The Hindu Business Line : IT cos ramp up hiring in high-end services

Chennai, Aug. 5 Driven by margin pressures and long-term revenue targets, companies are accelerating their growth in high-end services such as consulting, business intelligence and analytics – to focus on “intellectual arbitrage rather than labour arbitrage”.

Earlier, this ramp-up was checked by limited availability of qualified talent.

Plus, revenues from low-end services were flourishing. However, the rupee appreciation has prompted companies to look at increasing headcount rapidly in the high-end services space.

Premium billing

These services are billed at a premium of 50 to 125 per cent over low-end offerings and companies are doing everything they can to add headcount — acquisitions, internal training, lateral and fresher hiring.

“The rupee appreciation has been a trigger for the IT industry to ramp up hiring in these segments. The fact that margins are under pressure is making companies focus more on intellectual arbitrage,” notes Mr E. Balaji, Chief Operating Officer, Ma Foi Management Consultants. This trend is visible both in terms of revenues as well as headcount growth in premium services.

“To grow from $200 million to $1 billion in revenues by 2010, we need to go high-end very fast and plan to increase headcount by at least 50 per cent every year,” says Mr Moorthi Chokkanathan, Head-India Delivery, Hexaware Technologies Ltd.

NIIT Technologies, with 120 onsite employees offering business optimisation services in the insurance area, is now regularly hiring business analysts, said Mr Arvind Thakur, Chief Executive Officer, NIIT Technologies. It is also grooming existing employees in specific industry practices.

Polaris Software Lab Ltd is moving “as many employees as possible” into high-end work, according to Mr Kedarnath Udiyavar, Executive Vice-President, Polaris.

i-flex is now stepping up recruitment of specialists at its New York, London and Singapore offices. “This will bring in regional management, local expertise and non-English speaking capability,” said Mr Vijay Sharma, Senior Vice-President, Consulting and Systems Integration, i-flex Consulting.

Over the last three years, the company has doubled the intake of fresh MBA graduates and will continue to tap into this talent pool in future.

Birlasoft India Ltd, however, is ramping up capacity “slowly but steadily” as it seeks certified professionals for its consulting practice.

“We are looking to contribute 15 per cent to overall revenue,” said Ms Sonu Rathore, Assistant Vice President-Quality, Birlasoft.

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