Mphasis eyes $1 billion revenue mark, taps digital opportunities

Mphasis brought Nitin Rakesh as chief executive in January

IT services firm Mphasis is looking to reach the $1 billion revenue target as it taps more business from banking clients, its former owner HP and Blackstone portfolio companies with digital offerings that are growing faster than traditional outsourcing business.

Mphasis, whose majority stake was acquired by Private equity major Blackstone from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) last year, brought Nitin Rakesh as chief executive in January. Since then, Rakesh says that he has focused on finding hidden capabilities that were being served as silos to customers and expand it to the corporate level and tap newer business opportunities from them.

"I am sure we will hit it ($1 billion revenue mark) again. Whether it is Q3, Q4, it is a matter of time. The question really how do we keep it there and grow it from there. You don't want to touch $1 billion and go back from there like it happened last time," said Rakesh in an interview.
 

India's IT services industry is witnessing large-scale disruption. Global banks and enterprises are cutting down on outsourcing traditional application development and maintenance, and instead shifting their budgets in newer areas such as digital and cloud. Unlike in the past, where multi-million contracts were awarded by clients based on tasks they defined, the disruption in digital and cloud where consumers demand applications on a smartphone and expect the experience to be as smooth as using a Facebook app has forced these firms to expect more from their vendors.

Rakesh said teams that worked with clients in a "co-invest and co-create" model that helped them execute solutions in newer areas, but were masked in the transition from a HPE unit to an independent company backed by Blackstone.

Over the last three quarters, he says, the focus has been to take these capabilities at a corporate level and signed up DXC, the technology firm spun off from HPE, for its cloud offering that the former parent was not aware of the capability. This has also helped the firm grow over 4.5 per cent quarter on quarter over the last six months.

Mphasis, which gets four out of five dollars from delivering services to banking and financial services clients, would continue to mine existing clients, find newer customers in similar services and mine over 20 financial services clients in the Blackstone portfolio to grow its business. It will focus in US and Europe, which contributes to 90 per cent of its revenue.

The firm has expanded its new age services contribution to 40 per cent of its direct business revenue, up from 33 per cent in March and expects it cross 50 per cent as it bags newer clients.