The Company creating a large accounts focus strategy which will take about 10 – 15 of its 2-3-million-dollar accounts and raise them to 10, 15 and 20million dollars
FinTech BizNews Service
Mumbai, March 27, 2025: Happiest Minds Technologies recently hosted a press conference. Ashok Soota, Chairman & Chief Mentor; Joseph Anantharaju, Co-Chairman & CEO and Venkatraman Narayanan, Managing Director & CFO spoke to media and gave insights on the different aspects of the company. Following are the select text of their speeches:
Ashok Soota
The theme of this press conference is Delivering Transformation with Innovation,
Integration & Industry Expertise. We are going to talk about 10 strategic
transformational changes launched by Happiest Minds since FY24 and going ahead
through FY26. The latest change is the one we announced on 19 th March 2025 regarding
our apex organizational structure. The moment we sent this out, we were flooded with a
number of queries on the change. Joseph who is now Co-Chairman & CEO will talk about
this change and take queries also.
Let me start from where these 10 transformational changes began. After a few years of
delay, we finally completed two acquisitions – PureSoftware and Aureus whose results
were integrated in Q1 of FY25. The wait had been worthwhile because both
organizations were aligned with our culture, brought in excellent talent and the
acquisitions were cash-accretive.
The results of these acquisitions led to our growth in FY25 being well above industry
average. This is not a results meeting and therefore I will not give any numbers.
Three more transformational changes followed in the second half of FY25. We did say
these changes would begin to make an impact in FY26, which you will see very soon.
These 3 changes were:
(i) Reorganizing Happiest Minds on an IG-wise basis and creating 5 new industry
groups;
(ii) Being the very first company to recognize the potential of GenAI by creating an
independent business unit headed by Sridhar Mantha, a Happiest Minds veteran and our
erstwhile CTO for 12 years;
(iii) We appointed a Chief Growth Officer, Maninder Singh, and gave him the
responsibility for net new sales. Maninder’s team is already making visible impact by
bringing in new logos. These transformational changes will show great growth in FY26
and even more so in FY27, assuring us of a healthy organic growth in FY26 and then FY27.
The four transformational changes of FY24 were followed in FY25 by the apex
organizational changes mentioned earlier. Our Co-Chairman & CEO will be talking about
this and the 6 th , 7 th and 8 th transformation initiatives. Our Co-Chairman is already drawing
up plans for:
Transformation 6: Developing a Private Equity Company eco-system and their portfolio
companies;
Transformation 7: Addressing the requirement of GCC companies;
Transformation 8: Creating a large accounts focus strategy which will take about 10 – 15
of our 2-3-million-dollar accounts and raise them to 10, 15 and 20 million dollars.
Joseph will give you more colour on these transformational initiatives and execution
plans for the same.
As the IT industry has come under pressure in recent years, I have been feeling that it
needs to be strengthened by a Products & SaaS Solutions approach. We were fortunate
in gaining one such product, Arttha in the BFSI space through our acquisition of
PureSoftware. A product team has been enhancing the product capability and also
moving to a SaaS platform. Both the product and the SaaS solution will co-exist. This is
our 9 th transformational change and Joseph will share with you more about how we are
going ahead with this initiative.
The tenth and final transformational change is our HaaS solution. The product will be
delivered in two phases: first as a revolutionary product which is expected to be available
for launch by Q4. The HaaS solution will require another year. At this time, I have the
Board of Directors’ permission to make a directional statement. The final decision to
include this in our offerings will be taken by our Board only when the business plan is
ready towards the end of FY26. Lest there is a fear that development of the product will
require large capital expenditure and strain our resources, let me assure you that even in
the first full year, the business will run on a cash-positive basis. It’s also important to
mention that our product is being developed through the unique bio-informatics
capability of Happiest Minds, of which we have been speaking during the last year.
Friends, as I come to the end of my talk, I want to step back and take a look at the IT
industry. The year FY25 is witnessing flat growth for some of the majors and negative
growth for a few others. We have delivered a healthy double-digit growth, albeit most of
it is inorganic. The market is predicting a US slowdown or recession. This has clouded
the prospects for the Indian IT industry. We want to state emphatically that at Happiest
Minds, we see no recession driven slowdown. Thanks to our 10 transformational changes
and to our dedicated teams including those from PureSoftware and Aureus, we see a
good view ahead for next 2 years. This is not a results conference or a guidance
conference, but I can say that we expect to delivery healthy double-digit organic growth,
not just in FY26 but also FY27 due to the momentum we are building up through our 10
strategic transformational changes.
Joseph’s speech
Let me start by thanking Ashok and the Board for the trust they have placed in me.
I am very confident of continuing to deliver industry-leading growth based on the quality
of our leadership and talent, the transformational initiatives we have initiated, and the strong
customer relationships we have developed over the last 14 years. I would like to give further
details about how we are ‘delivering transformation with innovation, integration &
industry expertise.’
The change announced in the apex organizational structure is the first step in building a
strong organization for the future. The Executive Board (EB) will continue in its current
form and provide continuity while we use this year to transition to a new look EB
consisting of next-generation leaders to help us meet our goal of long-term profitable
growth for the next decade. We would also need to integrate the organizations from the
two companies that we acquired earlier this year. Over the last few days, I have been
talking to leaders from Happiest Minds, PureSoftware and Aureus to understand their
aspirations and forge an integrated organization structure that I target to announce in the
next 6-8 weeks.
