With digitisation growing across sectors and increased transparency in government dealings offering better opportunities, Indian IT firm Tech Mahindra, whose concentration till recently was on international markets such as Europe and the US, is now shifting focus to the Indian market.
The company established a strategic business unit structure recently, and has put in place a dedicated delivery team.
Speaking to
“We took a decision in March 2017 to look at the business here because of the nature of deals coming in,” Baksi added.
The IT market growth
Indian IT market accounts for about $85 billion and is growing at the rate of nine per cent, propelled by the government’s digitisation drive. This presents huge business opportunity for businesses. For Tech Mahindra, the Indian market accounts for about five per cent of the total revenue. The company’s total revenue is about $4.9 billion. The company aims to double its Indian revenue in the next few years.
Since the beginning of dedicated India operations six months ago, the company has seen large government projects for modernisation, huge opportunities for improving customer experience in the e-commerce space, and IT transformation projects involving enterprises customers such as banks and telecom players.
Coal India deal
The mid-cap IT major recently signed a ₹270-crore deal with Coal India for digital transformation for a period of five years. The deal includes supply and implementation of the Hospital Information Management System, across all eight subsidiaries of Coal India covering 21 hospitals.
It also won a tender issued by the India Ports Association to modernise and automate ports for five central government-owned ports.
The company has already tied up with two large telecom players for IT transformation and customer experience in the wallet space.
In the e-commerce space, the company is working to improve customer experience. “But we are very selective about the projects in both government and enterprise side,” said Baksi.
For instance, payments are still a huge challenge with the government. “So what we do is we work with the government while the Request for Proposal is being made,” Baksi said.
“We ensure the payment terms are favourable to us with any vendor they choose. If the payment terms do not meet the internal norms, we walk out from the deal. We don’t even bid. We are selective about the projects we work on,” he added.