It is just a matter of a few quarters before Tech Mahindra emerges as Indias sole specialist billion-dollar IT services firm. The companys robust growth of 25% (more importantly, without diluting the margin) has as much to do with its deep domain knowledge as with its major geographic market: Europe.

The first is a definite strength that it has to leverage further. The second is luck: being at the right place at the right timeEurope. Of course, it has to change that and spread to other geographies.

In FY 08, as much as 74% revenues came from Europe, while North America accounted for 19%, up from 18%. But what is noteworthy is that Tech Mahindra has already started focusing on the future markets, with Africa already contributing to its revenue as an active market.

In terms of segments, service providers still contributed the lions share at 89%, while telecom equipment makers accounted for 5%. BPO, measured separately, contributed 3.5%, up from a mere 0.2% in FY 07. BPO manpower doubled.

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l Start-up Year: 1986 l Products & Services: Software services & BPO l Branches: 24 l Employees: 22,810 l Address: Sharda Center, Off Karve Road, Pune-411004 l Fax: +91-020-25424466 l Website: www.techmahindra.com
Highlights n Opened a 400-seat facility in Belfast and a 1,400 seater in Chennai. Building a 9,000-seat facility in Pune n  Increasing geographic diversification by deals with telcos in Fiji ($8 mn), New Zealand ($24 mn), Botswana ($2.5 mn) n Tenfold growth in BPO business, to nearly 3% of total revenues Strengths p Ready to think out-of-the-box:A $1 bn BT Global Services deal, where $117 mn paid as upfront savings p Focused on the high-growth domestic telecom BPO market Weaknesses q Weak in major telecom markets like China and India. Almost no presence in Latin America q BT dependence is still high at around 60% of revenue		Vineet Nayyar, CEO Rakesh Soni, COO Sanjoy Anand, CFO Sanjay Kalra, president, Strategic Initiatives CP Gurnani, president, International Operations Sujit Bakshi, president, Corporate Affairs

Over the past couple of years, Tech Mahindra has been building up capabilities that pitch it in the big league. So it created a specific CSU or Competency and Solutions Unit that has a team of over 600 people working on new technologies and their business applications. The company has been going in for large deals that are spread over long periods. And the change is reflecting in the balance sheet in terms of size and length of the deals Tech Mahindra is signing up. Of the companys 109 major accounts, there are around 46 million-dollar accounts, with six of them accounting for more than $10 mn. In fact, the company has assured revenues of over $2 bn for the next 3-7 years.

Tech Mahindra has also been working on two of its biggest weaknesses: excessive dependence on BT, and European dominance. Currently, the companys non-BT business accounts for nearly 40% and is growing at a fast pace. Similarly, with wins in places like Botswana, Fiji and New Zealand, Tech Mahindra is trying to spread its reach beyond Europe. The company is also looking at the India market, and already has BSNL and Idea as its clients.

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