HCL Technologies bullish on revenues from Europe

When European debt and sovereign crisis is giving anxious moments to multi-national CEOs, India's HCL Technologies is bullish on the continental Europe, aiming to get one-third of its revenue from the region.

"The Europeans are finding that their costs structures are not competitive...this is first-time that the Europeans are opening to outsourcing," Vice-Chairman and CEO of $3-billion firm, Vineet Nayar, told PTI on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting.

With the $800 million acquisition of the UK-based Axon two years ago, HCL Technologies which offers IT solutions across different sectors, gets 28 per cent of its revenue from Europe.

"Our share of revenue from the continent Europe will be only higher...," Nayar (48) said. He said the European companies want to become cost competitive, particularly in the manufacturing sector, offering opportunities for the Indian IT firms to offer them solutions to improve their bottomline by use of technology.

"We see fear in Europe because of debt and Euro crisis... there is a significant emphasis on cost cut in Europe and therefore they are open to Indian IT companies like never before...," he said.

Sending a strong message to the opponents of the India outsourcing story, Nayar, a regular at WEF meetings, said that HCL Technologies would hire 90 per cent of their European manpower from the locals.

The company has already built a delivery centre at Helsinki and Poland. For the US markets, the HCL Technologies would focus on telecom and entertainment because these industries face threat of survival and are looking for solutions, he said.

The entire space of life sciences will also remain a priority area, reason being President Barack Obama's focus on healthcare.

The company with a 72,000 headcount gets 55 per cent of its revenue from the United States, 28 per cent from Europe and the balance from Asia, including just about five per cent from India.

With the potential of the private sector in infrastructure, the HCL Technologies will focus on offering solutions to the Indian power firms, besides the financial services, Nayar added.