centres in special economic zones in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Noida, Pune and Chennai. It will add 1,000 people to its Chennai facility in the next 18 months.

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