 "Jonathan Brassington")
As businesses around the world are getting digitised requiring the technology services providers to enhance their capabilities, LiquidHub, a US-headquartered company which claims itself as a 'digital integrator' is looking at India for the talents that are required to deliver such services. In an interview with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra, LiquidHub’s co-founder and CEO Jonathan Brassington talks about why spending on digital would continue to be there, whether in good time or bad, and how India would play an important role for the company in that respect.
How different a 'digital integrator' is as compared to traditional IT services companies who offer digital services?
A Digital Integrator is a hybrid between an IT services firm and a marketing or digital agency. It overlaps different capabilities. It involves strategic thinking, digital strategy, creative design as the second circle and IT services as the third circle. Traditional IT services address some strategy and lot of technology services, but they lack the ability to do creative design. They lack the ability to do journey mapping, creative strategies and design work. They are now recognising this converging trend and are thus mobilising to address the market opportunities. All of the tier-1s (IT services companies) have bought marketing agencies. We are not only providing IT infrastructure, or ERP services or BPO, we are focused on digital integration space bringing in multi-disciplinary capabilities.
Even though 'digital' seems to be the buzzword, there are some concerns being noticed in areas like BFSI and healthcare, by some large IT service providers. What do you notice?
What we see is that, while there is consolidation in both the industries (BFSI & Healthcare), we see a lot of digital transformation that includes introducing new digital products as well as a complete re-imagining the business model leveraging digital. In both these segments, we have been working with clients to improve customer experience and customer engagement.
There are still quite a bit of economic uncertainties in many countries and regions globally. What does it mean for service providers like you?
We (the industry) went through a period of time in 2009 where everybody ran every penny of cost out of the system from back office to front office. The new frontier is about growth and profitability. Using of digital and digital business models allow organisations to expand profitability. While markets are in a rough patch right now, I don't see any problem with digital at all. Instead Digital will free up a lot of other spends and will enable competitive advantage.
What has been your growth? Are you looking at both organic and inorganic avenues?
For the last five year, we have been growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20 per cent. We are also fortunate to be backed by partners like Chrys Capital (In March 2014, LiquidHub raised $53 million in a funding round led by Chrys Capital). We have the access to capital to grow and accelerate our strategy. We are looking out for strategic acquisitions which have to pass through the filter of customer experience and customer engagement. However, we are not solely dependent on acquisitions to accelerate our growth.
How successful have you been in leveraging the offshore capabilities that Indian offer?
We started our India center relatively early in 2003, just as a two-year old company. We are now having our India center as an important part of our new positioning as a Digital Integrator or Next Generation Agency as we look to bring about meaningful leverage and scale. We are having our larger operations in Hyderabad as we continue to hire, build and train resources in Hyderabad and Bangalore. We reckon that over the 12-18 months, we are looking to staff several hundreds with digital capabilities.
The core story for us is we are seeing convergence of the IT services business ($980 billion sector) and the marketing agency sector which is about a couple of hundred billion dollars. With the launch of Accenture Digital, Deloitte Digital, IBM Interactive and Publicis buying Sapient Nitro, we see a convergence and emergence of a new breed of Digital Integrators.
What is your plan to grow India headcount?
Of around 2000 people we have globally, around 1000 of them are located in India between these two regions (Hyderabad and Bengaluru). We are looking at growing the number here to 2500-3000 people. We are looking at building highly specialised digital services capabilities. Over the years, we have matured our outsourcing models. Recently, LiquidHub made any entry into the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals’ Global Outsourcing 100 for 2016, in the 'Leaders Category'. This is a big acknowledgement of our operational excellence.
Does cost still continues to be the biggest factor to be in India or you are seeing this changing to skill and talent?
We operate in a global delivery model where teams are distributed globally. We see an uptick of graduates with an experience in design thinking, coming out of the Indian schools. We see no scarcity in talent, but we feel it's about refining talent with the skills that are needed in our areas. We are trying to find people with converging skillsets in creative design and technology competencies. Using these together, we can train and refine further.
