Ust global's Kerala strategy clicks; continues to invest in clients

Niranjana Ramesh, Chennai
The Economic Times
"We are keen on exploring the European and Asian markets, and will be looking out for acquisitions in the knowledge management and business analytics space mainly besides in ERP and CRM." UST Global recently acquired a testing company in Canada and an e-commerce company in the US. It plans to leverage the Canadien technical expertise in its end-to-end IT solutions, and e-commerce capabilities in its retail vertical, the second largest for the company, contributing to 20% of its revenues. Its largest vertical is healthcare, garnering 40% of revenues.

The company's strategy has so far been on saving costs by setting up its development centres in Kerala, which still remains a low cost destination compared to Chennai and other major cities "The Kerala government, through the downturn, has been strict that there should be no layoffs. But, they have been providing us other sops," Sudheendra said. "The cost arbitrage in this state is nearly 25% more compared to the more industrious states of the country." The company has 4800 of its 6000 strong global workforce in India, of which 3500 are in Trivandrum, 1000 in Chennai and 250 in Kochi.