Not only was it instrumental in setting the whole industry in motion with its founding in 1978 by Narendra Patni and his two brothers, but it was the training ground for the founders of Infosys, now offshoring’s number two company. With longevity comes maturity – “maturity in terms of process, and a deep delivery capability,” says Deepak Khosla, VP of marketing at Patni.

Mumbai-based Patni owes a lot of that pedigree to a close relationship with the father of outsoucers, General Electric. At one stage, GE accounted for 70% of revenues, but over the last two years Patni has actively managed that down to 15%, even as overall revenues have surged.

In 2006, the company’s growth, at 32%, may be behind several of its competitors, but that, says Khosla, is because Patni sticks to the area where its “reputation for commitment and flexibility is unchallenged” – and a willingness to deploy staff at customer sites.

Over 70% of its 2006 revenues of $586.9 million came from ‘classic’ application development and maintenance services with the largest part of remaining activities centred on implementation and enhancements of enterprise application suites. Two-thirds of that is earned on a time and materials rather than fixed-price basis, with two-thirds of its employees’ efforts at customer sites.

Its closeness to key customers is evident elsewhere. Patni is one of the five global outsourcing partners of Dutch bank ABN AMRO, and among its 239 other active accounts it counts Carphone Warehouse, Electrolux, Eurostar and Hutchison 3G.

Khosla says Carphone Warehouse was won on the basis of Patni’s domain expertise in the telecoms arena, and other vertical strengths are centred on insurance, manufacturing and financial services.

Given the trend towards multi-service sourcing, Patni is aware it needs to broaden its offerings – and as well as its push into creating embedded software for consumer and industrial equipment, it is ramping up select areas of BPO – claims processing, HR and technical support are all targets.

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Profiles of the top Indian IT service providers:

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• Infosys
• Wipro
• Satyam
• HCL
• Patni
• MindTree Consulting
  

From West To East

The Western IT services companies making best use of Indian resources:

• IBM
• Cognizant
• Accenture
• HP Services
• EDS
• Capgemini

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