Zensar Ties Up With SMEs / Universities
posted in Outsourcing News and Top Outsourcing deals, Nearshore Outsourcing |Source: www.business-standard.com
Collaborations and partnerships with universities, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and independent solution vendors (ISVs), Zensar Technologies hopes to reduce its dependence on the people-intensive outsourcing model.
Ganesh Natrajan, Deputy Chairman and Managing Director, Zensar states, the people-intensive information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services (ITeS) industry employs 1.6-million professionals, while it is estimated in FY-2008 2.5-3-lakh people will be swell that figure. However, India’s IT industry continues to battle declining profit margins, faced as it is with a shortage of skilled manpower, including an annual 15% average increase in salary costs, as well as, a rupee against that is appreciating against the dollar.
Currently, among the top-25 software services providers from India, Zensar’s FY-07 revenues are seen to be tipping Rs. 605.86-crore, while with an employee headcount of 3,700-people, it is more than aware if revenues have to grow, they should not be solely dependent on Zensar’s expanding its workforce.
Claiming Zensar’s virtual workforce will reach the 5,000-mark by 2010, Ganesh says: “We will limit our direct employee headcount to 5,000-people, of which 3,000 will be in Pune, 1,000 in Hyderabad and 1,000 elsewhere.”
Consequently, supply-side collaborations with universities / SMEs and demand-side partnerships with SMEs / ISVs are some of the building blocks Zensar plans to use for a tiered development or virtual workforce.
Already, it has tied up with eight universities across India for training 200-students by having them work on Zensar outsourced projects.
Zensar’s partnerships with SMEs is a two-way relationship that involves it providing tools and process know-how, in exchange for extending its reach into untapped geographies.
“We are in talks with SMEs in Brazil and Ghana,” Ganesh says, while adding his firm’s virtual workforce building blocks were in place, supported by Zensar’s global delivery platform, of which, the recent launch of a development centre in Gdan’sk, Poland, together with Shenzen, China and Hyderabad centres form an integral part.
Designed on the lines of Aptech’s partnership and collaborative development approach, Ganesh says: “The global delivery platform constitutes 10% of our overall revenues and by 2010 will account for 20% of our revenues.”
