Tech Mahindra bags Vodafone contract; stock up

MUMBAI: Tech Mahindra has won a multi-million dollar IT contract from Vodafone for the telco's operations in Qatar. The contract covers application development and maintenance, infrastructure management and other services. "The value of the deal is not being disclosed at this point," said Krishna Gopal, Vice-President (sales), Middle East, Africa and Saarc, Tech Mahindra. Vodafone has around 700,000 subscribers in Qatar.

At 9:40 am, shares of Tech Mahindra were trading up by 0.21% at Rs 682.70 on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

IBM, which has outsourcing contracts with three of the largest GSM operators in India, was one of the bidders for the contract, said experts tracking the telecom industry. Hewlett Packard, Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services are also learnt to have bid for the contract.

The success story of IT outsourcing in telecom has attracted many players after the initial success of IBM with Bharti Airtel in India. IBM also won the outsourcing contract for Bharti's Africa operations. Tech Mahindra and Wipro have contracts with some of the newer entrants in the multi-billion dollar Indian telecom sector. Tech Mahindra, which caters exclusively to the telecom space, now wants to focus on the billion-dollar communications spend of large corporates as well.

"While telecom will be critical, it will not be remunerative. Enterprises are spending billions on communications... That is where the money is going to be," Tech Mahindra Vice-Chairman Vineet Nayyar told ET in a recent interview.