Capgemini to use Igate's account management strategy for all its clients: CEO Paul Hermelin

MUMBAI: French information technology services company

Capgemini

SA is looking at using

Igate

's account management strategy for all its clients, the company’s global CEO

Paul Hermelin

has said.

Capgemini bought Igate Corp, the Nasdaq-listed technology firm founded by Ashok Trivedi and Sunil Wadhwani, for $4 billion last year and dissolved its brand earlier this year. Since the acquisition, Capgemini has been meetings Igate’s clients to reassure them about the deal.

“We have met a few and I heard something I did not expect. They said ‘please don’t destroy it’. So, we are investigating to try and capture its different account management strategy,” Hermelin said at a media briefing on Tuesday.




He said some customers thought that with Capgemini they would be getting an ‘arrogant Western consulting firm’ and that he was working to ensure that Igate’s strategy was spread throughout the company. “The

financial services

business, which already works a little like Igate, will take two quarters. The US, which is a little more redneck, will take a few quarters more. Finally, expansion into the European side will take longer,” Hermelin said.

He added that the combined company had worked together to add seven new customers since the deal closed. Hermelin and Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis were inaugurating the company’s new 50-acre campus in Navi Mumbai, which will seat 30,000 employees once it is fully built. “About half of Capgemini’s employees are in India.



So, there is a joke that I am not a French CEO, I am an Indian CEO. Your CM took it further and said that is not enough, I should become a Maharashtra CEO,” Hermelin said.

The first phase of the campus with a built-up area of 1million sq ft and seating capacity of about 13,000 is operational, while the second phase is expected to be completed by early 2018. Capgemini has 90,000 employees in India. The company plans to add 25,000-30,000 employees, before taking into account attrition, this year.


Hermelin added that the company could live with its attrition figures in the country but was working to managing spikes of attrition in certain highdemand technologies. “With 15% attrition, you can live. But there are spikes at go up to 25% in some technologies. That is what we have to work on.” Capgemini has also launched a Group Innovation Centre in India, one of just nine it has globally.

Hermelin said it had enough volume through Igate and future deals would focus on technologies and niche skills.