As many of you know, Private Equity (PE) firms have been increasing in number and size
over the last few years. They have been making larger investments across a wider range
of industries while getting operationally involved and directing not only strategy but also
operational execution at their portfolio companies. Happiest Minds has always had
customers that were owned by PE firms but the % of customers and our revenues from
these customers has increased significantly. Earlier, we had engaged with these firms in
an ad-hoc and tactical manner. Given the potential of this channel, we would like to
engage in a more strategic manner and have a senior leader take responsibility for
crafting and executing this strategy. We are developing a set of offerings that are not only
targeted at the portfolio companies but also at the PE firms. We would like to move more
upstream and help PE firms in carrying out due diligence of their acquisition candidates
and helping them with a post-acquisition roadmap. We are developing tools and
frameworks that will accelerate this process. The first step would be to leverage our
existing customers and the good work we are doing to get introductions and get
connected with the PE firms that own these customers. We will follow that up with a
curated list of firms where we have connections or a compelling value proposition. Our
offerings to the portfolio companies would include security risk assessment and
remediation, modernization and management of their tech debt, consulting and
execution on innovation strategies, help with cost take-out, leveraging GenAI, integration
of multiple acquired entities, etc.
Over the last 13-14 years we have acquired many logos of consequences and effectively
deployed our ‘land and expand’ strategy. This has resulted in the average revenue per
customer consistently increasing resulting in many accounts that are $2-3M in size; in
addition to a few customers that are $5M and $10 customers. We would like to take this
strategy to the next level and move some of these customers into the $20M range and
create many more $5 and $10M accounts. As part of this strategy, we will be investing in
dedicated, seasoned Client Partners to bring focus and elevate conversations, creating
customer-specific solutions, aligning incentives and responsibilities across several
functions, and giving these sets of accounts prioritized focus and treatment. Our decision
to create a dedicated NN sales team has freed up sales bandwidth and allowed us to
specialize the EE/EN sales team to enable this strategy.
Many of you have been tracking and reporting on the proliferation of Global Capability
Centers (GCCs) over the last couple of years. While we have been engaged with GCCs
since our inception, the increased number and size make this an attractive segment for
Happiest Minds to focus on. Our offerings and value proposition will vary based on the
stage and maturity of the GCC. For companies that are contemplating a GCC, we would
help them understand the opportunity, risk, legal and compliance needs, scale
requirements, and talent needs to craft an appropriate strategy and facilitate their entry
directly or through Happiest Minds. For GCCs that have been around for an extended
period, we would like to focus on enhancing their effectiveness, aiding their innovation
strategies by leveraging GenAI and Automation, modernize technology landscape and
leverage data to become more core in their company’s landscape.
We are very excited by the prospects and the potential of the award-winning Arttha
Banking platform and propose to create a separate PnL for this platform along with the
investments required to actualize this potential. We are taking a two-pronged approach
here. The first prong is targeting the Indian market by adding functionalities, including
integrations and regulatory compliance that are specific to the Indian market and having
a focused GTM that includes associated offerings that have Arttha at their core. We are
also looking to expand the international market presence beyond our current Southeast
Asia and Africa markets into Europe and North America by investing in features and
functionalities for these markets, developing alliances and partnerships to enhance the
value proposition and tap into the necessity for these banks to offer a customer
experience that is more digital and personalized that current banking products are not
able to offer.
With this note of excitement at the potential of these transformational initiatives, I would
like to invite Venkatraman, our MD and CFO to share his thoughts.
Venkat’s speech
Typically, I interact with the press after our results are announced, focusing on what has
transpired over the last quarter or year.
However, today’s discussion offers something different.
We are giving you a ringside view of the transformational changes that are underway at
Happiest Minds—changes that are forward-looking and integral to driving our growth
agenda and aligned with our vision of “Designing Happiest Minds for Perpetuity.”
As someone deeply involved in the changes Ashok and Joseph have outlined, I can
confidently say that these transformations that we are undertaking will have a significant
positive impact on our business. Some of these will be immediate, while others will unfold
over time.
In this context, I want to highlight the areas I will be focusing among various others during
this period of change.
First, we will strive to continue delivering industry-leading margins. We’ve successfully
maintained 18 quarters of industry-leading EBITDA, even as we’ve invested heavily in the
transformations we’ve discussed today. Our margin profile reflects the strength of our
franchise and aligns with our vision of Accelerating Profitable Growth: " We are committed
to maintain and improve margins through both value and value growth and effectively managing
the various profit levers available to us.
Second, will be our continued focus on M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions). This will include
both exploring new opportunities and ensuring the successful integration of the ones
we've already undertaken, and I anticipate dedicating considerable time and effort toward
these.
From start to successful integration, M&As are about managing people, culture, and
outcomes.
Outcomes are critical in driving growth, profitability, and managing stakeholder
expectations and here, effective execution will take centre stage.
We are starting the new year with a good pipeline of potential M&A prospects. While I
can’t provide specifics at this time, rest assured you’ll be the first to know once we close
any new deals. The plan for the next year which is currently under preparation assumes
good growth on an organic basis. We will have more details for you when we meet next
and after our results. What I mean to say is that any M&A will be in addition to our plan
for the year.
Lastly, building on Ashok’s comments, there are significant shifts occurring in the Indian IT
industry. We must remain agile and adapt quickly to make the best use of these changing
dynamics.
