The Hindu Business Line : Syntel sets its sights on $1-b revenues

Pune May 15 Services and BPO firm Syntel Inc has drawn out a roadmap for 1-5-10 — $1 billion in revenue with market capitalisation of $5 billion by 2010.

In an e-mail interview, Mr Keshav R. Murugesh, Syntel President and Chief Operating Officer, told Business Line that to get to that level, Syntel was likely to move to an employee strength of 25,000 people and was investing in terms of talent, infrastructure and new offerings.

He said it expected to see higher revenues from Europe and APAC (Asia Pacific) in addition to the US and expected new offerings such as testing, BPO, PLM (product lifecycle management), migration and application management to continue to ramp up fast. He also said that it was looking at moving into some tier II and tier III cities "thereby taking work to the people as opposed to following the model of taking people to work.''

Nod for SEZ facility

Mr Keshav said the company has obtained approval for its own SEZ facility in Pune at Talawade. The new SEZ would be created on 40 acres of land, out of a total of 76 acres that the company has in Talawade. It would be constructing 10-lakh sq ft over the next three years at an estimated investment of $60-70 million.

The SEZ facility would cater to the growth of its business both in IT and BPO segments, Mr Keshav said.

Syntel's Pune campus focuses on areas such as banking, insurance, healthcare, automotive and manufacturing and BPO services around investment management and mortgages. A new healthcare BPO is likely to be housed in this campus. The investment would be from internal accruals.

He said Syntel had about 2,000 people working out of Chennai where the company is setting up an SEZ facility at Siruseri. Commenting on the BPO operations in Pune and Mumbai, Mr Keshav said 12 per cent of Syntel's overall revenues come from this segment and was focussed on high-end financial processes. The growth in this business in the past one year was 200 per cent and over the next three years, it could well emerge as a 25 per cent contributor to its overall top line.