Mindteck plans BPO foray

Mindteck, a $13.7 million Bangalore-headquartered IT services firm, after consolidating its various group companies in the US, UK, Singapore and the Middle East, is looking at a topline of $20 million by the end of this year.

Speaking to Business Standard, Mindteck CEO, Anantha Narayanan said that the integration will give them scale and size and will relieve the firm from various statutory compulsions in different countries.

Mindteck, which is controlled 78 per cent by Middle East-based Taib Bank, is also in active discussion with three niche software services firms for acquisitions.

Asked whether these consolidations are a precursor for Taib Bank to exit the firm, Narayanan said that it is for the investors to decide their exit strategy but added that this will not be a good time for exit as there are clear signs of growth in the company.

"If they exit now, I do not think they will get good returns as we are starting to generate decent amount of cash now," he noted, adding that the firm "must be seeing 10 per cent margins this year as against marginal profits last year," he said.

The company is also scaling up its manpower to 600 from the current 450 and has outlined a capex of $2 million in the present year. Mindteck is presently focussing on business applications and embedded technologies.

The company, which is presently offering technical support as part of its IT services, is looking at foraying into BPO services.

"There are already some elements of IT support which we do under our IT services. We are planning to get into BPO and we are already talking to a leading bank in the Middle East to do some back-end processing work," Narayanan added.