Beyond the meal voucher

IN CONVERSATION

Nine years in India, and Sodexho is still known as only a meal voucher company while globally, this business contributes only ¤6 billion to its total turnover of ¤12 billion, the rest coming from management of food and a host of other services.

Sodexho's chief executive officer MICHEL LANDEL tells Business Standard how he intends to push double-digit growth in the region and ensure that India's contribution to the overall turnover of the company goes up to 5 per cent over the next 10 years, against less than 1 per cent currently

Where does India figure on your agenda?

India is a very important market for us. We see a lot of future for our business in this fast growing economy. Along with China, India is the other market we will focus on in the next 10 years.

Already we have started providing integrated management services to corporates like Reliance and Wipro which includes all the basic services like food, travel and maintenance needed to keep the employees satisfied.

In India, it is still a 70:30 ratio between vouchers and the managed services business, but we are working at changing this over the next few years. The standard of living is going up, and we believe we can do double digit growth in India.

So what is the agenda for the next 10 years?

We are looking at adding more clients into our integrated management services which we see growing as Indian companies become larger and more global. As Indian companies go global, we would like to be able to provide these services to them in other countries too. The other two areas will be healthcare and education.

Can you elaborate on your plans in healthcare and education?

We are already working with Fortis and Wockhardt to manage the hospitality services at their hospitals. We cover everything apart from the medical aspect of it. Globally, we are the leaders in this category which is just about starting to emerge in India.

Similarly, we see tremendous potential in education, the other sector we feel will grow in this country. We would offer similar managed services to educational institutions in the country at all levels.