Our regional focus will continue to be driven by where our clients are based: Sudip Singh, MD & CEO, ITC Infotech

ITC Infotech’s data across all parameters has been encouraging as this financial year called for a robust strategic response to the raging pandemic, says Sudip Singh, managing director & chief executive officer. In an interview with Mithun Dasgupta, Singh says in the near term, the company’s aim is to consolidate its presence in the regions where it currently operates in. Edited excerpts:

ITC chairman Sanjiv Puri has earlier said for “a young player” like ITC Infotech there is an opportunity to scale up, and at the moment, the conglomerate is focusing on scaling up the wholly-owned subsidiary. What are the new strategies the company is taking to achieve this goal?
Encouraged by the vision of our chairman Sanjiv Puri, ITC Infotech has been scaling up its domain-led business-friendly solutions for its clients over the past couple of years, leading to a strong growth trajectory. Our interventions have been powered by a laser sharp focus on our clients and our employees, while striving for excellence in operations. Our strategic focus continues to be on delivering business-friendly technology solutions. We take great pride in investing and building differentiated capabilities at the intersection of industry domain & digital technologies. The three key themes that we have pivoted over the past two years include focus, simplicity and execution.

During the last financial year, the company’s consolidated total income grew 12% year-on-year to Rs 2,268.63 crore, while net profit doubled to Rs 209.47 crore. Has the coronavirus outbreak posed a threat to the company’s growth momentum as well as profitability this fiscal?
The last eight months of the Covid-19 pandemic provided us the opportunity to underscore our commitment to our strategy of staying focused on our employees & clients. This financial year, a year that will always be remembered for the unimaginable crisis and disruption, called for a robust strategic response that was centred around clients & employees. The data across all parameters has been encouraging – our Oct’20 Client Satisfaction (as per independent third party study) indicates that we are setting the benchmark for the IT services industry; our employee attrition is down to best in class in the industry and our industry-led solutions are being recognised as the sharpest in the identified industry verticals by leading analysts like Forrester, Zinnov & Avasant on the global arena – leading to 7.5% y-o-y growth for H1FY21. All of this while delivering with excellence, resulting in the industry leading bottom line (21% Ebitda for H1FY21).

The company provides business solutions to enterprise clients in different sectors. What are the sectors doing well and expected to do well for the company?
The three industry clusters we focus on are – consumer goods & manufacturing, banking financial services & health care (BFSH), and travel & hospitality. The banking, financial services & health care verticals have seen a strong uptick in demand, despite the pandemic. Consumer goods and manufacturing as a sector also saw an overall uptick in demand, powered by transformational strategic initiatives in some of our key accounts. In line with the trends in the market, while the travel & hospitality industry sector went through significantly weakened demand, clients remained focused on cost reduction and enabling operational efficiencies.

ITC Infotech has presence across five continents. Will it go slow on expanding operations further in certain geographies at this moment? When is the company planning to inaugurate the new global delivery centre in Johannesburg?
Our regional focus will continue to be driven by where our clients are based. To effectively manage our global presence, and in line with our strategic objectives, we have aligned our team across three regions – Americas, Europe and AMEA (Asia, Middle East and Africa). In the near term, our aim is to consolidate our presence in these regions where we currently operate in. As part of this strategy, we are strengthening our presence in South Africa, through a larger global delivery center in Johannesburg. The Global Delivery center is expected to be launched in the next couple of months and is expected to be fully functional in the next financial year.

A project team from Johns Hopkins University is working with ITC Infotech’s digital experience (DX) team on Covid-19 Control data collection App. Kindly elaborate on the details on this project.

During this unprecedented crisis, industry-academia collaboration is critical and the Covid Control data collection app by Johns Hopkins University was very well-timed. ‘COVID Control – A Johns Hopkins University Study’, is aimed at locating potential Covid-19 clusters in the US. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University wanted to address the challenge by collecting information that can identify potential Covid-19 clusters before health care and testing is sought.

This would allow government agencies to deploy optimal resources to Covid-19 hotspots. A mobile application to enable this was created by the Johns Hopkins team with the support of ITC Infotech. The efficacy of the application depended on its large-scale adoption and usage.