The
rewards of good management
Apart from turning out a good performance this year, Mastek has
been recognized among the Best Managed Indian Companies from India,
by the Asiamoney magazine. In it's first issue of 2000, Asiamoney
conducted a survey of the 178 Fund Managers in the region and Mastek
was rated 7th Overall and 2nd among the IT Companies.
When Asiaweek did a story on the Hot technology stocks in the
region, Mastek was ranked 11th in the region and 1st in India in
terms of returns to shareholders.
Mastek has, during this year, also climbed four steps to the 14th
position in the Nasscom TOP 20 software exporting companies from
India, with a CAGR of 70% in the last four years.
In view of the excellent performance of your company in the FY
1999-2000, the Board has recommended a final dividend of 10%, in
addition to an interim dividend of 30% declared in April, 2000.
Global Growth
Mastek's subsidiaries around the world recorded strong growth
and client additions during the year. The US operations (accounting
for 60% of the revenues) grew at 75% over last year. During the
fourth quarter of the financial year, Mastek was faced with the
reduction in business from a top client in the US. The Majesco team
did a remarkable job in terms of new business acquisition to enable
quick redeployment of a significant number of people, thus reducing
the impact considerably. Mastek's expertise in CRM / eCRM continues
to put us in a unique competitive position, ensuring high growth
rates.
The growth in the Germany and Belgium markets along with UK has
enabled Mastek to emerge as a leading pan-European IT services company.
There has been significant addition to offshore clients from this
region. The formation of a subsidiary in Belgium will provide additional
growth impetus in the region. UK and Europe accounted for 34% of
Mastek revenues in the year.
Domestic operations of Mastek did not see a growth or revival.
The level of operations was similar to last year and no increase
in operations was made. A significant achievement, however, was
the completion of the Delhi Sales Tax project, a very prestigious
assignment for the company.
With the revival of the Asian economies, the Asia-Pacific operations
got a fillip, with a growth of 79% over the previous year, and a
significant contribution to the bottom line. This was achieved with
a revival of the Securities segment and significant projects in
eBroking, as also by leveraging our CRM expertise in the region.
Mastek now has a Pioneer Company status in the Multimedia Super
Corridor at Malaysia. Our efforts to penetrate the Japanese market
have also paid dividend in a small way with a few projects and the
outlook is more positive for the coming year. The Asian operations,
including India, accounted for 6% of our revenues in the year.
Our 'More Local, More Global' strategy has been successful in
terms of growth rates in each region, as well as in terms of a more
balanced global portfolio of operations, ensuring lower exposure
to any single country.
Depth of Partnership
The depth of our partnership with clients is a function of the
value that we create for them by deploying state-of-art technologies
to help them differentiate themselves in the market. This year,
again, saw several such instances of Mastek making a difference
to it customers.
Expected to impact over 10 million British citizens over the next
5 years, the Individual Learning Account is a Web Portal for funding
continuous lifelong learning, initiated by the UK government. Mastek,
through its partner Capita, was involved in building this complex
application, expected to be launched later this year.
HLG Securities, one of the leading stockbrokers in Malaysia, wanted
to deploy Internet technologies to clearly differentiate themselves
in a 'commodity market'. Mastek conceptualized, developed and implemented
an Extranet based data mining and warehousing solution that would
provide their remisiers (sub-brokers) with online access to research
recommendations integrated with customer investing profiles as a
base for proactive marketing.
Another 'first of its kind' eBusiness application was the B-to-B-to-B
industry network in the US for Varstreet.com. In Japan, Mastek got
a major breakthrough project in the area of Computer Telephony integration
(CTI) and unified call center technology from a Top-20 Japanese
company. Mastek has been involved in developing call simulators
for the multi-channel call center that can address telephone calls,
voice over IP, e-mails and web chats.
The year saw the addition of 60 clients comprising large corporations
as well as a few Dot Com companies. The International Customer Meet
last September, which is a unique platform for customer update and
feedback, was attended by 14 of our top clients from across the
world. Based, in part, on inputs from these customers, Mastek has
launched a global branding campaign oriented around the depth of
partnership with our customers.
The Future
Among the key trends that are shaping, changing, creating and
extending the business opportunities around the world are:
-
eTransformation of the global economy around
the Internet.
- Convergence of technologies applied in
doing business - Internet and WAP.
Continued advances and usage of eCRM technologies in customer
acquisition, fulfillment and retention strategies.
The importance of eCommerce
and web enablement cannot be over-stressed. Organizations have realized
the opportunities and threats that the Internet poses and they are
pulling out all stops to ensure that they get their strategy and implementation
of applications in time. The Internet services market, worldwide,
is estimated at $73 Bn in 2003. Time-to-Market being critical, Global
1000 corporations are on the look-out for effective options to bring
in applications faster, in a cost-effective manner. Further, they
want optimum service and performance once the applications are rolled
out. With IT budgets and resources being stretched, outsourcing is
the only viable approach for most of these organizations. Outsourcing
offshore, with its advantages of time and cost, makes it more attractive.
The "value addition" and "value creation" through eTransformation
of organizations is being led right from the top with the CEO's
taking active interest. This makes it imperative to have a strong
local presence, both from the marketing point of view as well as
quick operational response from top management. This
puts Mastek, with its subsidiary model, and strong local management
in a unique position to service these organizations.
In outsourcing to Mastek, the Global 1000 organizations appreciate
our ability to act like a partner to their business, our global
presence and round the clock support. Because of the extensive investments
in IT infrastructure, communications, professionals with both technical
and functional skill sets, Mastek enables the organizations to shorten
time-to-market for New Economy applications.
With the local presence and commitment to align ourselves with
their vision, and the proven execution abilities and technology
competencies to fulfill their vision, Mastek is well poised to capitalize
on the eTransformation opportunities on a global basis.
Mastek's transformation and its unique global position are now
paying dividends. While transformation and change are a part of
life in these exciting times, what has not changed is the commitment
of Mastek to its stakeholders - employees, clients, partners and
shareholders - a commitment to create significant value to all our
stakeholders.
Ashank Desai
