IT services major Capgemini is focused on driving more value from India

Focus is to make sure that the India unit is aligned with global plans of repositioning company as a hub of engineering R&D, operational technology, and IT.

For Paris-headquartered IT services major Capgemini, India has always been the backbone of its services delivery for its global clients, but the company is focused on driving more value from India as it gears up its engineering research and development (R&D) presence worldwide with its acquisition of Altran Technologies.

The company, which has about 149,000 employees in India, is looking to hire 60,000 associates this year.

Of them, 30,000 will be recruits from campuses and the rest lateral entrants.

For Ashwin Yardi, chief executive officer India, Capgemini, the focus is to make sure that the India unit is aligned with the global plans of repositioning the company as a hub of engineering R&D, operational technology, and IT.

“When we acquired Altran, we repositioned Capgemini engineering, and our strategy has been to be a leader in the intelligent industry.

"By far we are the leaders; if you look at the scale and size of our engineering at Capgemini, we are the largest.

"Some of the areas that are being created by this focus include autonomous car platforms and setting up 5G labs in India,” Yardi said.

A few months ago, Capgemini announced setting up a 5G lab in Mumbai, its third globally, to accelerate the deployment of 5G solutions.

Spread over 1,300 square feet, the lab offers a collaborative environment, which leverages technologies on network, cloud, edge computing, hardware, and software solutions.

The lab will support Capg­emini’s global clients in a 5G end-to-end transformation.

Yardi said engineering had always been a focus area at Capgemini with Sogeti as a division of the company, which got an impetus with the acquisition of iGate in 2014.

Now the Altran acquisition has catapulted the company into the leading table of engineering and R&D services providers.

This is reflected in the growth of the engineering business, which was up 16 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter of CY2021.

The Altran India team has almost 15,000 people.

Along with this, the firm is sharpening its industry focus and the idea is to build deeper industry talent and also expand its industry centres of excellences (CoEs) in India.

Capgemini now includes auto, telecom, consumer products & retail, BFSI, and aerospace in its industry focus.

This has meant the company’s hiring or talent acquisition has changed.

One is to hire people directly from these core sectors and to increase the wider knowledge pool of industry awareness and depth among employees for which “we have launched industry content so that the employees can get skilled in specific industries.

"And finally the firm has created an asset hub that looks at client-specific or cross-industry assets, which can be deployed for clients”.

“To give an instance, when we talk about building an autonomous car platform we mean working on a car as well.

"We want to improve the overall industry quotient of our pool of consultants, building assets, and then building labs, which can build prototypes for our clients and it is being done on a much bigger scale,” he said.

He is not concerned about the rising attrition the industry is seeing.

For the second quarter of CY21 Capgemini had an attrition rate of 15.2 per cent (last 12 months).

“One of the reasons for this confidence is because we never stopped hiring, like most of our peers did during the initial days of the pandemic; also we did not stop giving salary hikes.

"Our quarterly salary hikes continued. Perhaps that is why Capgemini’s YoY attrition has gone down.

"For the second quarter of 2020 the attrition was 17.4 per cent."

He is confident attrition will taper off in a few quarters.

“There is not a single skill area that is not in demand, which is making people move.

"With growth back, the industry needs to adjust to this spike,” he added.

Photograph: Courtesy Capgemini