Tuesday, February 05, 2013

AJAI CHOUDHARY

Chairman and CEO of HCL Infosystems Limited discusses the company’s future growth plans with B&E’s Neha Saraiya

B&E : HCL Infosystems recently raised Rs 472.6 crore from institutional investors via a qualified institutional placement (QIP) of equity shares. What are the prime investment areas that you are looking at?

Ajai Choudhary (AC): The objective of this money is to create the next growth forward for our company. The systems integration market is growing extremely fast. Although we are the leaders, there are still a lot of other services in the market that the hardware customers are looking at. So through these funds, we want to create new facilities to deliver these services.

B&E: You have announced a tie-up with BSNL for the National Broadband Penetration Programme. What benefits for HCL Infosystems shareholders do you foresee from the JV?

AC: As a company, we have already created a PC market in the rural hinterlands of India. First of all, we did a project with ITC e-Choupal along with many other projects with other MNCs. Although BSNL has done a real good work when it comes to penetration of phone market in the rural areas, no company has really looked at creating a broadband and a PC mix for this particular market. So what we thought was that as we already have many customers in the rural market, why not go and add just Rs.300 to their existing bill and give them a computer too. Basically the idea was that if rural consumers already have a wire-line connection, then why not add a small amount per month and give them a computer and a broadband connection as well. That will not only serve their need but also benefit our company at the same time. That’s where the basic idea was born.

B&E: Last year, you announced the acquisition of Natural Technologies, a niche banking software product company. How is the integration process going on?

AC: Fundamentally, what we were looking from that acquisition was to get hold of a product-company as we were not looking for a service-based company at that time. A third of India’s GDP is contributed by cooperatives and that’s exactly the idea behind the acquisition. The rural banking and cooperative segments are completely untapped in India, quite unlike the commercial sector. And as ‘Natural Technologies’ creates products for the cooperatives segment and the rural banking segment, we really discovered a huge segment out there in the bargain. Thus, we scaled up. The basic idea is that as we help grow the market in India through that product, the same product can later on be exported to companies in places like Africa. And to that extent, we have actually bid for a couple of tenders in Africa.
 

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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