Zooming in

With the demand for outsourced product development and software R&D making quite a comeback, especially in markets of the US and Asia, the GlobalLogic CEO, Peter Harrison, has his hands full.

As it is, the company is looking at potential acquisitions in Brazil and India, and, overall, it hopes to close the current fiscal with an organic growth of 35 per cent — more than double of what it notched the previous fiscal. eWorld caught up with Harrison to find out about the company's expansion plans. Excerpts:

On demand outlook for outsourced product development

Things are really picking up globally. From our perspective, it is back to where it was before the downturn…So clearly the demand side is very strong. The US is at least back to the level of where it was, Europe may be a little less and Asia a little more. Interestingly, we are seeing a lot more demand in Asia.

In India, in particular, I see a lot more decisions in the market both with regard to Indian companies and MNCs.

Overall, we grew at an estimated 35 per cent organically for the current year ending March 2011, and more if you include acquisitions. Compared with that, during last year fiscal (FY2010) we grew at about 15 per cent. So, in all, it is very healthy and robust growth.

On trends in the Asia market

We won an exciting bid with a China-based telecom company to build a cloud-based PBX. So their customers have a PBX but they do not have to install any hardware for the same. We are also seeing a lot of activity in the mobile segment, including mobile tablets.

India and China are clearly the big two markets in Asia. We are also working directly with Indian clients, mostly tech companies.

For instance, one of our clients is a company that provides technical services such as helpdesk…we build the software that allows them to reach out to the desktop and manage the desktop remotely, and run diagnostic and help them control the desktop remotely.

We also work with several travel sites in India and help them build the travel and matching engines.

Besides this, we are doing quite a bit with hardware companies.

On your company's expansion blueprint.

We just opened an office in Chile, which is more market facing. Going forward, the plan is to grow it to be both market and delivery facing. Also, we are looking to acquire a company in Brazil…it is still in the works.

So, essentially, these are companies that consult on engineering processes. Brazil is going to be a very big market and it is growing very fast. In Brazil (for acquisition), we are looking at small companies, say 20-80 people.

In addition, we are looking to acquire a company in India. We have reached terms with one company, in form of a binding agreement, and we should be in a position to announce it in a few weeks.

The company I am talking about focuses on product engineering, but they also do work with content so they are into content engineering as well.

The acquisition will allow us to address content engineering.

Headcount growth in India for fiscal 2012

Apart from the acquisition, we will probably be hiring about 1,000 people in fiscal 2012. This will be the organic growth. Our current headcount in India is 2,000 professionals. Majority of that growth (in capacity terms) will happen in Noida. And some in our existing locations of Pune and Bangalore.

moumita@thehindu.co.in

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