NTT to focus on growing new business in India

Pune: NTT is focusing on growing its smaller accounts in India, a senior country executive said, as the Japanese technology services company sees increased adoption of technology across industries.

NTT has created a new Digital Sales Group (DSG) that will focus on the white spaces – emerging, mid-market, and digital-first customers – to convert these into larger accounts.

“There are accounts where we have been seeing business coming in, but some, where it has been sporadic – maybe we did some work for them a year ago. Now, we’re focusing on them and creating a new set of opportunities,” said Kaustubh Chandra, Director – Marketing & Digital Sales Group, NTT India.

The idea, Chandra said, was to increase the volume of business from existing accounts as well as win new business.

Using revenue as a metric, about 500 large customers have been classified as focus accounts, while all others will come under DSG, which will be supported by its marketing team.

DSG will take end-to-end ownership of the sales process, from need creation to fulfilment for these customers.

“We cannot let go of the accounts that we weren’t focusing on as that is the future,” said Chandra.

During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, several customers cut down on spending, but others, in new areas like healthcare and pharma, started growing exponentially.

“We want to create a breeding ground for accounts which have not been giving us that kind of revenue so we can go after them. Over time, this will help get in new logos and new age organisations and gradually build the portfolio so that next year the accounts that have a solid growth trajectory can move to a more focused approach,” he said.

NTT joins other IT services firms like Cognizant and Capgemini that have set up India focused business teams as local enterprises start investing in technology and digital transformation initiatives.

NTT set up the new DSG about six months ago, around the beginning of the pandemic, which has completely changed how companies sell to enterprise customers.

With face-to-face meetings no longer an option, marketing and sales have had to shift gears to doing everything digitally, and this has started translating into new deals, Chandra said.