NYSE-listed WNS now operates from 37 centres across 10 countries, employing a little over 27,000 personnel, majority of them based in India. The outsourcer, which started operations as an offshoot of British Airways with investments from US PE firm Warburg Pincus, sees e-commerce and social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) as next frontiers for growth.

WNS Group Chief Executive Officer Keshav R Murugesh, who has completed five years with the company on February 19, says his journey with the company has been “exciting and fast paced”. Murugesh, who is also the Chairman of Nasscom’s Business Process Management Council, says the BPO market is still under-penetrated and nascent. Edited excerpts:

A number of geographies across the world such as Vietnam and China have emerged the preferred locales for pure-play BPOs. Is India losing its foothold?

I would say that the whole voice area is very important for India in the long term. While many companies have moved away from the traditional old models to more customer interaction models, there are many other pure voice players coming in. Separately, as we have transformed the industry from the traditional cost reduction BPO model to one which is much more strategic decision-making using the BPM model. What we have actually done is we have welcomed many other countries into this model. So, actually I don’t see them as competition. They are complementary. We cannot exist without these countries.

The industry believes that the next opportunity in IT space would come in from SMAC. How relevant is SMAC to WNS?

According to industry data, by 2020 about 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet and that is the opportunity. I think it might happen much earlier, but that is the power of mobility, internet and some of these models. Many sectors such as banking have begun embracing this, with everything being done digitally. On the SMAC front, we are not doing what everyone else is trying do. We are looking at the digital transformation requirements of the future and how WNS will be relevant for it. This is where our investments would also go.

Is e-commerce the next emerging frontier for IT firms?

It’s a huge growth rate for companies in the e-commerce space, and as internet penetration keeps increasing, it will only get bigger and bigger. As people get used to receiving good quality at low prices from the convenience of their homes, this model will be embraced fast.

The only thing that can spoil the whole model is when they are not serviced well. We at WNS are already servicing many of these companies.

On Nasscom’s initiatives to introduce dedicated degree course for BPM.

We have made slow but steady progress. We have finalised the curriculum. We are progressing on a tripartite relationship between Nasscom, universities and member companies such as WNS. We have identified three qualification facts on the finance and account side, which is a 120-hour module that will be introduced into any of the finance courses. Now, we are in the process of training teachers. We expect to see the first batch coming out in the next year (academic) itself.

Earlier, WNS created a verticalised structure to align more with the clients’ way of thinking. Is this working?

So we are the first company to have created an end-to-end vertical structure and that is working extremely well for us. We are investing in some of our traditional verticals and in some of the new verticals that we believe will be the long-term strength of WNS. Also, we have continued to invest in expanding our geographical footprint.

We are also investing strongly in technology.

WNS is still a mid-tier company. What are the plans to grow the firm into a mid-size or large IT major?

I don’t know what do you mean by a mid-tier company, but we see ourselves as the most relevant and most impactful company in the space to our stakeholders whether they are clients, employees, the government and others. This is far more relevant than playing the size game.

From our perspective, we are growing revenue at highest rates among the pure-plays, profits are growing faster than the revenue and our ability to acquire and do strategic deals are high.

At this point, our aspiration is to be seen as a company that is growing faster than our peers.

Major IT companies have their own BPO setup? How do you compete with them?

I think the market is under-penetrated and demand is still nascent, so there is enough business for everybody in the market.

At the same time, from the WNS perspective when we go to the market, we go in as a pure play, which means we build certain comfort with the client and we understand their business the way they understand it.

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