36 | Seagate India: Renovating Network
Strengthening its support base and network in India were the big focus areas

Seagate continued with strong growth in the traditional IT and application-driven newer markets. It introduced its first hard drive designed specifically for the digital video security market. It also worked toward making its support and distribution network more effective and widespread. As Seagate was looking at renovating its distribution network in India, Supertron Electronics and Fortune Marketing joined its distributor list.

It also formed the Seagate Regional Customer Councils, comprising of channel partners from all regions, with an objective of enhancing responsiveness to customer needs. Further, the company decided to authorize its network of premier partners to accept warranty hard drives for exchange from consumers.

37 | Hexaware Technologies: Beyond PeopleSoft
Acquisition of testing services firm FocusFrame will add considerably to expertise, and future revenues

Last fiscal saw Hexaware consolidating after the revenue setback it suffered the previous year a result of the transfer of the PeopleSoft India Service Center that accounted for more than 10% of its revenue. The company decided to aggressively pursue fast-growing testing services. It paid $34.3 mn to acquire US-based testing firm, Focus Frame, that, apart from giving it an industry-leading platform, immediately contributed to its topline. From 3.8% in AMJ 06, testing contributed 17.5% to its overall revenue inAMJ 07. The company has identified testing as one of the three $100 mn opportunities in 2009, the other two being travel and transportation, and, of course, the PeopleSoft business.

38 | Acer India: Slow, But Steady
Though growth slowed, Acers focus on SMBs and its retail strategies kept it in the game

In the multi horse PC business, vendors need to adopt unique strategies to stay in business. In that order, Acer focused on two key areasSMB and retailduring last year. On the SMB front it launched a program called StarVARS aimed to grow partners in their respective location, with quarterly performance bonus. To increase SMB spending power, the company also tied up with ICICI for easy finance options. Meanwhile, retail, that contributed about 40% of the companys overall revenues, saw the number of exclusive Acer mall retail outlets crossing 100 across 60 cities. Being a major AMD consumer, the company launched schemes like Mad about AMD, which rewarded partners who are able to push more AMD based products.

39 | Nortel Networks India: Hopes Up!
A good performance in the enterprise business has raised hopes for growth

While the service provider business was sluggish, Nortel Networks did fairly well on the enterprise business. It won a Rs 16 crore deal from IRCTC beating arch rival Avaya. It focused heavily on the SMB market, which is expected to grow rapidly this year. The impact of the global Nortel-LG tie up was evident as Nortel India managed to offer some new set of products branded ARIA (to be distributed by Avaya Globalconnect and also through Airtel) on the voice side but it would be some time before the impact of the Nortel-Microsoft tie-up on unified communications is felt in India. The company hopes to get some share of the WiMax business in the next year.

40 | Tulip IT Services: Coming of Age
A successful IPO followed by a great year, saw Tulip making it into the big league

A successful IPO in FY 06 was followed by another excellent year, when Tulip finally graduated into the big league of Indian domestic services players. Growth was not just in terms of topline/bottomline, but more in terms of what the company added to its offerings portfolio. It launched both managed services business and Tulip Connect. The latter ensured Tulips geographic expansion by adding 450 more cities to the network. The other improvement was a new management team of leading industry professionals including a new CEO. The moves paid handsomely in terms of new client wins like Haryana SWAN, First India Credit Corporation, Dabur, Bajaj Allianz, Idea Cellular, ICICI Bank and SIDBI among others.

41 | MphasiS: Transformation Time
The last quarter came as a savior, pulling MphasiS out of the declining profits of the rest of the year

Though the merger with EDS, announced the previous year, is yet to be completed legally, MphasiS operationally leveraged the EDS relationship, specifically in three areasBPO, infrastructure services, and testing. In BPO, the EDS relationship helped the company increase non-voice BPO (HR, F&A, etc) revenue significantly (from 18% in JFM 06 to 39% in JFM 07). In IT services, MphasiS traditional strength in ADM is being supplemented by infrastructure services such as remote desktop and data center management. Also, MphasiS is trying to leverage the capability of RelQ, a specialized testing firm acquired by EDS. MphasiS has also started business from EDS clientele such as Vodafone.

42 | NIIT Technologies: NIITing Success
Focus on three key areas resulted in robust growth

When it de-merged from NIIT in 2004, CEO Arvind Thakur realized that unless it focuses hard and not fall for easy temptations, it would, at best, remain a second-rung me-too company. So the firm identified three areas and focused all its energy on developing those. That meant it had to be patient about growth. It grew a mere 8% in the first year, accelerating slightly in the next year. In FY 07, the strategy finally paid off and the company came to its own with a robust 43% (46% if you include BPO) growth.

The three verticals, which the company has chosenFinancial Services, Travel and Transport Services, and Retail and Distributiontogether contributed 79%. And financial services, with a heavy focus on insurance, led contributing 42% of the total revenue.

