Post AbsolutData buy, Infogain doubles down on digital transformation play

After three acquisitions in 14 months, Los Gatos, California headquartered software engineering and IT services provider Infogain is poised to double down on its digital transformation offerings with the launch of its data-based solutions.

According to COO Ayan Mukerji, one of the new solutions will replace time-consuming traditional research methods and help the company’s clients predict, almost instantly, how a new product or service will perform in the market. Another, he told TechCircle, is an analytics offering that will use historical data to offer useful business insights.

The capabilities, Mukerji said, come from the house of AbsolutData Research and Analytics, the San Francisco, Bay Area-based artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics firm Infogain bought late last month for an undisclosed amount. 

AbsolutData offers a NAVIK AI platform, which drives the predictive aspect of the new services. According to Mukerji, the algorithms and statistical models in the platform simulate consumer behaviour through historical data, giving companies an idea on how users would react to something new, and work as a faster and cost-efficient alternative to pilot runs.

“It’s a digital twin. You can run the same campaign and the same thing, and within minutes -- literally minutes -- you'll get the response,” he said. “Imagine you're launching a new chocolate, a new women's care product or an automotive. In these different environments, you can simulate and build digital twins that allow you to do this research very rapidly.”

This service is offered in conjunction with advanced analytics, where data gathered by businesses is analysed to highlight trends that may be useful to draw customers/growth, and will help company clients make strategic business decisions more effectively. Both these technologies have already created a scalable business impact for AbsolutData’s Global 500 enterprise clients, helping them grow faster with increased profitability, Mukerji said.

The capabilities, he said, are in the process of integration, but Infogain sees them as a critical part of its three-pronged strategy, under which it plans to offer full-stack platform-based transformation and meet customers’ increasing digital transformation demands. 

Data-based AI prediction and analytics is the third leg of the digital transformation strategy, Mukerji said. It follows digital strategy and experience engineering/design, and IoT and cloud solutions -- which the company has already built from the acquisitions of Seattle-based Revel Consultancy and Microsoft Azure partner Houston-based Silicus Technologies, respectively. 

Overall, digital transformation offerings make up about 30% of Infogain’s business revenues, while the rest comes from its core software engineering and testing service offerings.

“Companies across the globe are increasingly looking towards a combination of technology and AI/analytics to drive scalable, sustained and profitable business growth. The Covid-19 pandemic has further accelerated digital transformation across organisations,” Anil Kaul, CEO at AbsolutData, said, commenting on the deal. “As a unified team and company, we are very well positioned to service our clients' requirements comprehensively and innovatively, as well as providing tremendous growth opportunities for AbsolutData employees."

The acquisition also marks Infogain’s entry into two new industry segments -- consumer packaged goods (CPG) and telecommunications. In CPG, Mukerji said, Infogain serves clients such as Pepsi, General Mills and Danone, while in telecom, it has added players such as T-Mobile to its customer base. The three-decade-old company also services Fortune 500 companies and digital natives in the high-tech, logistics, healthcare, retail and insurance industries.

“It is very simple, we want to cross-sell digital transformation,” he said. “We will bring in our design and our strategy (with data estate and cloud transformation offerings) and cross-sell to those accounts.” 

With this strategy in place, Infogain aims to double its analytics customer base over the next two years and hopes that about 15% of its revenue will be driven by data, AI, and analytics. While Mukerji did not share the exact numbers, he said the company expects a 15-20% year-on-year overall growth at the end of Q3 FY21, which is higher than the industry average. 

“Yes, we’re a smaller company but the fact is we compete with the Big 10 in 70-80% of the cases. And when I say Big 10, I mean all the way from Accenture, which is $48 billion, to maybe GlobalLogic, which is $700-800 million, or Zensar, which is $500-600 million,” he said.

Since being founded by former Intel executive and technology industry veteran Kapil Nanda in 1990, Infogain has expanded its footprint in India, the US, the UK, UAE and Singapore. It employs over 4,000 people worldwide and has delivery centres in Houston, Seattle, Austin, Kraków, Mumbai, Pune, Gurugram, Noida and Bengaluru. 

The firm raised $63 million from ChrysCapital in 2015, as per VCCEdge data. However, it could not be immediately ascertained how much total capital the company has raised so far. 

The COO said that he expects Infogain to hit about half a billion dollars in revenue in the next three to four years. Nearly 75-80% of the company’s revenue currently comes from North America, with the top 10 customer accounts driving 66-67% of the entire business.

To build  on the new digital transformation offerings, the company also looks to acquire more companies in the future. Although not set in stone, Mukerji said that cybersecurity could be a key space for such deals.

“We never say no, and absolutely, there are areas down the line where over the next three to five years we see ourselves absolutely open to doing more acquisitions,” he said.