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Mini Joseph Tejaswi,
The Times of India
Hit by competition from multinational players, the rising rupee and soaring salaries, large and medium domestic technology providers are busy scaling up their consulting businesses. It is a high-value revenue stream that analysts believe has the potential to offset margin pressures, arising from various factors, on the basic software services side.
"Earlier, consulting was thrown-in with IT services. But Indian companies shave now learnt to command premiums of up to 100% for pure, high-end business consulting. Technology companies are currently expanding their consulting strength by inducting true-blue consultants across key geographies," says Amit Poddar, an independent tech analyst.
TCS witnessed a 60% growth in revenues from consulting hospitality, travel and financial services. In the last fiscal, consulting contributed 3.4% of the total revenues at $137.15 million.
Infosys is seen to be capitalising on its strengths in financial services and manufacturing, and is making significant inroads in the retail space as well. Consulting accounted for 3.6% of the company’s total revenue at $111.24 million in the last fiscal, an over 50% growth over the previous year.
In the first nine months of the current year, consulting’s share rose to nearly 5%. "We see great traction in the consulting space," says Kris Gopalakrishsnan, CEO, Infosys.
Wipro repositioned its consulting focus with an independent revenue mandate a year ago. Till a couple of years ago, Wipro’s consulting revenues were integrated with other verticals and horizontals. In fiscal 2006-07, the space brought in $25.7 million (1%) to its corporate revenue. Wipro’s acquisitions of NerveWire and AMS were designed to further scale up its presence in consulting.
Cognizant, HCL, Satyam, Patni and MindTree are also trying to raise the share of the lucrative consulting space.
Satyam says its share in consulting has been growing year-on-year. "It's currently around 10% of the total business and we can see it crossing 15% in the next couple of years. We want to have a holistic approach in consulting with a focus on engineering, managed services and BPO," says Shailesh S Shah, chief strategy officer, Satyam.
Patni Computer System recently acquired Taratec, a life sciences firm in the
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