The S P Hinduja Group appears to have found a way to salvage its failed attempt to enter the information technology (IT) services space.
Last year, it tried to acquire Satyam Computer Services, now rechristened as Mahindra Satyam, to complement its business process outsourcing (BPO) arm, Hinduja Global Solutions (HGSL), but backed out during the early stages of bidding.
Satyam was finally acquired by Tech Mahindra, a group company of Mahindra & Mahindra. However, the Hinduja group recruited senior executives who quit the then Satyam over a period of time and enhanced the offerings from Defiance Technologies, the designing arm of Hinduja group’s flagship Ashok Leyland.
The IT arm now offers not just design, but a comprehensive IT suite, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, infrastructure management services, enterprise technology services and mobility services.
The structure of Defiance Technologies tells the story. Other than the company’s Board of Directors — which includes Ashok Leyland’s Managing Director R Seshasayee, Hinduja Automotive’s UK Executive Vice-Chairman V Sumantran and Defiance Technologies’ MD and CEO Subu D Subramanian — most of the business and practice heads in the leadership team are former Satyam employees.
For instance, Ramesh Babu, who heads the enterprise applications and SAP practice at Defiance, was a senior VP and a member of the management council at Satyam, looking after the SAP practice.
Lakshmi Kumar, who heads the IT services and infrastructure management services practice at Defiance, was a VP at Satyam, responsible for the automotive practice. Krishna Kumaraswamy, head of enterprise technology practice at Defiance, had worked with Satyam for over seven years as VP and global head of SAP Services.
More From This Section
This is not all. Defiance Technologies’ head of plant lifecycle management (PLM) and digital manufacturing solutions, Varadarajan K N had played a key role in founding and growing the PLM practice within Satyam during his almost nine-year stint, prior to joining Defiance.
Similarly, Mahendran P A, head - green technology solutions and quality at Defiance, was responsible for establishing market research and customer analytics business operations and delivery at Satyam, prior to joining Defiance. Similarly, other practice heads at Defiance like Hari Vedadri, head - cloud computing and strategic initiatives; Sampath Thirumalai, head - business development, RoW and IT infrastructure; Uma Raman, head - business integration, Europe, were former Satyam employees.
It’s not just the practice heads, even the head of various geographies, including the US and Europe, had worked with Satyam before joining Defiance. For instance, Defiance’s head of business and operations in the Americas, Prakash Challa, was with Satyam. There he held several senior leadership positions, including that of senior VP and global head of retail & consumer products industry group and head of solution architecture group.
Vetriselvan Somasundaram, head of business development and alliances, Europe at Defiance, too, worked as executive client partner at Satyam. Suresh K V, who heads business development in Europe at Defiance, also worked with Satyam as a VP and “led the growth of the manufacturing and automotive vertical in Europe between 2006 and 2009”.
Partha Sarkar, CEO of Hinduja Global Solutions, believes there’s a lot of sense in enhancing the IT offerings of Defiance Technologies. “We did something else. We were able to create a team and set up the IT practice from the erstwhile Satyam team, which we brought under the umbrella of a company called Defiance Technologies, which is a part of Ashok Leyland. So, we took out the practice from Satyam. That is the time when Satyam people went everywhere, so we created a new business out of that,” he said.
Meanwhile, HGSL is looking at acquisition in the customer relationship management space in the US and UK. It plans to spend $25-100 million. The BPO has a cash reserve of close to $130 million. This is in line with the company’s strategy to grow its revenues four-fold to about $800 million in the next four-five years.
HGSL derives close to 85 per cent of its revenues from the US, where it primarily caters to healthcare, telecom and consumer segments.