43 | CMS Computers: Global Call
The exports run improved global footprint

From a small chunk of the companys revenues till about two years back, exports became the biggest revenue contributor, at par with Systems Integration, CMS traditional stronghold business. Exports, driven largely by its software arm, Systime, and the SI businesses garnered Rs 175 crore each. In a bid to expand its global footprint and push exports business, Systime announced $15 mn investments to set up three global delivery centers in India and announced open delivery centers in the Middle and Far East. On the domestic front, CMS had a good run bagging a large Rs 40 crore ATM deal from ICICI Bank. e-Governance provided further steam to the domestic run with key wins like the West Bengal registration order, Punjab Land Records (e-patwari), e-Suvidha and a part of Gujarat CSCs.

44 | CSC India: The M&A Boost
Aquisitions and India Direct set the ball rolling for growth

The $1.3 bn Covansys buyout towards the fiscal end added significant muscle to CSCs Indian operations, doubling the manpower to 14,000, boosting delivery capabilities and adding 5,50,000 sq ft of office space. Thanks to the acquisition, CSC India will emerge as the second largest facility for CSC outside of US, outpacing UK as the integration process gets completed. The company further launched its strategic initiative, India Direct to create an independent go-to-market channel to compete with Indian offshore providers, and gain market share by delivering infrastructure and application services directly from India to clients in North America and Europe. Mike Laphen, CEO (then COO and president), CSC during his visit to India in March 07 announced M&As and India Direct as the growth drivers.

45 | Mastek Limited: Change of Guard
With significant top managment changes, Mastek resumed its focus on insurance and government

Change in leadership was surely the most prominent development, with the founder and the chief architect of the company, Ashank Desai, taking a non-executive position and Sudhakar Ram, the group CEO, taking over additional charge as CMD.

Mastek continued to be focused on improving visibility in the insurance and government verticals, striking some major insurance deals. The Zurich deal in UK, worth $1 bn is one of the biggest for any tier-2 Indian company. While the government vertical continued to contribute about 45%, insurance saw significant increase. The company focusing on the launch of its end-to-end Core Elixir solution, an SOA platform for the insurance industry next year.

46 | NIIT Limited: New Horizons
The business model underwent a transformation, with focus on corporate, global, and even non-IT

The changing dynamics in the domestic retail IT training sector prompted NIIT to focus more on its global ventures and domestic corporate training. The $40 mn acquisition of Element K, the worlds second largest e-learning company; agreement with the Cairo-based IT Institute for skill-building; new European corporate customers and the China expansion were few of NIITs global success stories for the year.

NIIT launched high-end training programs for corporates and is developing customized EDUSAT content for Haryana governments Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan and providing computer-aided education in Meghalaya govt schools. It diversified into non-IT training by launching NIIT Imperia and the NIIT Institute of Finance.

47 | Prithvi Information Solution: Grand Entry
Prithvi has found a place in the Top 50 club, in a short, nine-year existence

A high topline of Rs 768 crore with an employee base of just about 1,750 can be attributed to its large onshore presence (1,250 employees in the US), though Prithvi is headquartered in India. The companys robust growth is because it draws as much as two-third of its revenue from non-conventional areas like business intelligence, engineering solutions, and KPOall fast-growing opportunities. In the US, notable achievements were the partnership with a telecom major for providing Offshore Application Development & Testing Services and with a large consulting firm for offshore services. The company has an impressive list of clients including John Hopkins University Hospital, Merrill Lynch, State of Ohio, T-Mobile and Meijers McKesson.

48 | iGate Global Solutions: A Turnaround Year
A right pricing-mix saw iGate revenue take on a healthy color

Since the time Phaneesh Murthy has taken over as CEO, iGate Global Services, the company has been trying to convince clients to move beyond the less risky but also less efficient input-based, time and material pricing into a more output-based pricing, succeeding only partially, and taking some temporary beating was the year of turnaround. PAT grew more than eight times and revenues grew a healthy 26.6% while the company managed to find the right-mix of both pricing models.

iGate further strengthened its track record in mortgage by acquiring Loan Pro LLC, a US-based mortgage origination services firm. It also won a three-year contract from the Radian Group, a mortgage insurance provider.

49 | IRCTC: e-Commerce Champ
Further consolidation on the customer services front is what kept the e-ticketing major focused

While a host of dotcom survivors have been harping on the virtues of e-commerce, it took a government site (from the much maligned Indian Railways) to set the record straight. IRCTC became the most popular Indian e-commerce portal (by value of transaction), thanks to the enhancements made in the e-ticketing initiative by means of the e-ticketing agents model. IRCTC tied-up with Sify to enable online railway ticketing services with cash payments at over 3400 iWay cyber cafes across 154 cities in the country. It inked an agreement with four major petroleum companies for their petrol pumps to serve as ticket collecting points. Despite the achievements, following an imbroglio with Laloo Yadav, IRCTC MD, PK Goel, credited with its e-volution, suddenly fell from grace.

50 | Xerox India: Three-pronged Focus
Focus on SMB, color, and B/C class cities influenced product and investment strategy

The SMB focus corresponded with the launch of a slew of products for this market. Out of some thirty-five new products launched, around twenty were targeting the SMBs. Further, out of the Rs 17 crore investment into brand building and product marketing initiatives the previous fiscal, Rs 12 crore was earmarked towards demand generation and market development activities for the SMB segment. After the adoption of a tier-2 distribution model, Xerox outlined its channel focus on expansion of the tier-2, especially in B and C class cities. It more than doubled its tier-2 channel strength, adding around 500 partners.

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