Ashok Soota-led Happiest Minds eyes strong momentum from India biz

Ashok Soota-led Happiest Minds Technologies is eyeing a strong momentum from its India business. This is on the back of high digital maturity among Indian clients and a stronger macro-economic environment here compared to North America.

For Happiest Minds, the India revenue contribution to its top line has been increasing steadily. India contributed 16.4 per cent to total revenues as of Q3 FY24, growing from 15.7 per cent in Q2 and 15.5 per cent in Q1. North America, its largest market, contributed 70.3 per cent to the revenues as of the third quarter.  

“Our India revenue continues to pick up. Our market share from India will be among the highest in the industry. In fact, the revenue we are getting from India today is higher than what we had planned for the beginning of FY24,” Joseph Anantharaju, executive vice-chairman, Happiest Minds, told Business Standard.

In India, growth is driven by the manufacturing and banking verticals, followed by emerging sectors like global capability centres (GCCs) and life sciences and pharmaceuticals, Anantharaju said.

Manufacturing and banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) together contribute about 26 per cent to the total revenues.

“India is a relatively value-conscious market. So, we have to get the right kind of customers at the right price, who appreciate the value proposition we bring to the table,” Anantharaju said.

The company will continue to strengthen its talent base in India expanding across its five centres – Noida, Pune, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, and Madurai/Coimbatore. “We will be looking at growing aggressively in these centres,” he said.

The company has 5,246 employees as of the December quarter.

In terms of acquisitions, Happiest Minds will be focussing on companies having businesses in the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, Anantharaju said.

“From an industry perspective, we would look at companies that would complement our capabilities in some of the sub-domains. For example, within BFSI, we may want to build capabilities in insurance. In healthcare, we may want to build in the payer space. The other criterion is from a capability or service line perspective where we may want to build expertise,” he added.  

Happiest Minds continues to focus on emerging technologies as part of which it has created a separate business unit for generative AI.

“Most of the management (team) for this is in place. We have already trained about 100 people, who are working on various customer and internal projects. In the past quarter, we had about 30 discussions with customers, of which, about 6-7 have resulted in projects and proof-of-concepts (POCs). We expect these to grow into larger implementations in FY25,” Anantharaju said.

Happiest Minds reported a 3.5 per cent rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 59.6 crore. This is on the back of revenues that grew 12 per cent to Rs 410 crore for the third quarter ended December 2023.