French IT services firm Capgemini, which has more than half of its 1.8 lakh employees based in India, now wants to bring in Indian ways at the heart of its management style.

“Several of our clients in the US who were served by both Capgemini and IGATE said please do not change the way the accounts are managed by IGATE. Keep the IGATE management style,” Capgemini CEO Paul Hermelin said during his first media interaction since the acquisition of IGATE.

“We are today investigating as to what is so unique about this (IGATE’s management style). We want to go beyond the IGATE client base and take this to other clients as well,” Hermelin said while indicating changes across the board.

Capgemini acquired IGATE for $4 billion last year, taking over IGATE's 25,000 employees and 280 clients, of which only three were also working with Capgemini before.

Transition plan He said the transition to an IGATE-style of working and account management will begin with the company’s financial services unit, which was built out of the acquisition of Kanbay that had most of its workforce based in India. “We see this getting implemented in a quarter or two. The rest of our US operations it will take some more time and Europe much longer,” Hermelin said.

Capgemini, with a revenue of €11.92 billion in 2015, has four Indians — Salil Parekh, Srinivas Kandula, Aruna Jayanthi and Srikanth Iyengar — on its Group Executive Committee.

While Parekh serves as the company’s Director General Adjoint, Member of Group Management Board, Kandula heads India business, Jayanthi was appointed as the global BPO head and Srikanth Iyengar was hired as the global sales head. Highlighting how the company is already so much Indian, Hermelin, who is also the Chairman of the Indo-French CEO Forum, said, “Prime Minister Modi said I should be on the other side of the table (in the Indo-French CEO forum) as I am no longer French.”

New campus On Tuesday, Capgemini opened its new campus at Airoli, near Mumbai that will house 30,000 employees. Hermelin said it will also serve as a centre for applied innovation exchange. “At group level we have 40 innovation centres but there are only nine certified as group innovation centres and one of this will be in India,” he said.

He said IGATE played a big role for the company to establish itself in the US market, which was the core strength of IGATE. For further acquisitions, he hinted on tapping into the US healthcare market, where IGATE has zero presence at the moment.

“Acquisition will be more targeted with the goal to increase the US presence. The US market is more than 40 per cent for several global firms, while for us it is 31 per cent.”

Digital tech Apart from focusing on geographic expansion, Hermelin said the company will look at growing in digital and innovative technology fronts. “Currently, 22 per cent of our revenues come from digital and it is growing at 23 percent. We expect digital revenues to be around 30-35 per cent in the next 2-3 years organically and with an acquisition we can touch 40 per cent.”

However, digital is where IGATE had almost negligible impact on Capgemini’s revenue. At the time of acquisition, IGATE had 500 people working on digital technologies, while Capgemini had close to 30,000.

Correction

An earlier version of the news report said Salil Parekh, Srinivas Kandula, Aruna Jayanthi and Srikanth Iyengar are on the company's board. They are part of Capgemini's Group Executive Committee. Salil Parekh’s correct designation is Director General Adjoint, Member of Group Management Board.

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