Interview

“It is high time India moved up the value chain”

Virtusa is a US-based, high-end software engineering services company with technology centres in the US, Sri Lanka and India. The company focuses on productisation that rationalises and consolidates a variety of technology assets into reusable core platforms. These shared platforms are leveraged to rapidly assemble vertical product lines to address the customer needs of various markets, says Kris Canekeratne, the CEO of Virtusa in an interview with Srinivasa Rao Dasari

l What should the domestic IT sector do to stay competitive?

To keep pace with the world market, India needs to move up the value chain, otherwise the domestic IT sector will be left far behind. The low-end of the IT sector should share the latest technologies available in countries like the US. Indian IT workers are currently working on a very arrow platform and the time has come for them to broaden their scope professionally. Outsourcing of IT development will continue further. Whether it is products or services, offering greater efficiency is the current mantra for success.

How does the product segment compare with software development?

We build products for companies according to their requirements. Usually product companies are prone to high risk and at the same time it is highly rewarding for them too, if they click; whereas service companies don’t face such a high risk. We work with large US companies for product development, right from architecture design to the end-product.

How do you foresee outsourcing opportunities?

IT outsourcing to India is growing at a constant rate of 20 percent in terms of spending and development. There is a steady increase in existing value propositions based on internal efficiency. There has been a change in the IT industry’s dynamics. Rendering services with higher efficiency levels has become a competitive model now.

What is the status on productisation?

With changing technologies and frequent updating, we foresee good demand in this segment. Our productisation enables companies to cope with the changing times. Productisation is a rigorous software engineering process that leverages platforms, product lines and pervasive asset reuse to achieve increased software efficiencies. These efficiencies are manifested in accelerated time-to-market, improved software quality and reduction in development costs.

What are the industry verticals that you are involved in?

We focus on four verticals—finance, telecom, manufacturing and retailing. In these segments, we develop products for our clients. Since many US-based companies are looking towards India, we anticipate good demand for the services that we offer.

Do you take up brand building exercises for your products?

Brand image plays a vital role in the global market. But we don’t take up any kind of brand building measures. We only develop products for companies and let them develop their own brand image. Trademarking of products is also equally important.

How many products have you developed so far?

Since its inception in 1996, Virtusa has developed about 500 products and product-class solutions to create significant strategic value for our clients with a major contribution made by the Hyderabad centre. More than 85 percent of products are J2EE-based. Our global delivery model includes productisation strategy architecture, product-class application development, portfolio rationalisation and software quality engineering.

Could you elaborate on your expansion plans?

Our current headcount at Hyderabad centre is about 1,000, a swift growth from a level of 200 in 2002, and hopefully by 2005, it will reach 2,000. employees. Virtusa currently has nearly 1,500 employees worldwide and we are looking to keep growing rapidly due to our highly differentiated value proposition and sophisticated engagement experience.

Hyderabad is central to our ambitious plans as we become the world’s leading provider of productisation services to blue chip enterprises and leading software product companies.