C Vijayakumar, Chief Executive Officer of HCL Technologies, is clear about where he wants the company to be positioned – at the cutting edge of disruptive technology.

In the last two years, the company invested $100 million in creating digital infrastructure such as experience design centres, IoT and Cloud labs. The company is investing in start-ups that offer cutting-edge technology as well. In a interview with BusinessLine, Vijayakumar shared the company’s future strategy, growth prospects and why India is not a focus market. Excerpts:

Start-ups are next big thing which all established players are looking at. Is HCL Technologies also proposing to work with any one of them?

The company has already started investing in couple of start-ups. HCL Technologies invested close to $2-3 million in Moogsoft, which offers AI solutions for IT operations.

It is also working on start-up venture partnerships through Morado Ventures, in which HCL has invested, for funding more start-ups. These are helping us gain some capability in cutting-edge disruptive technology.

What are the growth drivers for your company?

Though company’s major share of revenue comes from engineering, services, applications and infrastructure that constitute Mode 1, revenues from next-gen services (Mode 2) and IP offerings (Mode 3) are also on the rise. For the fiscal ended March 2018, Mode 2 and Mode 3 offerings accounted for 23.4 per cent of overall revenue compared to 18.6 per cent the previous fiscal.

As corporate enterprises re-image their businesses spending on traditional technologies will see a compression. But, it will be compensated by the investment in emerging technologies and IP offering. The company has invested close to $1.2 billion in IP partnerships, in-house IP creation and acquisition in the last two years.

Are you open to more acquisitions?

We are open to more acquisitions if opportunities were to arise and investments will be in line with previous years. The company is also looking to strengthen its presence in Germany, Australia, Canada and South Africa.

Does it mean India is not a focus market...?

India is not one of the focus market. Though there are projects in India, as a strategy we are reducing our focus. On the enterprise and niche segments, we will continue to participate, but we will be selective.

Though technology consumption is on the increase in the country, we have to figure out what it means for the company and how it fits in with their priorities.

The primary reason for reducing focus in India is the long-gestation period for SI projects and lot of capital gets stuck.

HCL has a large revenue base. Almost 99.9 per cent of the clients are global clients. So we want to focus on them, protect our revenues and also grow the revenues.

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