‘New strategy to change how we see M&AS’

Mid-cap IT services firm Zensar Technologies, part of the RPG Group, announced the acquisition of Us-based M3bi for $33 million as the company re-strategises under its new chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD) AJAY BHUTORIA. In an interview with Shivani Shinde, Bhutoria spoke about the new strategy he has rolled out, mergers and acquisitions (M&AS) and how Zensar is going to address supply-side issues. Edited excerpts:

This is the second quarter since you came on board at Zensar. How is the new strategic roll-out going?

As soon as I came on board, we came out with a strategy that will cover sales engagement and talent roadmap and how we look at M&AS. The focus of this strategy is to get Zensar towards having ‘predictable, sustainable and profitable growth’. When you start executing on such a roadmap, it will take anywhere between four and eight quarters for the strategy to take root and give results.

What is the strategy?

There are two parts to this; one is the core areas or verticals of focus and the horizontal structure that this focus requires. We have identified five growth areas, and none of these are new to us. We have had capabilities and footprint across these areas and it is about sharpening the focus. These five areas include experience services, advanced engineering services, data analytics & artificial intelligence (Ai)/machine learning (ML), core application services like Saas and digital foundation services. For instance, we are already offering services under the experience service with our earlier acquisitions of Foolproof and Indigo Slate. They are well established in the firm and are giving significant traction for us. Similarly, advanced engineering service is now being highlighted because of the criticality we have added to it. Data analytics, AI/ML is again where we are present. We are carving it out as a separate opportunity because of the market out there. Add to this, there are four horizontal focus areas that tap into the new strategy roll out. That is, sales, talent, partnerships and M&AS. On the sales side, we have started to expand our pre-sales team and also made changes to how the sales team works and reports. Skilling and reskilling have been part of the company, and given the way we have sliced up our strategy, there will be an additional impetus on how we get talent. M3bi, our recent acquisition, addresses some of these requirements. From the capability aspect, it is doing some really cuttingedge work in data analytics and AI/ML. It brings us significant capability.

How does the M3bi acquisition fit into the new strategy?

This acquisition fits into two of the five strategic areas we have spoken about — advanced engineering services and data analytics AI/ML. Additionally, it also gets marquee clients on board. Three of the clients we get through M3bi are Fortune 500 companies. A sizable portion of the work it does is with banking and financial services (BFSI) verticals. BFSI is a major thrust area for us and contributes 29 per cent to the firm's revenue.