Covansys unfreezes recruitment, mulling acquisitions

BANGALORE: Covansys India, the 100 percent subsidiary of US-based Covansys Inc, has decided to unfreeze its recruitment for this year and add about 150-200 software professionals in its rolls. The company is also mulling acquisitions, within and outside the country.

The company had frozen recruitment and shelved any plans of acquisition or mergers last year, citing the economic slump. It also decided to strategically re-christened itself to Covansys from Complete Business Solutions Inc., (CBSI).

"America has been primary market, contributing about 70 percent to our revenue. The rest is from Europe and Asia with 10 and 20 percent, respectively. The slowdown has made us reduce operational cost, increase productivity and efficiency and realign decisions. It has also given us the opportunity for realigning our service offering into three core service offerings. Web Enterprise Integration, Startegic Outsourcing and Individual Business Solutions. We are also looking into three competitive markets, Mainframe, Client Server and Emerging Technologies. This has helped us gain a few more projects in the market," said, Covansys India, COO K. Subrahmaniam.

In terms of manpower strengthening, the company, will be increasing its staff’s strength in Bangalore. About 80 percent of this new addition are to be in its Bangalore development center, where, currently, there are about 120 professionals.

As for mergers and acquisitions, the company is closely looking at couple of firms in the country, with about 100 to 500 employees. Refusing to divulge the names of the firms, Subrahmanian added, "Covansys as a company has always looked upon Organic and M&A (Mergers and Acquisition) for growth. Acquisitions should offer us industry reach, geography reach and technology reach to supplement our offerings. This would justify our acquisition."

But, this year a couple of acquisition by the company is in the cards, as Covansys, is closely looking at the option along with setting up technology centers and expanding geographical presence. One of the technology center was .Net Center of Excellence set up by the company to leverage the framework on the .Net architecture.