We want to expand into the healthcare vertical: Sudhakar Ram

Q&A with Mastek's group CEO and managing director

Despite logging weak performance in its US operations in the last quarter of FY14, IT company Mastek targets a leadership position in the US insurance market. Mastek’s group CEO and managing director Sudhakar Ram tells Aditi Divekar that the company also plans to increase its footprint in the UK. Excerpts: 

Mastek is into select few industries in three geographies - the US, the UK and India. What is the company’s growth strategy going ahead and where do you see the firm in the next 2-3 years?

 

We are already the leaders in the property-and-casualty insurance space in the US. Our intent is to be a leader in the policy administration segment of insurance in the US in the next three or four years. The US is a tough market and we have already made a breakthrough there. The policy space is where we need to pick up momentum as our insurance policy solutions have been rated very high. Also, making huge investment is a step we are taking in the policy segment and are making a product investment of $10 million every year, a substantial part of which is going to build the policy administration system.

 

Mastek is planning to increase its footprint in the UK. What is your plan of action for the UK market?

 

Our aim is to increase wins in the G-cloud procurement platform launched by the UK government where the deal size is small, in the range of £1-5 million. We want to be in the leadership position in the G-cloud space. It is not easy to get business in G-cloud but there are enough deals and so we stand a chance. We have also increased the number of sales people selling in the UK-government to make more wins in the segment. We have almost doubled the small team of three sales to five persons. Given the size of our company this is a substantial investment.

 

You are currently into insurance and government orders. Are you looking to enter new verticals? What is going to be your strategy?

 

In terms of verticals, we want to expand into healthcare but that will happen in the next year. Next year, we will largely focus on the US for healthcare; in the UK we are already strong in this segment. We are also building our insurance capabilities in the UK and are looking at options like local acquisition or taking our US technologies to the UK - whichever works better. In retail segment, too, we are looking to acquire and are looking at what kind of company will supplement the business we do. We have started the search and we are planning an acquisition this year.

In India, we look to grow organically. We are more focused on insurance and government deals and have top insurance companies as our clients, with increasing footprint in Maharashtra, Odisha, and Gujarat.

 

What are your plans for the Indian market going ahead and which all geographies seem lucrative?

 

We are not looking at a huge growth in India but we plan to have decent market share especially in government deals. We are well-positioned in new application market and plan to lead this segment. Earlier, profitability used to be a challenge for us in India but not now. We have worked it out.

In terms of other geographies, we expect the US market to grow much faster than the UK going ahead. Most of our profits come out of the UK, but US is the larger market. We are also looking at entering new geographies and if the acquisition we are planning has a footprint in Europe, then we will expand there.