Mphasis yet to find the secret sauce to grow its business from HP

Rumour mills have been churning up stories of HP’s exit from Mphasis for several years. In an interview to Bloomberg TV India, Mphasis CEO Ganesh Ayyar says whatever proposal the company gives to HP has to be sustainable and good for both. Ayyar, however, denied reports that he was bidding for the HP's stake in Mphasis.

Is HP exiting Mphasis? I have been the CEO for the last 7 years. And almost entire first three years of my tenure, I fielded the question that HP is going to buy the remaining stake of 40 per cent and Mphasis is going to be a captive of HP.

Then the last four years has been about HP is going to sell the remaining 60 per cent. And every time there are details provided that A is bidding, B is bidding and more, there was another rumor saying that Ganesh here is bidding for the remaining 40 per cent stake of HP. And I had to defend myself with my wife. She said I did not know you were bidding for this project and I said even I did not know. After I read the news I got to know that I am bidding for this project. So my point is these rumors keep coming. If it is going to happen for real, it will happen.

Will it change things if HP were to exit? Why would it change? We have kept our shareholding and business very clearly distinct. HP has been really professional about it. They don’t give us business because we are at majority of it, but they give us business because we give value. Our business with HP is declining because we as Mphasis haven’t found the secret sauce to arrest the decline and bring it back. So this has nothing to do the shareholding. The shareholding at any point regardless if HP decides to buy or sell our focus on generating business will continue. But as far as I am concerned, my focus is to make sure that Mphasis generates differentiated value for my clients.

But the contract that you have with HP comes up with renewal in February? That is right. It comes for renewal in February.

Your revenue from HP that has been declining steadily. What are you doing to stop that flow? It has been one of the toughest secret sauces to uncover. Ultimately, whatever solution we gave to HP has to be sustainable and has to be good both for Mphasis and HP. Solving the problem, which either benefit completely Mphasis or completely benefits HP, will not solve the issue. What has been the challenge so far is that we have been trying to find the right balance-what is good for our client HP and what is good for Mphasis? If we find the right balance we will crack that code. It hasn’t been easy.