Aparup Sengupta exits Essar's BPO unit, Aegis

Aparup Sengupta, CEO and MD of Essar Group’s business process outsourcing (BPO) arm Aegis for the past eight years, has decided to end his innings at the BPO. Sengupta is moving to a different role in the group.

The exit assumes significance, as the promoters have been looking at diluting their stake in the BPO business and appointed bankers to explore a possible sale.

In an email reply, the Essar group confirmed the move: “Aparup Sengupta is taking up another role within Essar and would continue to be part of the Essar Group. Aparup is moving on from an active operational role at Aegis to a role within Essar Group. He has been instrumental in growing Aegis to become a $1-billion company spread across five continents.”

After Sengupta’s move, the BPO operations will be managed by an executive committee consisting of Sandip Sen, CEO-CLM Business,

C M Sharma, global CFO and head back office business, S K Jha, CEO-Technology business, V Nandakumar, CEO-engineering services business, and S M Gupta, chief people officer.

“Aegis has a rich leadership team run by industry-renowned professionals with deep domain expertise. Upon Aparup’s moving to his new role in Essar, Aegis will be managed through an Executive Committee,” said the group spokesperson.

According to industry observers, the exit points to a possible stake sale in the near future. “It means the talks are now taking shape and his exit is quite significant in that respect,” said a banker. The company said: “We would not like to comment on market speculations.”

In an earlier interaction with Business Standard, Sengupta had said that he was in talks with private equity and financial investors, as promoter Essar Group was keen to dilute its stake. “Over a period of time, they might exit the company and may want to focus on their core business. But the exit will depend on the value that they get,” Sengupta had said.

Aegis’s revenues stood at $1 billion as of March 2012. Sengupta had charted a roadmap for the company to reach a revenue target of $2 billion by 2014-15. He has been responsible to grow the group’s revenue through inorganic route in the initial years.

Under Sengupta, the company acquired almost 14 companies over a period of 40 months. Over the last two years, however, Aegis has focused on growing its business organically. Sengupta had stated that the next $2-billion revenue will come from organic route.

This was significant for the company as it wanted to show return on equity and return on capital employed, when it eventually planned to tap the capital market for funds.

The company’s revenue rose 42 per cent last year. Its deal pipeline, worth about $2.6 billion, is spread over 500 deals across the globe. In February 2011, the company had signed a $2-billion deal with Saudi Telecom, under which it was scheduled to manage the customer care operations of the telecom firm. As part of the deal, Aegis and Saudi Telecom Company formed an equal-stake joint venture, Contact Centre Company. “At that time, our revenue was about $704 million, and it went on to hit $1 billion. That represented a growth of 42 per cent last year. The joint venture with Saudi Telecom is also ramping up. We have doubled the people (1,200) working on the deal and added seven clients. We are also close to signing a $650-million deal, spread over seven years,” Sengupta said.