L&T Infotech to nearly treble headcount

L&T Infotech, a subsidiary Larsen & Toubro, plans to increase its headcount by 1,800 to 5,000 in the next 18 months.

This expansion is expected to help the company nearly double revenues to around Rs 700 crore this fiscal (2004-05) from last year's Rs 380 crore.

To service the expansion the company is setting up development centres with an immediate combined capacity of over 2,500 seats in Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai.

Speaking at the foundation laying ceremony for the Bangalore facility, A M Naik, chairman and managing director L&T said, the Bangalore facility to be set up in phases over five years and will eventually have 3,000 seats on an investment of Rs 150 crore.

The Rs 55 crore first phase with 1,500 seats will be completed in 12 months. The new centres will increase L&T Infotech's offshore development centres to nine from six.

Naik ruled out taking L&T Infotech public now saying, " We will improve our services and delivery further before doing that."

Also, while not ruling out any acquisitions, he said that the company will be very selective in choosing the target. Buyouts, if any, will be in the ERP domain.

While its present strengths lie in four broad verticals "" manufacturing, utilities, financial services and telecom services "" the company has zeroed in on horizontal technology areas to drive growth.

As a result, it is looking at enterprise solutions, embedded software, geographical information systems, and enterprise application integration (EAI) firms.