HCL Technologies: Conquering New Territory

HCL Technologies, which won the Everest PEAK Matrix Service Provider Award in March for its outstanding performance in the healthcare and life sciences practices in fiscal 2017, has been an all-round performer as an IT service provider across segments in the last four years constantly. As a result, its financial performance, including turnover, profits and investor returns, helped it find a place among the top of the BW Businessworld fastest growing companies list 2017.

The company, which is ranked 4th in the list considering its performance in the growth parameters such as accelerated revenue, profit and market capitalisation, has adopted a unique growth strategy at present helping its clients reimagine their business in the digital age.

“Moving from traditional efficiency oriented solutions to business outcome oriented conversations, we are helping customers across industries decode the new world and help navigate their way through new technologies like Internet of Things, Cloud, Software-Defined Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics and more,” said HCL Technology CEO C. Vijayakumar in his latest blog.

Founded as a garage start-up in 1976, HCL was part of India’s big IT revolution and its journey in the last four decades has been really transformational. Over the years, HCL witnessed several firsts as a pioneer in the country’s computer industry.

The most significant of these was the development of India’s first indigenous micro-computer in 1978. It also developed the knowledge base for different areas of technology that included a fine grained multi-processor UNIX in 1988, much ahead of the then global giants like Sun Microsystems and HP.

The Shiv Nadar-led enterprise created value through acquisitions, alliances and key partnerships with large global players such as Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Perot Systems, Deutsche Bank and NEC Corporation, among others, to drive strategic growth. After a strong focus on manufacturing for over two decades, HCL Technologies was spun off as the software services and information technology company of the group.

The $7-billion HCL Group, which currently comprises two different listed entities HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems, is one of the world’s leading IT outsourcing companies with interests in product engineering, custom and package applications, BPO, IT infrastructure services, IT hardware and systems integration. It also distributes information and communications technology (ICT) products across a wide range of focused industry verticals. The group, which was started in a Delhi garage with a team of nine people, including the founder Shiv Nadar, 40 years ago, today has 1,11,092 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from 32 countries.

The software services arm of the group, HCL Technologies, was one of the early movers in the healthcare and life sciences verticals. Hence it is now one of the most mature among global IT services providers in this area of business and has emerged as partner of choice for leading global life sciences, healthcare providers, payers, pharmaceuticals and medical devices companies.

Karan Puri, senior corporate vice-president (Consumer and Commercial Services) at HCL Technologies said in a recent statement “HCL’s life sciences and healthcare practice, with its deep domain strengths and micro–vertical focus, helps companies overcome industry challenges, achieve their business objectives and drive growth. Patient centricity has become one of the key drivers for global life sciences and healthcare industry, leading to an enhanced collaboration among life sciences and healthcare companies and various other stakeholders.”