Earlier this month IT firm NIIT Technologies reported a fall in net profit, largely due to its UK business, which the firm warned would be under pressure for the remainder of 2016. But its CEO Arvind Thakur remains optimistic about the long-term prospects, as well as those for Europe and the US.

The performance of your UK business put pressure on your UK results. How do you see this playing out in the longer term?

We are focused on three sectors — travel and transport, media and financial services. We have a big presence in the Lloyds Market.

The run up to the UK breaking away from the EU has created an element of uncertainty and in a environment that is already soft — the insurance market — this creates further softness.

The other concern is with pound sterling which is putting pressures on revenues — other than that it’s a well developed market and we do expect these issues to role over a short period of time and when they do role up there are enough pent-up opportunities, which we will prepare ourselves for.

There is also the media sector — we recently got a large engagement from [media regulator] OFCOM so for us that’s a great market, where we will continue to invest.

Given your involvement in the travel and transport sectors, does the announcement of the choice of Heathrow throw up any opportunities?

Absolutely — we work with many of the big players — British Airways, Gatwick Airport and Eurostar — we work with many such clients. The expansion is happening and there are opportunities to engage here.

What are the prospects for Europe versus the US?

We have a strong presence in Benelux and German, Switzerland, Spain — if I look at the company’s overall revenues 35 per cent comes from Europe and the UK and that will remain consistent going forward. Where we are seeing growth is in the US where our focus is on digital transformation. We are optimistic about the high growth rate going forward.

How concerned are you about tougher immigration regimes in the US and UK?

It’s obviously a cause concern but it’s a reality we have to deal with. We can think of it firstly in terms of finding the appropriate talent in the country itself, and secondly that it will lead to an increase in pricing.

What is the impact of automation?

We see an increasing number of repetitive activities lend themselves to automation — leading to greater productivity and higher accuracy. More and more of our engagement is looking at embedding these automation tools — newer contracts have explicit automation commitments to deliver productivity improvements in them.

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