Polaris is not for sale: Arun Jain

Interview with Chairman, Polaris Financial Technology

Chennai-based Polaris Financial Technology has been making headlines on talk of its being up for sale. Almost all the information technology biggies were rumoured to be eyeing it. Denying all speculation, Chairman Arun Jain tells T E Narasimhan he never met or discussed any such proposal and the focus had instead been on restructuring. Edited excerpts:

When will the restructuring be completed?

It’s almost completed. It’s just about creating 45 positions, of which 20-25 have already been filled. Eighty per cent of them would be locals. We will start 2014-15 in a new form.

What was the idea behind restructuring?

We had technology and delivery capability. What was lacking was management bandwidth. The idea behind restructuring is to accelerate growth, specially on the product side, supported by expanding the management bandwidth. New chief executives were appointed for four divisions — information technology (IT), retail banking and capital markets, global transaction banking (GTB) and insurance. All these CEOs are closer to customers. While two of them (IT and GTB) are stationed in London, the retail head will be in Singapore and insurance head in US.

Each of these bandwidth can be doubled by enhancing management bandwidth. The growth of product business will be higher compared to service. Our target is to double this business from $100 million in the next three years. Services hasn’t grown in the two last years but with the addition of management width, this business will also double in four-five years from Rs 2,000 crore a year now.

Is Polaris going to be on the block?

It is purely speculation. The restructuring exercise has been misconstrued by a certain section of stakeholders with repeated mention of possible sale. Despite the company’s clarifications, these rumours continue to surface, impacting customer relationships, distracting management and employees. Polaris is not for sale.

We are not meeting anybody. I haven’t met anyone in the past and I’m not now. In fact, in the last three months I haven’t left Chennai.

Are you open to acquisitions?

If we get some good opportunity, yes.