Sodexo looks beyond cards, vouchers

Food-voucher provider Sodexo is sharpening its focus on allied services like cleaning, overall house-keeping and technical maintenance.

In India, Sodexo is known primarily for its food vouchers and cards business. Globally, it’s a different story. The company derives 95 per cent of its worldwide revenue from cleaning, housekeeping, technical maintenance, catering and food services. The company terms this “onsite” solutions services. It’s only a meagre five per cent that comes from the food vouchers and cards business.

For a few years now, explains Michel Landel, chief executive officer of the French company, there has been a change in the service requirements of large and medium companies, institutions and hospitals. “The shift is towards a single service provider, who can address all needs from food to energy to technical maintenance to housekeeping, etc. We saw this coming and have been addressing this need for some time now,” he explains.

In India, however, it is the core service voucher and card business that is known, on account of its presence since 1997. The company covers 10,000 large, medium and small companies, reaching a total of two million employees a month, according to Ashish Talwar, chief executive officer for the segment. “The vouchers are redeemable across 20,000 retail outlets in 370 cities,” he says.

Allied solutions, in contrast, is a fairly recent foray. Sodexo has over 1,000 sites where it provides food services, technical maintenance, housekeeping, etc. On its rolls, says Sunil Nayak, chief executive officer for food, facilities and project management, Sodexo India, are blue-chip companies such as the Tata and Aditya Birla groups, Essar, Wipro, IBM and Dell.

To boost its presence in the space, the company acquired Radhakrishna Hospitality Services, the largest Indian food & support services company, in a Rs 400-crore, all-cash deal last year.