CSS Corp to hire 1300 people from campuses, plans IPO by 2023-end

CSS Corp is looking at hiring about 1,300 people in India from various campuses in the coming year, in line with the strong growth momentum being experienced by the customer experience and technology services provider, its Chief Executive Officer Sunil Mittal said.

The company, which has about 6,000 employees in India, is also looking at going in for an IPO towards the end of 2023 as a standalone business.

Speaking to PTI, CSS Corp Chief Executive Officer Sunil Mittal said the company has recently crossed the 10,000-employee mark globally and India accounts for a significant portion of its headcount.

"We have doubled our headcount in 2.5 years...Out of 10,000, we have, around 6000 are in India. Costa Rica has almost 1,000 people now and it will go to 1,500 people in the next year. We are well-positioned to double the headcount (overall) again in three years," he added.

Mittal noted that the company is planning to hire 3,000 employees to net globally this year, of which 1,800 have already been added.

Talking about campus hiring, the executive said the company plans to hire 1,300 in India through its campus recruitment programme.

CSS Corp C2C program (Campus to Career) has been launched, which will engage students/engineers while they are in college through paid internships. Also, it will enable them on specific deep courses required while working with the clients.

"We have also invested in cloud labs for students to get hands-on training in different programmes/products. A lot of the focus is on how do we get the right talent in the system, how do we retain and mentor the talent. We are fairly confident that we will be able to maintain this kind of growth trajectory for the coming quarters," he stated.

CSS Corp is also undertaking an initiative to hire 100 ex-Armed Forces Service personnel in India. Mittal pointed out that there is a special emphasis on increasing the women ratio across the company as well, and the company wants to expand the ratio of women staff from 36 per cent currently to 50 per cent in the next two years.

The executive stated that the company grew at 25 per cent in FY21, and expects to do better than that in FY22, and is well-positioned for growth in the coming years. "...we have enough bookings and deal wins which makes us confident that we can continue with this momentum in the coming quarters...We will end this year at around a 225 million USD annual run rate," he added.

In February this year, Capital Square Partners (CSP) - a Singapore-based private equity Fund Manager and Startek's majority shareholder - had acquired a controlling stake in CSS. At that time, Startek - which competes with CSS Corp - had said it has participated in this transaction by contributing a total of USD 30 million in a limited partnership managed by CSP to acquire both an indirect beneficial interest of approximately 26 per cent in CSS, as well as an option to acquire a controlling stake.

Asked if the company was looking at an IPO, Mittal said the company is looking to go public towards the end of 2023 as a standalone business.

He added that while it is too early to talk about the size of the offer, the company hopes to be around USD 350 to 400 million USD from a top-line perspective by the time it goes public.