Outsourcing: Gopinathan Padmanabhan, Executive VP and Head of Global Delivery, MPhasiS (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What are the competitive dynamics of these cities? When you’re setting up a center in Mangalore, is it very competitive? Are there other Indian companies setting up operations in Mangalore?

Gopinathan Padmanabhan: Yes, there are. All of the key players are aware of the dynamics, the cost structure, and so on. Everyone follows the same strategy of spreading out their workforces in multiple locations. I told you the advantages of these locations. The disadvantage is a limited supply of manpower. While we do have the universities, the available people, and so on, there is a limit on the number of people you can hire and sustain in the location. What is the sustainable number of people I can manage in the location? I can go and hire 1,000 people, but can I maintain a workforce of 1,000 trained people and provide services and meet my SLAs while handling attrition? That is a challenge. >>>

Outsourcing: Gopinathan Padmanabhan, Executive VP and Head of Global Delivery, MPhasiS (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Are most of your financial services customers U.S. customers?

Gopinathan Padmanabahn: As is the case for most of the typical Indian IT services companies, our revenues are split broadly across the U.S., India, and the rest of the world. The U.S. constitutes about 65% of our revenues. India constitutes about 15% to 17% of our revenues. The rest of the world constitutes about 18% to 20% of our revenues. That’s the rough split in the BFSI space also. >>>

Outsourcing: Gopinathan Padmanabhan, Executive VP and Head of Global Delivery, MPhasiS (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I see. So, you wanted to be in a space that is optimal to HP’s sweet spot, and you don’t have any conflict of interest when it comes to going to market through HP’s channels.

Gopinathan Padmanabahn: Exactly. That’s right. That’s the second reason. First and foremost, we are good at this, have several customers; we’re doing a great job, had long-term relationships.

SM: What percentage of your business is in financial services? >>>

Outsourcing: Gopinathan Padmanabhan, Executive VP and Head of Global Delivery, MPhasiS (Part 1)

Two former Citibank executives came up with the idea for MPhasiS in 1999. A merger between U.S.-based IT consulting company MphasiS Corporation and the Indian IT services company BFL Software Limited in June 2000 produced MPhasiS Limited, a global company that provides business process outsourcing services as well as applications and infrastructure services. One of the largest IT services companies in India, MPhasiS boasts revenue in excess of $1 billion.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Gopi, let’s start with an introduction of you and your company to set a little context. >>>

Outsourcing: David Bonthrone, Executive Vice-President, Group FMG (Part 4)

SM: There is an effort in India to move certain types of outsourced functions into the smaller cities or towns, not Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore kinds of places, which are pretty crowded, pretty saturated places. Some of the types of functions that you are talking about have shown up, on my radar at least, as functions that are good for this kind of small town or rural outsourcing type of model. Have you had any exposure to this trend?

DB: I personally haven’t, though I’m sure my chairman and group CEO have. A couple of our senior executives here have got rich backgrounds in NSO, BPO, whatever kind of balance of offshore/outsourcing that one wants to talk about. >>>

Outsourcing: David Bonthrone, Executive Vice-President, Group FMG (Part 3)

SM: Talk to me about the kind of work that your Chennai operation does.

DB: We do a lot of print production work. Within that, I mean cleaning up images for printing and production. We have a fast turnaround facility that can handle a lot of volume in terms of print. That’s some traditional work on the traditional print production side, cleaning up images, getting the right colors in there and retouching facilities, laying out flat what we call flat paneling, so laying out publications. Then the enormous migration into the digitization of those assets might be everything from developing an email campaign all the way through to developing the code and hosting and maintaining it for a particular customized website, micro site or even, in the future, an e-commerce-based site. >>>

Outsourcing: David Bonthrone, Executive Vice-President, Group FMG (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let me see if I’ve got this right. The way you split the market is the holding companies have a variety of advertising agencies and new media agencies and, typically, most of them have centralized production facilities.

David Bonthorne: There’s a trend towards it.

SM: Now, the part that I didn’t quite get is, are those centralized production facilities also doing offshore development work, or is that all still on shore? >>>

Outsourcing: David Bonthrone, Executive Vice-President, Group FMG (Part 1)

When people think of outsourcing, things like customer service and Web development often come to mind. Group FMG is an international marketing solutions company with business offices in New York, London, Bangalore and Chennai. Group FMG helps clients develop brand strategies, builds e-commerce solutions and produces content that attracts customers and facilitates business growth. The company has worked with well-known brands like Microsoft, Staples, Fortnum & Mason, Sears, Kenneth Cole, and the New York Philharmonic among others.

Sramana Mitra: Hi David. Let’s start with some background about you and your company. >>>