WNS has been on an acquisition spree, with a total of seven companies bought since its NYSE listing in 2006, and the latest being US-based Denali Sourcing Services in January this year. With undrawn lines of credit and a strong balance sheet, the Business Process Management (BPM) firm is hungry for more small buys. In an interaction with BusinessLine, WNS Group Chief Executive Officer Keshav R Murugesh, who has been the Nasscom BPM Council Chairman for two consecutive terms, is of the opinion that voice is making a comeback in India, while emerging technologies are part ofautomation initiatives, rather than being disruptive. Excerpts:

You have been the Nasscom BPM Council Chairman for two consecutive years now and also spearheading the rebranding of BPO to BPM? What have been the recent changes?

To begin with, the stability of BPM sector is now far higher than it was before and many of the ongoing issues such as Brexit and H1B are not impacting the sector. We have been making investments, focusing on the right kind of areas we have been able to incorporate some of these models into our business model and not see them as threats. We have actually leveraged them to continue to grow our business, so if you look at it, the Indian BPM did about $28 billion of exports as of last year and we are looking at a $50-billion target by 2020.

On Brexit, was the industry’s fear real or was it an opportunity? Another concern was the H1-B visa issue….

I recall saying Brexit will be an opportunity both for the industry and WNS. I continue to stand by that position, because I believe that Brexit will ensure that companies want to increase the pace of becoming more efficient as they have to compete with other firms in Europe itself. We have not seen any disturbance on the momentum of business.

From BPM industry point of view, we are not impacted by H1-B visas as we have driven a model that is near-shore, global onshore and offshore. The Indian BPM did about $28 billion of exports last year and we are looking at $50 billion by 2020.

With the industry expecting to more than double exports to $50 billion, where is the growth coming from?

The growth will continue to come from traditional bread-and-butter areas such as BFSI, healthcare, retail and utilities, while the contact centre part of the business has started to see growth again in India, which is important. In Finance & Accounting, India is leading the world, while India is becoming a global hub for data sciences and analytics. There are big opportunities in shipping and logistics, and the rate of growth is solid. There is a lot of confidence in the BPM industry.

The emerging technologies — such as Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, digital and 3D printing — are they disruptive to the BPM industry?

They are all as part of the automation initiatives and enablers of the industry. They make the industry smarter and we have been investing in all these models for the past few years. We cannot hide from the fact that there is a massive disruption taking place in the end client side and we have to lead the change for them and that’s why we have invested in these models ahead of the curve.

India will continue to be the key focus area for WNS?

Absolutely! India continues to be the largest geography for WNS. We continue to invest strongly in India’s talent and locations. But at the same time, we have also got a solid global footprint that we are leveraging.

On the voice front, what is happening in the Indian BPO-BPM space?

Voice started declining in favour of other countries but it has started coming back to India. And that comes from a focused programme that has been run from the Nasscom’s BPM council and individual companies.

The reality is that people have realised that India has kept investing strongly in voice capability. India has also invested heavily in embedded analytics and in domains and as a result of which what was traditional call center business, lot of these companies are moving into customer interaction services involving both technology as well as domain and embedding digital models.

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