Q&A: Brian J Manning, President & MD (India), CSC

'India will be one of our top markets in 3-5 years'

Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), a $16-billion US-based provider of technology-enabled business solutions and services, says India is a strategic market for it. The company has more than 20,000 employees, including 3,000 in other geographies that support its India operations. President and Managing Director (India) Brian J Manning shares the company’s strategies to tap the domestic market and hiring plans with K Rajni Kanth. Edited excerpts:

CSC has so far looked at India as a geography with the best talent pool. What is your strategy to tap the market?
India is a key part of our emerging markets strategy and we believe this is the right time for us to get into the market. The market is expected to grow at a fast clip. It is already a $9-10 billion market and will be $10-13 billion in the next couple of years. The fact that most companies are now investing in technologies, (it) gives us the ability to leapfrog and deliver some of our offerings, be it in information technology (IT) or services. Our focus is largely on the mid-market and above. So, it is important for us to approach the customers directly and build relationships. Hence, we are building our own sales teams.

When do you expect India to emerge as a revenue churner?
Customers here are willing to take the leap and adopt the latest technology. We will focus on the three verticals—banking, insurance and healthcare—and some parts of manufacturing. Though revenue contribution from India is very small right now, we think it should be one of our top markets in the next three-five years.

With clear focus on the domestic market and the increasing business globally, what are your hiring plans?
At present, we are a little over 20,000-strong in India. We expect the growth (headcount) to be in line with the market trends. Organically, we expect the employee addition in India to be 15 per cent on an annual basis.

CSC recently acquired AppLabs. Do you have any other merger and acquisition plans for India on the radar?
Primarily, our focus is on the domestic market and increasing the customers’ agility. It (acquisitions) falls within the strategy. And, we don’t make any forward-looking statements.

Which are the other emerging technologies you are looking at?
There are a few key areas for us. So, cloud is a very big part of CSC’s model, going forward, to address the services economy. And, key to our cloud solutions is security. We are really focused on corporate-trusted cloud to make sure it meets the security standards of our clients.

Another key part for us these days is mobility. The objective of acquiring AppLabs is to extend our ability of testing across the mobile devices. Besides, we want to take our IT-based solutions and put them on the mobile platforms in terms of financial and healthcare services. And then also a key operation for us is our unified communications services, which were designed and built in India and are being run worldwide from here. That (unified communications) is in production and is being sold to our clients across markets.