We have a great growth strategy: HCL Technologies' CEO

Interview with C Vijayakumar

Since he took over as the president and chief executive officer of HCL Technologies, C Vijayakumar has managed to keep the company on the path of growth. In an environment where the founders and board members of the biggest IT firms are at the loggerheads, Vijayakumar tells Karan Choudhury that HCL’s supportive board is the differentiating factor for the company’s overall growth.
Edited excerpts:

In the recent quarters, HCL has done quite well. How are you managing this continuous uptick in performance?
We have a great growth strategy, based on Modes 1-2-3. We have built a set of powerful offerings in Mode-2, exactly where clients are spending -- cyber security, digital, analytics, cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT). So, instead of spreading thin and wide, we focus on a few things. We have also created a strong IP (intellectual property) partnership and acquisition strategy. All of this has helped us continue industry-leading growth.

You are expanding in the US and Europe. Is it going to increase costs?
No, close to 60 per cent of revenues come from there. We invested in 12 delivery centres in the US seven to eight years earlier, with 12,500 people; more than half are locals. We have a similar profile in Europe. So, we do not have to incrementally invest on new locations; we can scale up largely around the existing centres.

Do the founder and the board of directors trust the decisions taken by the leadership team?
We have a great leadership team. Many are seasoned veterans of HCL, committed to the company. We have a great board, actively supporting the business. We are all working as one team focused on maximising the market opportunity. All the stakeholders are aligned to support it.

What growth in engineering services have you seen?
This quarter, we grew (here by) 4.5 per cent. Year on year, over 25 per cent. So, engineering services is going to be a strong growth driver for us. The IP partnerships we have built are also going to trigger areas for growth.

How have geo-political changes in the US affected your performance and expansion?
Some deals are slowing and that is already there in our (published) outlook. So, I do not foresee something majorly changing from here on.

What is the hiring strategy for the coming year?
It is aligned to our growth strategy. As we scale up in the organic business, as we see the pipeline demand, our hiring will also increase. In this quarter, we hired around 1,000 employees. In the next quarter, this would depend on the pipeline and project fulfilment demand.

What types of companies are you looking to acquire?
In Mode-2, at digital companies of a certain size and scale. We are looking at cloud native services. There are a lot of niche players doing well in some of the cloud migration and integration services; we are looking at some other partners. We are looking at some in security, IoT, product companies and more IP partnerships. Also, some companies in regions where we are not present significantly, such as Germany, Australia and Canada. We are trying to see if we can find some growth opportunities.