Tech Mahindra bets big on Nordics

Tech Mahindra will be taking over employees from both companies on board

Tech Mahindra, India’s fifth largest IT services is betting big on Nordic regions as it has bagged two deals from leading players in Finland and Norway. In these deals Tech Mahindra will be taking over the employees from these companies on board.

The first deal bagged by Tech Mahindra is a five-year one 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. It will consolidate 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 set to be transferred to Tech Mahindra on January 1, under a business agreement. Stockmann said the planned changes are to reduce Stockmann’s ICT costs by about ^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, chief information officer 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 and will 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 for the first time working with Indian IT players. Going ahead we will see interesting partnerships coming out of the Nordic region. So far Nordic firms were either working with local players or with MNCs but now they are open to working with the Indian players,” said Rajesh Chandiramani, head of enterprise business, Continental Europe & British Telecom Engagement.

“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 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.