Mahindra-British Telecom (MBT), the telecom software joint venture between the Mahindra Group and British Telecom (BT), reported an excellent full-year result for fiscal year 2001/2, which showed profit growth of 31 per cent over the previous year. MBT moved up five places to No. 9 to be amongst India's top 10 software exporters.
What makes this performance all the more remarkable is that it was achieved against a backdrop of massive losses in the global telecom segment.
According to Madhur Kripal, manager of MBT's regional office at the Dubai Airport Free Zone (Dafz), this was the result of the very focused business strategy MBT has applied to all its markets.
The strategy, as spelled out by the official, has three constituent parts: first the company took care not to build a large fixed-cost base.
Next, it identified a list of customers it ought to get, rather than employing a shot gun approach and finally the sales force was given a mandate to secure the identified accounts alone, and forget about selling outside of the target customers.
MBT is a leading software services company focused on the growing global telecom industry. It offers software solutions and system integration services to telecom operators, telecom equipment manufacturers and telecom technology suppliers in various regions.
MBT has also invested in the development of software components that complement its service offerings. Presently its components cover mobile commerce, intelligent networks, network management, net firewalls, software component re-engineering and e-learning.
The company secured a majority of its revenues from its parent, British Telecom, in 2001/2 and the strategy is to grow the portfolio to 10 more customers of similar size and importance as BT, while maintaining current close links and commitment to BT.
MBT's other major customers include Alltel, Rockwells and Qwest.
For example, BT's core- billing system is managed by MBT to maintain the applications on a 24-hours-per-day year-round basis, and is responsible for billing more than 70 per cent of BT's total revenues.
MBT was one of the first companies to establish a regional office in DAFZ in July of 2000, taking advantage of the investor-friendly atmosphere of the Free Zone and the infrastructure support Dubai offers high-end IT companies.
Worldwide, MBT operates out of 21 marketing offices and six development centers, including state-of-the-art offshore development facilities in Mumbai and Pune in India and the UK. Mahindra-British Telecom is also categorised as a SEI-CMM Level 5 company.
