Riding high on Volvo IT deal, HCL Technologies eyeing more deals like this

NEW DELHI: HCL Technologies is open to more deals like the Volvo IT business it acquired earlier this year, and is focussed on becoming more local
in an increasingly global market, Ashish Kumar Gupta, head of HCL Technologies, EMEA told ET.

“From an HCL standpoint, we will see more opportunity in old markets and old services, and we will have a much larger consolidation play that we can do in the marketplace. So, we will have more Volvo IT’s than before, because now HCL has the reputation and capability to do more of these. We are quite actively looking out and hunting for those,” Gupta said in a telephonic interaction with ET.


Last October, HCL said it was acquiring Volvo's external IT business for $130 million and the group derived revenues of $190 million from this business.
While it did not disclose the total value of the deal, spread over five years, it is estimated to be close to $1.75 billion.Post the deal, 40 clients of Volvo's IT services arm from the Nordics and France region were to move to HCL along with 2,500 Volvo employees across 11 countries.

Europe accounts for nearly 30% or about $2 billion of HCL Technologies’ revenue, and business from the geography grew by 7.3% in the quarter ended September 30.

Talking about the impact of Brexit on the European business, Gupta said while it means uncertainty for large outsourcing deals, HCL is “very hopeful it’s not going to be a messy divorce”. The focus now, is to delve deeper into the emerging trends of new technologies such as IoT, digitalisation