Sajan Pillai’s office is bustling with activity. As the CEO of UST Global, one of the prominent IT services firms, his agenda and vision today are one and the same. He wants to break the siege of the IT industry by the giants and make it a $1 billion enterprise in the next two years with a client base of 100 or less. The man who believes in ‘Dream big, dream of excellence’ has made grandeur a convention in his plans.
This bold vision could be a little intriguing considering the fact that though the IT services market, both in India and the US, is a very crowded one with more than about 1,000 software companies in India alone, only five of these companies today earn annual revenues in excess of $1 billion each. Among the rest are a multitude of mid-tier companies such as Patni, Polaris, Hexaware, and even Mastek that are struggling to reach the mark, leave alone crossing it. In the case of Infosys, which is among the elite five, it took 23 years and a clientele of above 350 to reach the mark in 2004. The case with TCS or Wipro is no different.
But Pillai is quick to read your mind. He defies the conventional mode and breaks the norm when he says, “In an industry where everyone does the same kind of work and works on the same model, what differentiates - and will continue to differentiate in future - is the way you manage your client. Client management is the key to the success of any services company.” This is exactly how he is positioning UST today. With a client base of over 50 Fortune 500 companies in verticals like retail, manufacturing, transportation, logistics, media, and entertainment, UST is today redefining customer relationship. No wonder, many of its clients remain engaged with the company successfully for the last 10 years. With a simple mantra, ‘fewer Clients, more Attention’ the company is in a growth trajectory and has grown at a rate of 20 percent year-on-year compared to the industry growth of 8 to 9 percent last year.
Towards the Billion Dollar Dream
Unlike most IT companies that stepped into the services bandwagon in the late ’80s, UST, founded in 1998, has been a late entrant. Nevertheless the company caught up with most biggies in the industry by providing a gamut of services, which extends from Enterprise Application Services (CRM, ERP, e-Procurement, and SCM) to e-business solutions to a large number of Fortune 500 companies in many verticals. Traditionally, businesses relied on technology and product innovation for competitive advantage. However, as products became commodities due to global competition and relentless technological advances, the battle for differentiation and customer value creation shifted to customer intimacy and service. A reputation of superior service has proven to be a valuable differentiator in the industry. Hence the company believes that quality is not just about operational efficiency, and it is built upon people, relationships, and skills.