How different is the European market from the US market?
Very different. The US culture is more risk-prone. Despite CSS being a young company, if they (the US companies) like our competency and look us in the eye and trust our delivery capabilities, they will take the risk and go with us.
The European companies have a lot more 'show me the reference,' 'prove your worth' and 'once I trust you, I will start in a small way' kind of culture.
Conservative?
Conservative is a good word, but not conservative to the point that they don't take risks. They are measured in risk appetite. When I go now with a relatively bigger revenue base and with reference from several customers out of the US, they are ready to sit down and talk serious business.
It is really in the third year of relationship with European customers that one can see strong growth.
In terms of management structure, US is more volatile and Europe a lot more stable. The US customers are low touch, while European customers are high touch. For example, for a 200-people team at CSS, there could be a 3-member team on the US customer side, whereas you would find a 7-8 member team on the European customer side.
Tell us about your recent deal with Alcatel-Lucent? You have a new facility in Poland now.
We have been doing tech support work, for Alcatel-Lucent, out of Chennai for the last five years. It was a US-based relationship to start with. Now with the comfort factor built in, the outsourcing relationship has expanded to Europe.
Under the new deal, we will provide multi language tech support from our new facility in Wroclaw, in Poland. It is an hour from Warsaw and is kind of the Chennai of Poland- a University town, a conservative place.
Are you going to employ local people as you are going to give tech support in German, French, etc?
Yes, all the operations management team will comprise local people. But the managers will be from CSS India-who have been trained by us in Chennai. It will be like the Japanese companies where they send the top management from Japan while they have local employees to do the rest of the work.
Image: Cybernet-SlashSupport's facility in Wroclaw, Poland. | Photograph, courtesy: CSS
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