L&T Infotech sharpens focus on consulting business

L&T Infotech, the infomation technology arm of Larsen and Toubro, the engineering and construction major, is sharpening focus on its consulting business. The company set up a separate consulting business unit this March and already has close to 20 clients, representing 2 per cent of the overall revenue.

Kavindra Sharma, Head-Consulting of L&T Infotech, did not share any targets for the business unit (BU), but said: “We have a three-year roadmap for growing our consulting business. The first year we have focused on the existing client base and signed up 20 clients. In the second and third year, we will focus on strategic consulting and new customers.”

The business unit has worked on many of the IT strategy aspects of these clients and individually worked on enterprise resource planning (ERP). Year two and three will be focused on new clients and getting into strategic consulting, which will be much more than just IT strategy.

Sharma said the focus of the unit will not only be on sales but on creating downstream business for L&T Infotech. “The idea was to leverage what we already have in place and try and reverse the arrow. Generally, IT firms enter into a client business through IT maintenance work or processes, etc and then get into high-end work. Fortunately we have been getting good deals,” he added. Of the 20 clients, three or four have increased their consulting mandates. Consulting is not new for the group, as many, including Sharma have worked with the core corporate IT group at L&T. The team, way back in 2003-04, was involved in some marquee assignments for the group and for some of its joint-venture partners.

The current size of the core team at the BU is 40, who solely work on consulting. Apart from this, there is an extended system of 75 people who have done consultant jobs for one or two projects. “We will leverage the group expertise wherever required. This will not only be in terms of skillset but also from the project standpoint. L&T itself is getting into several new businesses and has opportunity for consulting on the IT strategy side. While we are already partnering with some of them, we will look at upcoming opportunities,” added Sharma.