Singular Focus Brings Success

The Pune center might be an ODC for Kanbay but that should

not in anyway dilute its importance in the overall scheme of things for the

company. The fact that along with smaller centers in Hyderabad and Chennai,

India's 4000 people accounted for 80% of Kanbay's global workforce and at Rs

422 crore nearly half its revenues is an ample testimony to this. Located at the

Talwade IT Park slightly outside of main Pune city, Kanbay has today become one

of the significant offshore IT services players in the country.

2005 has proved to be an exceptionally eventful year for

Kanbay. Fresh after getting listed in the NASDAQ in 2004, the company chose to

strategically focus only on the financial services domain. To live up to this

objective, one of the most crucial decisions taken was to acquire Accurum, an IT

services provider to the capital markets industry. The purchase price consisted

of a $5 mn closing payment, subject to certain adjustments, plus contingent

payments of up to $7 mn, payable upon the achievement of certain performance

targets.

This $12 mn acquisition, according to Cyprian D Souza, MD,

Kanbay India, helped the company augment its traditional strengths in banking,

credit cards and credit-related activities. "Accurum's leadership in

technology solutions in the capital markets sector strengthens Kanbay's

practice and adds to our breadth and depth of service for our current clients.

Accurum also holds close relationships and a strong track record with some of

the most important capital markets clients in the world," D Souza informs.

Cyprian D Souza, MD,Kanbay India

Post-acquisition, therefore, Kanbay ended up 2004-05 with 52

active clients-its broader expertise now in financial services ensured it

picked up 25 more new clients in three quarters of 2005-06. Other than its

existing client base, Accurum also brought into Kanbay fold an ODC in Chennai,

thereby increasing Kanbay India's presence from two to three cities. However,

more than 75% of the India manpower comes from Pune and Hyderabad only. To show

the seriousness behind its singular focus on financial services, Kanbay also

exited its security and connectivity business in Australia by selling it off to

Loop Technologies. However, Kanbay has not stopped only with the Accurum

acquisition-it has gone ahead with other strategic alliances too in order to

expand and fine-tune its financial services offerings.

One of these arrangements was inked with ILOG to market and

integrate ILOG JRules(TM), a key offering in ILOG's Business Rule Management

System (BRMS) product line, into complex financial services systems. This was

followed by another strategic alliance with ASG whereby ASG's metadata and

applications management solutions--ASG-Becubic and ASG-Rochade — were

integrated with Kanbay's TransformationLink methodology, that provides

financial services companies with a roadmap to transform their legacy core

business systems. And most recently it formed an alliance with CA to offer

consulting and implementation services to financial services organizations

deploying CA's flagship IT Governance solution, Clarity.

Though as of today Kanbay boasts of over 70 clients, 55% is

still contributed by Household International, a wholly-owned HSBC subsidiary,

and its affiliates within HSBC.

Rajneesh De