TCS is the number one IT company in India in terms of revenues. However, does the company also leads in client acquisition? Or in other words, which is the IT company which got the maximum clients during the past year?
Read on to find out the track record of IT companies in client acquisitions, number of clients, growth rate
#1. Cognizant
Cognizant's record in client acquisitions has been significantly higher than that of its peers, TCS, Infosys and Wipro, both in absolute numbers as well as in the overall percentage of new clients added. The company saw a 21% rise in its active client base to 712 in 2010, from 589 in 2009.
#2. HCL Tech
HCL Technology, which has a smaller base as compared to its rivals, is also adding more clients than TCS, Infy and Wipro in percentage terms. According to a Religare research report, though HCL has slowed in recent quarters, it has been recording relatively much faster client acquisition rates over the last two years. HCL Tech's client base grew 9% -- from 399 to 434 clients.
#3. Infosys
The clients of India's second-largest IT company grew 7.75% to 612 clients. Analysts say that Cognizant and HCL, particularly the former, have also seen a good growth in revenues per client. Growing revenue per client reflects good client mining abilities. However, on this count, Infosys is the leader with the highest revenue per client at $10.4 million last quarter, as compared to $8 million per client for HCL.
However, while Cognizant is getting good revenues from its healthcare division, Infosys does not even report healthcare as a separate vertical.
#4. Wipro
Wipro's client base grew 7% to 880 clients. According to Abhishek Shindadwar, IT sector analyst at ICICI Securities, the healthcare vertical is a key differential between Cognizant and its peers. "Cognizant's focused healthcare vertical is helping it acquire more clients in this fast growing vertical." While Wipro -- which gets less than 10% of its revenues from healthcare -- is now planning to increase its healthcare focus.
Cognizant derives around $1 billion from the healthcare vertical where it has built deep domain expertise according to Shindadwar.
#5. TCS
The company's client count grew 4.5% to 917 clients. According to a Motilal Oswal report, HCL ramped up its marketing spends by a significant 110 basis points over the past five quarters. This enabled HCL to increase its active client base by 16.4% during the period.
TCS in contrast likes to maintain better margins and re-invest a relatively lower fraction of savings into its business. Same is with IT majors Infosys and Wipro.