Gerald Attia, Deputy CEO, Alten Group, and Ramandeep Singh, CEO, Alten Calsoft Labs, in a conversation with Pankaj Maru talk about the group’s overall business, Indian operations post the Calsoft Labs acquisition and more…
Which are the verticals that are driving your company’s overall business?
Gerald Attia: There are 16,000 people in the Alten Group that help us in serving large customers across geographies in the areas of project management as well as global R&D support. Aerospace, automotive, telecom, information systems, and energy and life sciences are the five key verticals we focus on. Each contributes around 20% to the company’s revenue.
However, in the past few months the automotive sector has underperformed due to the crisis in Europe that has brought the vertical’s contribution under 20%. We are witnessing enough scope for growth in the energy and life sciences space. Our concentration on different sectors enables us to balance our growth. Our skill diversification strategy helps us expand from one geography to another and plays well with our organic and inorganic business plan and execution.
Can you elaborate on your India business and operations?
Gerald Attia: Post our acquisition of Calsoft Labs in India, we are pursuing two types of business opportunities. One, we are doing projects for clients like Airbus and other companies in Europe by using India as the delivery center. And the second business opportunity is to focus on the Indian market doing projects with the captives of MNCs or their international clients in India. However, bringing business from Europe to India is more challenging compared to bringing business from the U.S. This is largely due to factors like mindset, culture and cost, so it remains a daunting task. Besides, there is competition from near-shore countries like Romania, Ireland and others. We have 1000 people in India and as per our strategic plan we want to increase it to 2000 by 2016. We are looking at inorganic as well as organic growth.
Ramandeep Singh: We have a definite road map that includes organic and inorganic growth fueled by the U.S. and European markets. The year 2013 has been a good year so far and as per our projection, the rest of the year also looks positive. We don’t see any major impact of the U.S. legislation on visa.
What kind of challenges are you witnessing in terms of talent given the new technology trends?
Gerald Attia: Recruiting talent remains a key part of our business. There’s a big demand for talent in the cloud and big data.
Ramandeep Singh: Technology changes every day and staying updated is essential for a business to survive. We are investing in cloud, big data, and in certain emerging areas in networking such as SDN (software defined networking) and NFV (network functions virtualization) to train our teams with the help of experts and engage them in new proof of concepts. So we need a mix of experience and new talent.
Recently, Calsoft Labs joined the Network Intelligence (NI) Alliance. Can you please elaborate on the significance of this move?
Ramandeep Singh: The telecom sector is changing rapidly and more intelligence is now getting onto networks. The network should be aware of what is going on. To implement better security, and improve reliability and quality of service, networks are required to be upgraded with new technologies.We have been in the business of making networks intelligent for a number of years. By joining the NI Alliance, we will be able to offer next-generation network architecture and services to telcos and service providers. We have built a center of competence in India, which will be useful for testing and development, and will be helpful in serving global clients and markets.
What are your expansion plans in India?
Gerald Attia: We don’t come to India for low cost or pricing but for the talent pool that’s available in abundance when compared to Europe and the U.S. Earlier, India was only a testing ground for IT projects. But today, Indian teams are driving the entire project, which is a positive trend.
