P. Srikar Reddy: Striking The Right Note
Associated with Sonata Software since 1986, P. Srikar Reddy has played a pivotal role in building Sonata into a trusted and reliable IT services partner. He took charge as managing director and CEO of the company in February 2012 with a vision to build an organisation of empowered people and create value for clients.
“Our focus is to be a strategic digital transformation partner for our clients through our unique proprietary trademarked methodology, Platformation. We are a global company with operations across the world in most continents with focus on retail, distribution, consumer goods, travel and independent software companies,” says Reddy.
Strong top line and bottom line performance continued in the last quarter. For instance, the consolidated unaudited financial results for Q3 FY18 ended 31 December 2017 show profit after tax at Rs 49 crore; 22 per cent YoY growth. Reddy is quite confident of an outstanding year in terms of growth in revenues and profits in the industry. “Apart from the strong growth, this quarter has seen us acquire new marquee clients and strengthen our presence as a strategic digital transformation partner with our existing clients. Our theme of Platformation, that is Sonatas’ proprietary methodology of building digital businesses, has gained wider acceptance with our clients and partners,” he says.
Last year, Sonata considerably improved its strategy to focus more on the niche industry verticals of travel, retail and distribution and independent software vendor, as well as digital technologies such as mobility, omni-channel commerce, cloud and analytics. The company has gone ahead with building intellectual property-led solutions and deeper customer focus.
Reddy’s contribution as the CEO has been in organisational development —a major area in terms of investment — focusing on talent development, organisational design and structure, communication and ensuring alignment to corporate vision. “We have recently implemented design thinking as a method to achieve cultural transformation to move to our new Platformation vision. And we saw tremendous value in the way we engage with clients and in solution design,” he says.
Since Sonata is a global company and India services business isn’t a significant contributor to its revenues, Reddy has not seen a major impact post GST-implementation apart from initial hiccups in working with it. But M&A has been an integral part of the business strategy, Reddy explains, “We have always used it for strategic advantage to acquire IP and talent, aligned to our corporate vision and sectorial focus. We have acquired three companies in the last three years, all in the US. Rezopia is a cloud-based travel management platform, Halosysis an enterprise mobility platform, and ibis is a Microsoft Dynamics partner with IP in the distribution industry. We have integrated well, and have seen huge value derived across our sectors in terms of our image with clients, partners and analysts.”
