Consulting will help develop a strong front-end

The domain expertise that the company has developed is now
being translated into a consulting practice that Rohit is building. Excerpts
from his conversation with Dataquest.

l What are
your plans for the year ahead?

For the calendar year 2004, we are looking at growing our employee strength
from the present 3,100 to 6,000 and revenues from $28 million to $60 million. We
already have a commitment to the tune of 85% of the projected revenue from
existing clients. The rest is what we have to work towards through the existing
portfolio of clients and new business. We will continue our undivided focus on
the BFSI vertical, which already fetches us 80% of our existing business. The
next year will also see the company build its consulting practice.

Rohit Kapoor

l Throw some
light on Consulting...

It sounds unlike a BPO company, but most of the work that we have been doing
have helped us build domain expertise that we will adequately leverage. The
consulting will span helping incumbent clients undertake an opportunity
identification analysis. We will help the clients build a strategic outsourcing
map for the coming one to three years.

We will then engage with them in process consulting to help
the BFSI companies develop and tweak new product launches. At a third level we
will help clients re-engineer existing processes. This has been possible because
of the three key skills of
auditing and accounting, process building, and documentation that we have
acquired working with BFSI companies.

l Does this
mean that Exlservice will soon emerge as a consulting company?

The core business for Exlservice will continue to be BPO. What the
consulting practice will help us do is develop a strong front-end.

Consultancy will let us engage with companies long before
they have made the decision to outsource. This will not only provide us with a
strong inlay into our core business but will also be a differentiator for us.
The consulting practice typically contributes a very small portion to the
overall revenue, but we expect to grow it to contribute 20%-25% in the next 2
years.

l How are
clients reacting?

We are recognized as a service provider that has the domain skills to add
value. And this recognition is the reason all the twelve clients that we work
with today came on board. Let me also point out that Exl is not the lowest cost
service provider, we charge atleast a 20% to 25% premium over other players.

Mohit Chhabra in New
Delhi