“We would not shy away from taking bold steps”

It could be termed as a rather unusual marriage. How

else can one define a $40-45 million

Tata Technologies'

acquisition (in 2005) of $130 million UK-based company Incat?






More than third its size in terms of valuation! Yet the union seems to bearing
fruits. Tata Technologies is leveraging Incat's global presence, while Incat is

benefiting from Tata Technologies vast resource pool.






Things seem to have settled down after the acquisition in 2005 and there seems
to be a renewed focus in the company's approach. Part of it was the debut of

Incat in India.






Shashwat Chaturvedi from CyberMedia News spoke to Patrick
McGoldrick
, chief executive officer and managing director, Tata

Technologies, on the latest moves by the company, and other such issues.

McGoldrick is an industry veteran with over three decades of experience. He

joined the Tata Group in 1981 and is a founder director of Tata Technologies.

Excerpts.







How

is the engineering and design (E&D) market evolving?








E&D market has now matured substantially and is on the verge of taking off.
Theoretically speaking, it is at the same inflection point, say when Infosys

stood at Rs. 1000 crore. There is a lot of action happening, and we see a lot

more demand coming in for E&D services from auto and airline majors. The E&D

offshore market is expected to be around $5 billion in 2010. We hope to garner

around 10 per cent of that market pie, say approximately $500 million.






How has the Incat acquisition helped?







Customers today not only demand superior quality of work but also intimacy and
understanding. So when a Daimler Chrysler asks for a door-closer, one must know

that it is quite different from the door-closer used by say, General Motors.

These minute differences can be quite a critical factor for the success of a

company. Incat over the years has been working with all these global auto and

aerospace majors and they have an understanding going with them. With the

acquisition, Tata Technologies has acquired all that domain expertise, customer

intimacy and global presence in a single swoop and we both have benefited from

this move.






Why have you retained Incat as a brand name?







Post acquisition, during our interactions with the clients, we received a mix
feedback. While they were quite happy and buoyant at the prospects of working

with Tata company, they were of the view that since Incat was quite a global

brand name, why change it? After much deliberation, we decided to retain it.






There is often the debate about the threat from China to the Indian market.
Your views.








My views are quite on the contrary. Everything is going quite well for China at
the moment...they have great infrastructure, etc. But they have also implemented

population control and not much democracy. This might work in India's favor in

the coming years. With its highly educated talent pool, India will be a force to

reckon with in the future.






How is your association with Tata Motors?







It is very strong indeed, Tata Motors was our parent company and is still a
highly valued customer. We have been associated with all the projects of Tata

Motors.






Even Ratan Tata's much touted Rs. 1 lakh car?







Yes. We have been involved with that as well.





So when will it see the light of the day?







We do not have any control on that aspect, just involved in design and
development.






What are the future plans for Tata Technologies?







Currently, we are some 3000 people strong and we have aggressive plans for the
coming days. We already have development centers in India, U.S., Germany and are

mulling over a few other options. We are also open to acquiring more companies

that complement us. All said and done, we are quite ambitious and would not shy

away from taking bold steps.

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