Congratulations first on a stellar list. There has been a very strong response from investors of more than 100% profit on the trading day alone. How do you feel and what is the way forward for the company to run this strong ad?
All the people who helped make the IPO successful and that obviously includes our bankers, legal advisers, auditors, board members, and most of all, our wonderful team that I would like to dedicate this IPO to. Now in terms of how you feel, I have mixed feelings from the moment we had this great response. There is always a feeling that there will be disappointed people who applied and did not get your shares and you can see this in the comments on social media etc.
The second aspect is that of course it creates a responsibility in the teams to be able to meet the expectations it creates and to that extent it is a challenge and a challenge is something we should look forward to and see how we move forward. in our general footprint.
The post-Covid mega trend appears to be the massive acceleration of technology adoption. In his case, 97% of revenue comes from IT services and much of it is digital. On an industry level, what is the type of opportunity for an IT services company like yours?
I must clarify and make a distinction between what you call a broader IT services market and the digital part of the IT services market. We are born digital, agile, 97% of our business comes from digital technology and the traditional IT market is growing much smaller and that is why we can grow at a faster rate, say 20% more compared to around the 8% to 10% for today’s big IT players.
Ashok Soota listed on Happiest Minds with a 111% premium over the issue price
Ashok Soota CEO and CEO and Venkatraman N, CEO and CFO, talk to ET Now about Happiests Minds stellar roster. The company gets 97% of revenue from digital services.
I imagine when you said that the IT services business is growing, it’s the entire market typically and downturns and recessions and more in this one where everything is going virtual, IT will definitely grow faster within that. The transformation to digital will also accelerate, and from that angle, I’d say we’re in a good place.
You are mainly in IT services, are there any plans to expand to other verticals or what could be limited to verticals that are similar to those where you are presently present?
We must be clear that we are an IT services company, we are not in any other business and we do not plan to enter those businesses either. The way we define and the entire industry defines verticals is different. For example, our largest and fastest growing vertical is edutech. You can clearly see how you are going to benefit from this environment because everything is going virtual.
The other vertical in which we have a very strong presence is the rest of the high-tech world. Again, because it is a core competence at Happiest Minds, two of them account for 76% of our business, which has only been marginally or not affected by the Covid crisis. The remaining 24% has been affected, but fortunately we have a very marginal presence in travel and hospitality, which is the most affected vertical and, therefore, we have to continue building on the strengths that we have. We think we have pretty broad coverage in terms of verticals. Not that we are planning to enter new areas, but what sets us apart is the fact that we are always investing in new technologies and then building solutions and solution accelerators to enter those markets.
I’ll give you an example here. When we started Happiest Minds we were in what was called a SMACK package that included analytics and cloud, after that we have added over the years the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Virtual and Augmented Reality etc.
Your stake is down after listing, are there any plans to reduce the stake beyond current levels? After Mindtree and Happiest Minds, do you have an interest in other companies or future plans?
First of all, in terms of my stake after dilution it will be 55%, but a large proportion of our shares are also in the hands of our team members. So if you have a question in the back of your mind as to whether there could be a hostile takeover because you have also brought MindTree, all I have to tell you is that there is no such threat and there never will be for that. to import. We will remain well positioned in that regard.
Looking ahead, I don’t want to speculate on whether my shares will go up or down, if we obviously get more shares, but there are no immediate plans to do so. Whatever happens, we will keep one thing in mind: there will never be an ownership threat that could create a hostile takeover situation.
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