Atos India to help parent explore newer avenues in US

India to play significant role in developing US market as part of French IT firm's 'India direct' initiative

French IT services company Atos has now given a specific mandate to its India business unit to explore new avenues of growth in the US, especially in the application management services space which it does not have much presence in the country. As a part of the initiative called 'India Direct’, Atos India will be responsible for identifying new opportunities with a dedicated pool of resources both on the ground as well as its offshore delivery centres to identify opportunities in the areas of emerging technologies such as social, mobility, analytics and cloud, enterprise resources and planning (ERP) and content management.

North America accounted for around seven per cent of the company’s overall revenues of Euro 8.6 billion in 2013. However, the Paris-based company predominantly offers infrastructure management services in the US which is directly driven out of the country.

“With the demand for traditional IT outsourcing services as well as the emerging technology services picking up in the US, we are now focusing on the US market with a special mandate. We are making ramp up plans for the US market -- both in sales, business development as well as delivery, and all these will be driven out of India,” Milind Kamat, Executive Vice President and CEO of Atos India told Business Standard.

He said India would also play the key role in delivering these services in the US market in addition to serving the local market and servicing the traditional European markets.

Atos has been present in India for the past almost 17 years. The company presently employs around 10,500 people in India across its various delivery centres located in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata.

“It is not that we were not offering these services at all in the US market. But now, there is a specific organisation mandate with people on the ground to develop that market as a part of the three-year roadmap. So it will generate a number of different opportunities for our Indian operations,” Kamat added.

The initial plan the company has laid out is to approach the same sets of clients it has in the infrastructure management services space and cross sales the application management services. “If we drive our application business now, we can drive the same client base with new business and services.”

Within India, Atos has been testing many of its emerging technologies including cloud, social media and analytics. The company operates a business technology innovation centre in Pune with dedicate resources to work on many of these areas. The company is also creating a number of used cases using its cloud platform to service to the unique need of the clients belonging to different sectors.

In terms of market segments, Atos primarily focuses on BFSI, manufacturing, retail, transport & logistic and telecom in India.