Analytics has seen growth for past 9 quarters: Genpact CEO Tyagarajan

Tyagarajan says firm now expects full year revenue to rise 5.5-6.5 per cent on a constant currency basis, up from 5-6.5 per cent it expected earlier

Business process management (BPM) firm Genpact came out with its second quarter results on August 5, with revenue at $988 million, a rise of 10 per cent year-on-year (YoY) and 7 per cent in constant currency. The firm now expects full year revenue to rise 5.5-6.5 per cent on a constant currency basis, up from 5-6.5 per cent it expected earlier. Chief executive officer (CEO) ‘TIGER’ TYAGARAJAN talks to Neha Alawadhi about the way forward for the industry, impact of the pandemic and how the BPM industry and Genpact are changing. Edited excerpts:
 
What gives you the confidence to raise your full year growth outlook?

 
We were obviously very pleased with the (Q2) numbers. And, the combination of the first quarter and second quarter results exceeded our original expectations of those two quarters, and allowed us to deliver double-digit plus global client growth in the second quarter itself. We had expected to get to that level of growth by the fourth quarter, and the fact that we got to it in the second quarter, allowed us to have confidence for the rest of the year.
 

Banking also had a pretty good quarter. Great inflows, great pipeline, and all the other verticals really did well. Analytics in particular has been doing really well and we’ve been seeing analytics growth for the last nine quarters.

 
What is your view about returning to work, with the Delta variant and vaccinations in India?
 
We are actually very happy with the pace at which vaccination is happening. We are running our own vaccination campaign in all the cities that we operate in, in India. That campaign has been going on for more than a couple of months, and we feel really confident as we are way ahead of the country’s vaccination rate. We are well on our path to having a majority of our people fully vaccinated by the end of the year.
 
Will you have a hybrid or work-from-office model?

 
We’ve always had the belief that the future will be hybrid, the future will be a combination of some work that our clients will continue to do themselves and some work that they will hand over to us. It will be a combination of near shore and some work from an even further away location, typically an English-speaking location like India, the Philippines, Latin America, or Kuala Lumpur. We’ve just gone and changed all the designs to have what we think is the best way to run every process, barring a couple of variables.
 
Talking of experiments, how did the Rise Together programme (to recruit people who have been rendered jobless since Covid-19) pan out?

 
The programme has received tremendous response, particularly the first six months, because that’s when a lot of people were wondering what they’d like to do next. Our hiring continued to accelerate as our business has grown. Last year, we hired close to 20,000-25,000.
 
And, we think we certainly will be hard on that number this year. That’s a combination of replacement as well as new hires. We have been hiring, on-boarded, trained, integrated and they deliver to clients. They learn new things in a completely remote environment.
 
How is the BPM industry looking like right now? Do you think there is still a perception issue that it does low-value work?

 
We’ve always been looked at by our clients as being unique in our specialisation of domain and process. Since 2005, we’ve always held that position, which is what has driven our growth. I think the last few years with digital has only further demonstrated the importance of domain and process. We’ve always prided ourselves on having pretty deep relationships outside of the CIO, business leaders and CEOs. I spend 99 per cent of my time looking at value delivered to customers, and figuring out how to prove that value.