Mindtree bets on retail, communications businesses for double-digit growth

Mindtree said it expects more digital deals in its retail and communications businesses, its two main verticals, which will help it grow in double digits this fiscal and maintain margins similar to its larger rivals.

“A lot of deals that closed in the fourth quarter will ramp up in the first and we also have a mix of nice annuity deals as we go along,” said Mindtree CEO and MD Debashis Chatterjee in an interaction with TOI. The company said its pipeline is healthy, one of the best in its history, with a total order book of $1.4 billion at the end of the last fiscal.

Communications, media & technology, and retail, CPG & manufacturing are the two biggest businesses contributing 72% to the topline. While banking remains slow, travel and hospitality has shown some green shoots in terms of solutions for contactless travel. The travel and hospitality business had collapsed last year.

Shares of the company have nearly tripled in the last one year under Chatterjee, who joined from Cognizant.

Digital deals include a shift to cloud, creating more insights through data, supply chain transformation, omnichannel strategy, and reaching customers directly. All of these are becoming critical for traditional companies to compete against the online behemoths.

“Our aim is to do deals with a limited set of clients and have deeper penetration where we can cross sell and upsell our service lines. These deals are complex, with all the service lines involved,” added Chatterjee.

To help in that cross-selling, Mindtree set up a specialised sales team last year that works along with the client partners and account managers while pitching to clients. “When you are supported by such specialised people who can talk, for example, about cloud solutions, it puts us in a better position. You cannot sell data & analytics if you do not have the background,” Chatterjee said.