Black Box expects rise in India biz share, hire 400 people in 2 yrs

Essar Group's IT arm Black Box expects the share of India business to grow by 1-2 percentage points in its course to become a $2 billion revenue company by 2027-28, a top official of the company said.

The company specialises in building IT infrastructure for critical technology applications including hyperscaler data centres and planning to bring its learning to the Indian market as many of the company's global customers are looking to invest in the country, Black Box CEO Sanjeev Verma told PTI.

He said that the company plans to increase employee headcount across all levels in India to around 1,000 people from about 600 people at present.

"Currently, India is 6 per cent of our business. We do not expect it to become much larger, but if we have to go to $2 billion then it will be significantly important for us to move it to 7- 8 per cent," Verma said.

The company has reported revenue of around $750 in FY2024.

Verma said that Black Box want to bring some value to India based on the expertise it has captured with some of the global clients overseas, "which are very, large, very complex".

"Interestingly, many of those (global clients) are coming to India as well. We are trying to use our expertise that we have learned from them, working with their projects overseas, both in Europe and US," he said.

Black Box has a target to become $2 billion revenue company by 2027-28.

Verma said that India, apart from being a large local market, is also a very strategic for the company from a global expertise and delivery perspective.

He said that the company is investing in capability centre in India to serve global customers.

"We have now expanded it from about 300 people to 600 now. We expect to be over 800 by the next fiscal and about 1,000 in the next couple of years. Our overall hiring would be more because we also hire in local markets where we operate," Verma said.

Black Box has a network of 75 delivery centres of which 21 are located in the US and 14 in India. Globally, the company has a workforce of over 4,000 people spread across 35 countries.

Talking about company's $2 billion revenue roadmap, Verma said that the company's larger focus for this year is to change its go to market strategy.

"We want to focus on our top 250 clients, and some of them are very, very large logos for us with huge potential. We are changing our go to market from our geography led approach in America to vertical led," Verma said.

Black Box caters to five verticals- banking, finance, healthcare, technology and industrial.

"We want to exit non accretive long tail customers. We want to focus on our top clients, starting with the top 250 customer that actually produced 90 per cent of our revenues," Verma said.

He said that the company is taking a slightly longer term view, because these are accounts that takes some time to mature. "Therefore we continue to keep our focus on getting $2 billion in four years by fiscal year 2028," Verma said.