Nothing can describe HCL Technologies better than Victor Hugo’s eternal quote, “You cannot resist an idea whose time has come.” Long in the shadows of the Big Five players and Indian front-runners like TCS, Wipro and Infosys, there is no doubt that HCL has arrived as an IT-services’ company. Not only does the company stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Big Five while pitching for deals (particularly infrastructure services), but also emerges a winner from right under their noses. In its recent Autodesk deal, HCL was pitched against the likes of HP, ACS and EDS in the final rounds.

HCL’s two main planks as an IT-services’ company is its infrastructure and software services. In the infrastructure space, HCL’s capabilities far outstrip its rivals primarily because of its DNA. HCL has been one of the earliest players in the Indian infrastructure-services’ market. It has dominated the scene for more than a decade managing the backbone of the country’s largest stock exchange (National Stock Exchange), and the country’s largest ISP’s network.

As the market evolved, the company also expanded its offering to include web infrastructure. This gave it enough confidence to take its service global, which it did at the turn of the century. Since then, there has been no looking back. The company was able to maintain its distinct identity, as it was the only player completely focused on technology services compared to traditional players who either had boxes to sell or came from a consulting background. A major plank of HCL’s strategy is co-sourcing wherein the company works very closely with its customers to achieve efficiencies greater than individual competencies of either the vendor or the customer.

That’s really the value proposition that HCL brings to the customer. Despite its offshore-centric strategy, it does not focus on the labor arbitrage alone. Rather, it lays emphasis on the belief that the outsourcing proposition is based on the incremental value that it brings to customers in subsequent years. Therefore, consulting and transformational services form the core in its basket of offerings.

Vineet Nayar CEO, HCL Technologies

Today its customer list includes top clients like AMD, Extreme Networks and Deutsche Bank. Around the same time it took its infrastructure services global, the company undertook a major repositioning initiative in software services. So far, it had focused on product engineering services but the tech-meltdown forced it to take another look at that.

The company then decided to build vertical competencies, which it did so with a vengeance by adopting both organic and inorganic routes. It formed joint ventures — with Deutsche Bank in the banking space (2001), Jones Apparels in the retail segment (2002) and NEC Japan in the telecom space.

These initiatives proved successful as HCL began to figure in the analysts’ lists for niche verticals. Today the company is so confident of its vertical knowledge, and the value that it can bring to customers that it has started focusing on new revenue models based on the output to the client or the value that it brings to clients.