Take Solutions to focus on high margin businesses: MD

Speaking about the third quarter numbers Srinivasan HR, VC & MD, Take Solutions said the revenues for the quarter saw a 9 percent growth and were better than projected backed by continued focus on high margin businesses.The company also plans to spin off their life science business into an arm named Navitas, which will be a life science data management company and provide pharma & biotech clients specialised services. Moreover, Take Global UK, Take Inc USA & Take Global LLP India will come under Navitas, which will be headquartered in Chennai.The Navitas brand has been well accepted by the market, said Srinivasan.Out of the Rs 184 crore revenues reported in third quarter, about 63 percent came in from the life sciences business and 37 percent from the supply chain management business.The third quarter revenues for the company came in at Rs 184.7 crore versus Rs 212.3 crore for the same quarter, year ago. EBITDA came in at 20.9 percent versus 18.13 percent year-on-year.PAT for the December quarter came in at Rs 16.14 crore compared to Rs 16.73 crore for the same quarter year ago.

Below is the transcript of Srinivasan HR’s interview with CNBC-TV18's Ekta Batra and Anuj Singhal.Anuj: Just going through your numbers it does look like while your bottomline was quite okay, that was mainly because your margins went higher, but your topline was a bit of disappointment, came in lower. If you could tell us what was the reason and what is the outlook going forward?A: Not really, actually our topline has grown very smartly. If you look at the topline of this year and last year they are not exactly comparable because we divested a portion of the business. Our strategy over the last year was to shrink a bit to grow our margins and so on a comparable basis actually we have grown by almost six percent if you look at the continuing business.So we are very happy the revenue has grown much better than the budgeted numbers. On a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis it is a nine percent growth and obviously this was necessitated because we were focussing on business that would give us increased margins. So, year-on-year (YoY) our EBITDA has actually grown up by nearly three percent and that is what we want to focus on, a very profitable growth.Ekta: I wanted to ask you about this Life Sciences business which is going to be spun into a subsidiary. Can you tell us rationale behind it, the reason behind the spinoff?A: Here we serve the pharma and biotech R&D and it is an underserved domain and a deep knowledge business and over the last several years we have built a very strong portfolio of serving more than 100 customers globally.So, we want to give this business a very unique identity, it is a go to market strategy and so we have given it a new brand called Navitas and we have already launched the brand and it has been accepted very well in the market. So, it is really a go to market strategy. It has no implication of shareholding or numbers or consolidation. It continues as they were originally.

Ekta: How much of this Rs 184 or Rs 185 crore that you generated in the quarter came from your Life Sciences business and how much came from the other segment?A: 63 percent came from the Life Sciences business and 37 from largely the supply chain management. We operate only in two spaces.Ekta: So, it wouldn’t be a precursor to, maybe some divestment of the Life Sciences business, getting in an investor on board or maybe a listing of it separately?A: No, it is too premature to think of any of those. We have quite a bit to grow in size in the Life Sciences business. It is a great opportunity as space that is growing pretty fast and we want to give it a very good focus and we anticipate that growth in the Life Sciences business will be very fine.