Tech Mahindra expects 5G, home connectivity to drive growth

IT company Tech Mahindra expects 5G rollout, demand for home connectivity and digitisation will drive business growth in the coming days, senior officials of the company said.

The company expects short term setbacks for businesses due to coronavirus pandemic, however, telecom clients will support the business growth.

"There will be some headwinds, and those headwinds will be common to everybody, but company continues to innovate, continues to leverage every of my acquisition and certain businesses where the expansion is likely to happen faster, for example, digital, for example, healthcare, we are doing a double click or a double drilling," Tech Mahindra MD and CEO CP Gurnani said in an investors call.

According to the details uploaded on the company's website, 93 per cent employees in the company's IT team and around 85 per cent in the business process services were working from home after the lockdown was announced.

Tech Mahindra CEO for Network Services Manish Vyas said that major service providers continue to remain focused on investment in network expansion and 5G services.

"The new workspace is clearly shifting more towards the home and that is something telcos, particularly the large ones who have been incumbents, they are all going to be looking at that product mix and all looking at digitisation and strengthening the product mix with home as the new access of growth," Vyas said.

He said that a lot of discussions are going on telecom players towards digitisation of homes.

During the lockdown, most of the employees across businesses are working from home.

IT major TCS has already announced plans to allow 75 per cent of employees to work from home by 2025.

Tech Mahindra in the quarter ended March 31, 2020 reported 29 per cent dip in the March quarter consolidated net profit at Rs 803.9 crore owing to narrowing of margins due to factors including a surge in COVID-19 related costs.

For the 2019-20 financial year, the Mahindra group company reported 6.15 per cent decline in net profit at Rs 4,033 crore. In December quarter, the profit stood at Rs 1,145.9 crore.

Gurnani said that the company continued to book businesses in March and teams both in the US and India were very active and they booked some good businesses.

"We are confident that the company is in a war mode, our teams are warriors and we will fight and we will fight back," he said.