Capgemini eyes more India buys

Pierre-Yves Cros, Chief Strategy Officer, Capgemini, said Indian IT companies or Reliance has never approached his company for sale of operations. He told CNBC-TV18 that Indian IT companies remain formidable competitors. Capgemini is looking at more acquisitions in India, he added.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18’s exclusive interview with Pierre-Yves CROS:

Q: What are you doing in terms of increasing your offshore strategy in India?

A: We finished 2007 with 27% of our workforce based offshore and a vast majority of that, around 33%, being in India. We want to double that through 2010.

We have 20,000 people offshore in India. We want to move to 40,000 by 2010. We have attractive locations- Latin America and Morocco. After considering other Asian countries, India will remain the center of the company.

Q: Is there any truth on the expectation that Infosys, Wipro or Reliance Communications is talking to you? Have they approached you or would you look at any strategic tie-up or merger with an Indian company?

A: It has been very disturbing because we never discussed with any of the large pure plays in India. Let me confirm that very strongly.

As a matter of fact, if we take the three largest companies in the Indian IT sector, our USD 30 billion of revenue are more than all the three together. So, it will be a big challenge.

We will expand in India and we will not prevent ourself to buy as a player. We can make more acquisitions in India.

We are very committed to this country but it is economically not a very smart thing to do. I don’t think we will be intending in the future to merge with any large player.

Q: Are you open to making big acquisitions to increase your offshore presence? Could we see a hostile bid for any of the Indian offshore companies because that would be the easiest way for you to increase your offshore presence?

A: Yes, we do have one billion euro of cash that we can deploy. In our industry, there is no hostile bid ever. One can do that in steel and car manufacturing.

People are the only assets for us. If they don’t like it or the company we merge with don’t like it, assets are very volatile and will move to a competitor. So, in this industry one will never see a hostile bid.  Let me take this  opportunity to tell you that Capgemini is one of the top three fastest growing companies in the world today. It has all intention to remain fully independent.