ITC Infotech strengthens 'consulting' to move up value chain

Company eyes 3 times growth in consulting operations over next five years

Following the footprints of its larger peers, IT services company ITC Infotech, the fully-owned subsidiary of diversified business conglomerate ITC Group aims to become an end-to-end partner for its clients.

With this view, the company has been strengthening its business consulting operations and expects it to grow three times over the next five years. The information technology (IT) consulting operations currently make for 1.5% of ITC Infotech’s total revenue, as against 1% a year ago.

“We would not want to get into the volumes game; we want to stick to the value game. In a five years’ time, I would probably be looking at a 3X growth in the current numbers,” Sandeep Kumar, vice president and global head of business consulting at ITC Infotech told Business Standard.

The Bangalore-based company hopes that over the next three to five years, consulting would the front-end of all its client conversations, and help it move up the value chain.

ITC Infotech currently has a 140-people team in its consulting practice, which is expected to be raised to 500 over the next five years.

With a view to expand its consulting practice, ITC Infotech has made some senior-level lateral hires in the space over the past three years. This includes Kumar, who was brought in around 20 months ago from Infosys, where he was the Management Consulting Services Leader, Manufacturing APAC. Kumar has also been the head of business consulting for new markets and services at Infosys.

The Business Consulting Group of the company also has some other senior-hands that joined from larger peers like Infosys and Wipro.

In addition to this, ITC Infotech has also added two new practices to its consulting offering and now has six practices—enterprise performance management, customer relationship management and loyalty, supply change management, sustainability, strategic advisory, and business innovation.

As the consulting practice grows, the company will keep it aligned with its IT services offerings.

“We don't want to create consulting capabilities in areas that are totally non-aligned with our delivery capabilities,” Kumar said.

In view of the same, the Business Consulting Group of the company is now planning to enter the banking, financial services and insurance industry, where it currently has a minimal presence.

Kumar believes that most of the consulting practices that his team is currently offering to other industries such as retail, aerospace and heavy industries can be put to use for the BFSI segment as well.