Zensar to continue with its hiring strategy: Zensar deepens focus on retail, BFSI to drive growth

Midsize IT services company Zensar is doubling down focus on its fastest growing verticals retail and financial services as the Pune-headquartered company expects increased spending by the clients in these sectors. The RPG Group company is also expecting to see larger deals in these verticals partly driven by the merger and acquisitions happening in these sectors gobally.

 

“Thirty per cent of our business is retail and consumer services and we have done incredibly well in aligning with our consumers. Finserve is all about automation driven by “as-a-service” model, and a lot of our cloud, and infrastructure products fit here which makes us a strong player in this segment,” said Sandeep Kishore, CEO and MD, Zensar.

 

Financial services constitute almost 20 per cent of Zensar’s overall business while the share of insurance to the overall revenues is around 15 per cent. The company has recently acquired Cynosure, a US-based insurance solutions provider, for $31 million. Cynosure which provides solutions in property and casualty insurance is expected to further strengthen its position in the insurance space. Zensar’s largest revenue contributor still continues to be manufacturing which constitutes half the revenue.

 

Kishore said, the company is investing in robotic process automation (RPA) for a lot of insurance companies to facilitate traditional legacy processes like billing reconciliation and funds disbursement.

 

In the fourth quarter of FY18, the company reported Rs 8147 million in revenues. The company, however, saw a 120 basis points decline in its operating margin owing to lower utilization.

 

Kishore, however, said that Zensar would continue to hire including the freshers as demand environment looks robust. “We added around 1000 people over the past two years while gross hiring last year was almost 3000. This year, we plan to hire 1000 freshers,” said Kishore.

 

At the end of FY18, Zensar’s headcount stood at 8905.

 

The company is also actively hiring overseas with US headcount alone touching 1400. “With 70 per cent of our business based in the US, it is our responsibility to invest in the geography and our Raleigh center is a part of the same plan,” he said.

 

Apart from the US, UK and South Africa are two major geographies for Zensar accounting for around 26.5 per cent of its overall business as compared to 20 per cent two years ago. This has necessitated the company to invest in physical infrastructure across these locations.

 

Besides, Kishore said, the company is seeing increased number of deals in the digital space as clients have moved to the next stage by outsourcing mainstream projects which tend to be slightly bigger in the range of $4 - $10 million. Sensing more opportunities from digital space, Zensar has set up innovation labs known as Zenlabs in Pune and, recently, in Hyderabad.

 

“With almost 200 people dedicated across Zenlabs, these are an integral part of the company strategy.”