As the government makes a push for smart cities, global companies are lining up for opportunities that India will provide in the coming years. US IT major Avaya is all geared up to cash in on smart cities while simultaneously expanding its operations in India.
In a proposition to expand its Research and Development (R&D) facilities in India, Avaya recently acquired Knoahsoft, in Hyderabad.
This latest acquisition will give Avaya its third-largest R&D center in Hyderabad after Bangalore and Pune. The Rs 300-crore acquisition is important for Avaya, which is aggressively chasing opportunities in Indian market.
India, being one of the largest BPOs, can be an efficient site to expand Avaya's operator network, the firm's President and CEO Kevin J Kennedy told CNBC-TV18 in an interview.
Below is the edited transcript of the interview.
Q: How are you performing in India?
A: We have very large epicenter of R&D here. We will continue to migrate in small amounts, but important amounts of R&D and principally because of the leadership we have been able to find in India which has been nothing short of excellent.
Both in sales, service as well as R&D. We have also been doing some Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A). Very recently bought a small company. While it's a US company, its entire R&D was here. I think that's the trend you'll continue to see in the FY16 as well.
Q: We know that you are pitching for RIL's telecom and other industries. What sort of industries are you looking at?
A: Avaya is blessed with 70 percent market share of all contact centers in the world wide. India because of it's legacy in the last ten years is of course one of the largest BPOs and so the concentration of opportunities for us to upgrade people here is something we want to be focusing on for next 5 years. So it's not just about one operator, it's about many operators.
Q: Talk about your growth strategy. What sort of growth trajectory are you looking at. Will it be organic growth or are mergers and acquisition on the card?
A: In the near term my focus is on making the best technology that can be made and make it highly integrated so we focus on being open where some of our competitors are proprietary. Secondly, we focus on mobile world as oppose to a desktop world.
Of course the market place like India with the youth and scale is a mobile marketplace and third we focused on this word engagement as opposed to just making legacy applications more productive and so those are really the three signatures that we are bringing to the market and we are going to test all that works great in a smart city and digital world.
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