Tech Mahindra Aims To Grow Its Business In U.S.

Amid the backdrop of the United Kingdom’s controversial vote to leave the European Union, solution provider Tech Mahindra is looking to boost its business in the U.S., which the head of the company’s North American business says offers both opportunity and economic stability.

’The current [devaluation of the Euro after last week’s vote] is going to hurt our bottom line,’ Lakshmanan Chidambaram told CRN, adding that although there are many variables that still need to play out, the U.K. vote has spawned "a lot of fears" for Europeans.

However, Chidambaram said Tech Mahindra feels the U.S. has a strong, steady economy, which will be a help for his company. ’We see that continuing for at least the next decade,’ he said Monday before the start of Tech Mahindra’s conference for analysts in Boston.

[Related: Solution Provider Tech Mahindra Embarks On Digital Transformation Journey]

Chidambaram said the Mumbai, India-based solution provider is especially excited about opportunities in digital transformation services as the rate of the digital shift in business increases.

Chidambaram said Tech Mahindra is pushing forward in the digital space with a focus on automation, the Internet of Things and robotics. He said that those platforms are going to change how organizations do business, and allow companies to focus on their businesses while leveraging technology to help ’keep the lights on.’

Fundamentally, he said, Tech Mahindra is positioned well to succeed as businesses move to digital business processes, assisted by digital platforms and the growth of IoT devices.

’A key differentiator for us is our rich heritage in telecom … there is a wave of information that is coming, and telecom pipes are going to carry that information,’ Chidambaram said.

Tech Mahindra launched in 1986 as a technology outsourcing firm, part of a joint venture with British Telecom. But today, the company is taking in $3.9 billion in revenue annually and employs 107,000 people globally. The U.S. accounts for 48 percent of its revenue; another 34 percent comes from Europe.

Currently, Tech Mahindra is focused on assisting customers’ digital transformations and creating digital platforms with repeatable frameworks that can be adjusted to fit businesses in different industries.

Jagdish Mitra, Tech Mahindra’s chief strategy and marketing officer, told the gathering of about 100 that the company tries to dive deeply into vertical industries and develop its platforms from there, a strategy the company is able to implement because of its repeatable frameworks, plus the fact that each of its vertically-focused practices is trained to create its own digital platforms rather than rely on a separate digital unit outside the vertical that might not fully understand the specific needs of each business.

’Everything needs to be directed towards individual verticals,’ he said, noting that Tech Mahindra’s efforts to train its staff on digital transformations was the largest the company has ever undertaken.

That process ended in 2014, he said, and now the company is moving to position its organization to assist its U.S. growth.

However, that’s not the only way Tech Mahindra has grown. In fact, acquisitions have also been a large part of the company’s growth strategy.
Just last week, the company acquired UK-based digital transformation and innovation company BIO Agency, less than a month after buying UK-based Target Group, a business process-as-a-service platform provider.

’M&A has been a key focus for us in terms of our business, … and we continue to see M&A as a critical part of our growth strategy,’ Mitra said.

As the company moves forward, he added, Tech Mahindra will continue to look for ways to grow in the U.S., leveraging its internal strategies and expanding its capabilities through more acquisitions.

’The Americas [are] … an extremely important market for us,’ Mitra said.