Suresh Iyer, Vice President - Marketing, Blue Star Infotech, in 1989 as a Software Engineer. Suresh is primarily responsible for overseeing global marketing activities for BSI in all its geographies and execution of strategic growth initiatives within BSI. He brings more than 20 years of experience in Application Management and Product Engineering spheres.
Blue Star Infotech Ltd. (BSI) helps global mid market enterprise derive measurable business outcomes through the efficient use of IT. BSI partners with clients across sectors like Manufacturing, Travel & Hospitality, Telecom, Media & Entertainment, Government and Health Sciences to understand their business pain points and arrives at appropriate IT led interventions to deliver a relevant solution. BSI’s dual experience in building software products for Independent Software Vendors and enterprise IT solutions provides it with a unique advantage to cross-leverage experiences in creating enterprise solutions (both customs and products) across domains and technology platforms. Founded in 1983 as a part of the Blue Star Group, its operations span across USA, UK, Europe, Japan and India. Its seven software development centers are ISO and CMMi compliant. Its alliances with leading technology companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett–Packard, PlatformLab, Amdocs, SAS, Kentico and Sitecore enable it to deliver business-aligned IT solutions to its clients.
Speaking with Yash Ved of IIFL, Suresh Iyer says "The challenge for IT organizations will be in becoming agile in sensing changes in customer and global environments and reacting to them."
How do you see IT industry shaping up in the current fiscal year?
The IT industry won’t be the same like it was in 2008 and before. We call it the ‘new normal’. The recession has made companies do more with less. Furthermore, IT has become more than an enabler. We believe that Business and IT are fused together in achieving business goals.
Technology can enable speed, access, delivery, quality, efficiencies and improve profitability. Technology can make business more agile and therefore react better to changes in the globalized environment. This is now all about efficiencies and constant delivery of value to enable higher efficiencies.
Therefore, it is no longer a service-only environment. You need a service delivery framework that can enable customers to realize positive business outcomes from their IT investments. This will give organizations like ours, who took the crisis as an opportunity to become more robust and agile, a competitive advantage to deliver more relevant, affordable and scalable IT solutions to its target customers.
In this environment, the challenge for IT organizations will be in becoming agile in sensing changes in customer and global environments and reacting to them.
What are the measures taken by the company in the face of global economic slowdown?
Faced with a slower pace of new customer acquisition in the previous year, we focused on protecting and growing our existing accounts, keeping tight controls on receivables, streamlining our business processes to provide higher efficiency, closely monitoring our forex policies and further leveraging the depth of all our relationships.
In addition, we acquired expertise in key areas such as Cloud Computing, primarily on the Microsoft Azure platform. We are also partnering with a US-based company called PlatformLab to offer cloud-based testing services. We tied up with Sitecore and Kentico to offer content management services which is of relevance in our travel & hospitality and media & entertainment verticals.
Our primary goal is to help our customers realize positive business outcomes through effective and efficient use of technology and process optimization.
And this is where we have an edge. While we are a mid-sized company, we have successfully delivered to very large companies. Our engagements with many of these are multi-year – in fact, our longest relationship is with HP spanning 26 years.
Our capabilities have grown by virtue of fulfilling their diverse and changing needs. Whether it is IT enablement or product development, we can provide a full suite of services and solutions to any sized company. And this is something very few companies in our league can do.
We compete with the larger services companies frequently. Our service maturity and engagement model maturity is quite high. Take the example of the project we executed for the Dept. of Economics and Statistics for the Government of Maharashtra. On-time, on-budget and was successfully adopted. Not many companies can claim this, especially in the e-governance space.
What kind of growth do you see in Product Development, Enterprise, Testing services and Travel and Hospitality Services?
In spite of the challenging economic scenario and stiff competition, we signed quite a few deals. This includes a deal with one of the largest healthcare IT product companies in the world to assist them in modernizing their product suite. We also set up an Offshore Development Centre for a UK-based Independent Software Vendor (ISV) providing collaboration solution for planning and managing business meetings.
In the enterprise space, we established key partnerships with vendors offering complementary services and solutions. Our custom solution for the pharmaceutical industry - Elixir, which is built on the Microsoft Dynamics platform, found several customers not only in India but in Malaysia as well. This was after the first successful implementation of Elixir in India at Indoco Remedies, a leading pharma company. We became the first partner to implement Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM) based solution using Oracle Business Accelerate (OBA) Methodology. Our Oracle practice aggressively leveraged the OBA tool for creating value rapidly for its customers in manufacturing and telecom domain.
In the travel & hospitality space, we primarily provide technology solutions for addressing travel distribution issues. We won deals in the ground transportation and hotel wholesaler segments. We also launched a mobility solution accelerator for the ground transportation and tour operator segments.
On the testing front, we provide a range of services including manual and automated testing and compliance testing in areas such as PCI and 21 CFR. This year, we also started offering cloud-based testing services with the help of a partner, PlatformLab. We built an open-source based test automation solution called BugZapper which provides a cost-effective alternative to companies interested in automating their testing activities.
Brief us about Microsoft ERP order from Meridian Pharma?
Meridian Enterprises, a pharma manufacturer and marketer of healthcare products, has embarked upon an initiative to put in place an integrated business management and information system.
Blue Star Infotech Ltd. will implement its customized IP-based solution for the pharmaceutical industry - Elixir, which has been developed on the Microsoft’s Dynamics platform.
Elixir provides features typically required within a pharmaceutical company and provides an integrated information system to resolve their operational issues, considerably enhance organizational efficiencies and improve their go-to-market time.
What is your capex plan for FY11?
Our investments are primarily in building solution accelerators for our primary verticals, developing proficiencies in emerging technologies, expanding our sales and marketing activities and creating new delivery models.
Are you planning any acquisitions?
Our growth strategy is both ‘organic and inorganic’. We look for and evaluate opportunities on an ongoing basis.
What is the revenue mix in terms of regions?
We have two regional offices plus local sales presence in three other locations in the US. We also have an office in London, UK.
Around 49% of our business comes from the US, while Europe contributes 18%, India around 25% and Asia Pacific around 8%.
We are seeing increased traction in Nordic market i.e. Scandinavian countries.
We see a huge scope in product engineering (aka outsourced product development market) as well as enterprise services business from the mid-market segment.
We will also focus on select segments within the upper mid market in the US and UK and India.
Brief us about your financials?
During the year ended March 2010 we reported a total income of Rs. 1.36bn as compared to Rs. 1.56bn last year on a consolidated basis.
Net profit after tax on a consolidated basis for the year ended March 31, 2010 was Rs. 137.8mn as compared to Rs. 155.5mn for the last financial year.
The board has also proposed a dividend of Rs. 5 per share.
The company added 10 new clients during the last quarter of FY10. Overall, the company added 37 new clients in the financial year 2009-10.
What kind of hiring are you looking at?
Our employee strength stood at 795 as of 31st March 10. We will definitely scale up during the current year at our delivery centres in Bangalore and Mumbai.