Tech Mahindra bags two contracts from Nordic region

Signs five-year deal with Finland's Stockmann and a cloud services deal with Norway's Nortura

Tech Mahindra, India's fifth largest IT services firm, is betting big on the Nordic region as it bagged two deals from leading players from Finland and Norway. In both the deals Tech Mahindra will be taking over the employees from these companies onto its board.

The first deal bagged by Tech Mahindra is a five-year deal from Finland's largest retail player Stockmann. Under the agreement Tech Mahindra will cooperate with the Finland-based firm to produce part of Stockmann’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) services.

With Tech Mahindra on board, Stockmann will consolidate the maintenance and development of business applications and infrastructure offered by more than 20 current service providers and delivered from several countries to one dedicated supplier.

At the same time, 34 of Stockmann's current ICT employees are will be transferred to Tech Mahindra on 1st, January 2017 under a business transfer agreement.

While Tech Mahindra declined to comment on the size of the deal, Stockmann in a press statement said that the planned changes is to reduce Stockmann’s ICT costs by about EUR 4 million annually from 2018 onwards.

“This partnership is the start of a new phase in developing ICT services at Stockmann. It will allow us to ensure efficient production of up-to-date services to our customers in the stores as well as online,” says Petteri Naulapää, CIO at Stockmann.

In a second deal, Tech Mahindra bagged an end-to-end cloud services deal from Norway’s agricultural cooperative firm Nortura. Tech Mahindra will get on board 20 employees from Nortura on to its company and will also manage the entire data centre infrastructure of the company.

“The Nordics regions is seeing the second or third wave of outsourcing and many of these are first time working with Indian IT players. Going ahead too we will see interesting partnerships coming out of the Nordic region. So far Nordic firms where either working with local players or with MNCs but not they are open to working with the Indian players too,” said Rajesh Chandiramani, Head of Enterprise Business - Continental Europe & British Telecom Engagement, Tech Mahindra.

“In the Stockmann deal we are taking their IT infrastructure as-is and consolidating their entire IT portfolio, additionally we are also rolling out their digital platform. The Nortura deal is similar to the work we did with KMD in Denmark,” he further added.

What is also working for Tech Mahindra is some of the deals that it has won in the European region in the past. For instance, in 2014 Tech Mahindra had won a deal with France-based Alstom Transport. Similarly in 2010 Tech Mahindra had won deal from Denmark’s KMD.