FY 08 was a challenging year for most Indian IT services companies including the likes of TCS, Infosys, Satyam, and Wipro. For HCL Technologies (HCLT), the other member of the Top 5 club, it did manage to keep up the margins with its much talked about differential approach. Revenues too crossed the billion dollar mark.

The strategies involved focusing on creating a multi-services portfolio, serving bigger clients, cracking bigger deals, and playing up with its geographical mix in order to increase non-linearity of revenues.

Primarily, engineering and R&D services (ERS), infrastructure services, and custom applications witnessed accelerated growth. While engineering and R&D contributed 25% to HCLTs revenue, the infrastructure management services (IMS) accounted for 15%, again a significant growth of 40% over last year. For HCLT, the revenue coming from IMS, which was a key component of many large outsourcing deals, gave it an edge over all the other tier-I players.

Another highlight for HCLT was the $40-mn acquisition of US-based Capital Stream, a provider of end-to-end lending and straight through processing solutions. The acquisition helped the company expand its offering in the financial services domain. HCLT has always been on a weaker footing as compared to its peers in terms of exposure to BFSI clients in the US. This acquisition provided an entry point into a long list of clients including Bank of America, Royal Bank of Canada, and Rabo Bank, among others. Ironically, the weakness in BFSI till now might have been a blessing in disguise for HCLT, as it was less impacted by the US sub-prime crisis.

Rank-10
Start-up Year: 1991 l Products & Services: Software, infrastructure, and BPO l Employees: 49,802 l Address: A-10-11, Sector-III, Noida, UP l Fax: +91-012-2520917 l Website: www.hcltech.com
Highlights n Crosses the billion dollar mark n Crosses 50,000 employee mark n HCL becomes SAPs Global Services partner n Major partnerships and deals inked with Konica Minolta, Mark Logic, Wiltshire Police, State of North Dakota, Chordiant, Visiprise, MISYS, Quest Diagnostics Strengths p Experiments with services mix, with focus on IMS and engineering services have worked well for the company p Engineering and R&D contributed 25%, while IMS accounted for 15% to its revenues p Strength in verticals like automotive and aerospace differentiated Weaknesses q  BPO is still isolated from IT and involves primarily low-value voice work q Not listed in America, affecting mindshare q Confusing investors with frequent changes in financial years		Vineet Nayar, CEO Shiv Nadar, chairman and chief strategy officer, HCL Tech Ranjit Narasimhan, executive VP, BPO Division

FY 08 was also the year when HCLT signed the highest total value of contracts ($542 mn). It won a number of large deals in the range of $10-20 mn including Autodesk, CA (this was serviced by HCL Enterprise), and Merck & Co. Vertical-wise, financial services, life sciences, and hi-tech were the top contributors to HCLTs revenue.

HCL, also hopes to consolidate its foray in China, using its differential approach. What difference all this makes to the companys fortune in the future is an interesting question.

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