The Hindu Business Line : Helios targets $500 m within three years

The company is consolidating domestic development centres, expanding overseas marketing teams, pursuing an acquisition in Europe and expects to close this during the first quarter of the next fiscal.

The Chairman of Helios & Matheson, Mr V. Ramachandiran, said the company had grown from $20 million to $100 million in less than three years and expects to repeat this growth to achieve $500 million within three years.

This confidence stems from the focus on healthcare vertical, which accounts for about 39 per cent of the business and the sector was growing at about 12 per cent as against 7 per cent in the case of IT. "If you take the case of Infosys, they took about 23 years to hit $1 billion but achieved the next billion in less than two years. We expect to grow similarly," he said.

"The company currently employs about 1,400 people and expects to double this number within two years. With about four strategic acquisitions, we continue to pursue more," he said. The company Managing Director, Mr G.K. Muralikrishna, said, "They were in the process of setting up a 1,000-seater SEZ facility in Mahindra Park in Chennai, and another one in Coimbatore, while strengthening the marketing teams in North America and particularly Santa Clara centre.

"Every time we acquire a company, the onsite component goes up significantly. Currently, the onsite work is about 60 per cent and we expect to bring this down," Mr Ramachandiran said.

The company had recently concluded a $25-million foreign currency convertible bond issue and has cash reserves of about Rs 30 crore and generates about Rs 60-70 crore per year. They expect to use this for M&A activity.

Bets on women staff

The company has relatively low attrition level at 10.6 per cent as opposed to the industry average of 16 to 18 per cent. This is also partly due to women workforce constituting 30 per cent, that is high in the IT sector.

"As a part of their commitment to provide employment to women it would be their endeavour to hike their numbers to 50 per cent," Mr Ramachandiran said, "Though this would not be easy to achieve," he added. However, he felt women brought in a different perspective to the workplace.

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