Sharda Center, Off Karve Road, Erandwane, Pune 411004
Tel
4018100
Fax
5424466
Website
www.mahindrabt.com
John Helleur CEO
Milind Kulkarni
CFO
Sunil Joshi
Head (global delivery)
Amitava Datta
Head (sales and marketing, Asia-Pacific region)
Added a number of new telcos as clients
Slew of strategic alliances
Intensifies focus on APAC
region—targets 100% growth and 6-10 new clients within 18 months
Concentrated offering in niche areas to counter the slowdown
Strong in CRM, BSS and security solutions
Large market to expand in Asia-Pacific
Telecom software-only focus—while helping the company ride through the slowdown—makes it vulnerable and can constrain future growth
A globally volatile telecom market which showed little signs of abating in the
year gone by did not prove to be a deterrent for Pune-based Mahindra British
Telecom. A joint venture between Mahindra & Mahindra and British Telecom,
MBT walked into the elite DQ Top 20 club with revenues of Rs 617 crore in
2002-03—up 14% over the previous year. Net profits grew more than twice, by
nearly 31%, to reach Rs 163 crore.
These growth rates assume significance if we take into account the fact that
the share of revenue from BT came down from nearly 80% to 50% in 2002-03.
Over-reliance on the parent was long considered to be MBT’s achilles heel,
though it had also proven to be a savior in troubled times. But in 2002-03, MBT
went ahead and cut dependence. The year saw a considerable contribution to total
exports—of Rs 615 crore—from international telcos like Qwest, Rockwell,
Qatar Telecom, Starhub, First Data Europe, Alltel, Telcordia and Ericsson. On
the domestic front, business at Rs 2 crore was insignificant, though names like
Microsoft India, HP India, BSNL and MTNL were added to the client roster. The
big crash came in the form of MBT’s revenues from MCI Worldcom slipping from
$2.5 million down to $50,000, following the Worldcom crisis.
MBT made forays into the French, Spanish and Italian markets on the back of
its existing operations in the UK, the Benelux countries and Scandinavia. An
important strategy that evolved over the year was to maintain two to three
premium accounts—in addition to the normal client roster—in every geography,
with each yielding over $5 million per annum.
Hoping to buck the downward trend in the telecom market, MBT concentrated its
offerings only in the areas of CRM, BSS, security and network planning with
inventory management. Accordingly, it invested Rs 3 crore on an information
assurance laboratory, set up to offer end-to-end IS solutions to enterprises.
Apart from telecom software, MBT started looking at BPO as a major growth
driver. The processes involved were mostly on the network planning and OSS/BSS
domain. Since BPO is looked upon as an adjunct to its fundamental businesses,
MBT is targeting its existing clients for business in this area.
