'We will continue to look at the right kind of acquisition' 

How is the journey towards becoming a quarter of a billion
dollar company by 2008?

We are looking at a combination of organic as well as inorganic growth
through acquisitions. We will continue to look at right kind of acquisition
aligned with our overall strategy and long-term vision of being experts in
certain specific areas that we have identified. So we are confident of meeting
our overall vision of $250 mn in near future. For FY 2005-06, we expect to grow
approximately 31% y-o-y in revenue, 35 % in headcount.

How has the company fared financially in FY 2005-06?

The last two quarters of FY 2005-06 have been good for us. We have acquired
41 new customers during the last two quarters, which is a record in itself. We
currently have a headcount of 3,400 and plan to employ 5,000 people by the end
of 2006. We expect to invest around $20 mn in the current fiscal for creating
additional capacity for about 2,000 people. We are also setting up a 2,000- seat
facility in Noida. The first phase of the Noida facility will accommodate 1,000
people and will be ready by June this year. Our Q4, 2005-06 has also been a
record quarter. We closed this quarter in excess of $55 mn worth of business.

-Avinash Singh, COO, Birlasoft

How have you strengthened your management team?

We are positioned to become a quarter of a billion dollar company by 2008.
To achieve this we needed to expand the leadership tool in our company. We have
brought in a person to head our Australia operations and another person to head
our Europe operations. We are also spending more on branding internally and
externally and have also brought in a marketing vice-president. Consistent with
our strategy of becoming IT specialist in certain technologies we have created
the office for VP, technology. So any company would be proud of the leadership
team that we have in place now.

How has Birlasoft's focus changed overtime?

Earlier, we were onsite heavy. Later we took a conscious decision to focus
on offshore and develop our capabilities and build our business along with
offshore oriented companies. So this financial year we went to a level where 60%
of our revenues are from offshore. We have managed to build a good traction in
this space. In fact our revenues in offshore per say grew by 62%, as compared to
our overall revenue growth of 21% y-o-y.

We had adopted a strategy, which was in line with building
our business in certain focus areas. We won three multimillion, multi-year deals
last year. 90% of the 41 customers that we acquired have come in our chosen area
of focus. So the building blocks or foundation that we had laid for Birlasoft
two years back, today we see that execution is working, we are gathering lot of
traction and momentum. We are also building good business for ourselves in those
areas.

Last fiscal, we invested in our people brought in by our great HR team. Today,
our attrition rate is 18%. This is much less than that prevalent in the industry
we operate in (about 30%— 50% average attrition rate). We are undertaking lots
of programs such as Birlasoft edge, Birlasoft spark, etc and now people are
coming to us seeing our focused approach.

What are your plans for acquisitions?

Acquisitions are in line with our horizontal strategy, which gives us
increased capability around some of our chosen areas. We define our focus in
three dimensions. One is in certain verticals such as retail, financial
services, etc. The second is technology specific, for example, Siebel,
PeopleSoft, IT asset management, etc. Third, we want to focus in geographies
where we can aim at becoming the number one player. So consistent with this we
are looking at acquisitions that will align with any of these three dimensions.
We will continue to focus and have strategies for specific countries where we
are investing in people, economic infrastructure to build our presence in the
market. The Scandinavian market is big focus for us, which is an underserved
market. We are going to invest into it. We are betting on the Australian and
Scandinavian market for becoming the biggest player there. We recently acquired
the assets of Sydney-based, Fusion Technology Group and the IP rights of
Portfolio Insight, a real-time, risk-based loan pricing and active portfolio
management software product for banks and financial institutions. This
acquisition has also helped us acquire some large customers such as Wachovia.

What are your plans for the retail vertical?

For this vertical, we provide customer centric solutions including services
such as profiling of customers and studying the behavior of customers who come
into say a super market and what type of buying behavior they have. In this, we
track their behavior and advise companies to plan their supply chain accordingly
and plan what products would come in the front row and which in the back row of
the shelf, etc. We have frameworks on customer centricity and have good
expertise in this. A lot of work that we also do is around maintenance and
support of large legacy system.

-Pragati Simlote

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