Ayyar: Mphasis to continue shedding its weight

In the past three years, the company has seen a 60% growth in average revenue per employee thanks to increase in automation and exiting of certain businesses

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Information technology solutions provider Mphasis, which had earlier this year divested its India voice business process outsourcing (BPO) business to two companies, said the company would continue to sell assets to focus on its core business.

Ganesh Ayyar, chief executive of Mphasis, said selling the India voice BPO business was part of the company's plans to focus on certain business and go deep into it while shedding off parts where the company did not want to be in.

“There isn't much more weight to shed, but have we completed the course? The answer is no,” he said. However, he refused to divulge more.

“Our mantra is 'an inch wide and a mile deep'. We are very clear where we want to be and we are also clear where we don’t want to be. We’ll slowly, in a very responsible fashion, deal with ‘where we don’t want to be’. And on ‘where we want to be’, we will double down in a very focused manner and we want to be one of the best in the world,” he added.

There were 10,000 employees in the domestic BPO business, he said. According to reports, the company sold its domestic voice BPO business to two different buyers, Hinduja Global Solutions and Karvy Data Management Services.

In the past three years, the company has seen a 60 per cent growth in average revenue per employee thanks increase in automation and exiting of certain businesses.

The company is also promoting entrepreneurship by employees. Three of its employees have started a start-up, which is currently a division of the company, working in governance risk and compliance fields.

International business, in which the company focuses on, has grown at 21 per cent compounded annual growth rate in the past three years. It is currently about $150 million a quarter.

Commenting on the business from HP, which is a majority shareholder in Mphasis, Ayyar said it has been declining in the past 18 quarters. The business from HP was 75 per cent of the company's total revenue four years ago; now it has come down to 27 per cent. Eight out of this 27 per cent revenue is from direct business from HP; 19 per cent is from external clients of HP, where Mphasis act as a sub contractor.