'Quatrro prides itself on the size of the acquisitions it has made'

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: S Varadarajan is EVP & chief HR officer at Quatrro BPO Solutions. He started his outsourcing career at American Express where he helped the company set up an accounting back office in India, which globally saved the company $25 million. It is at Amex where Varadarajan’s association with Raman Roy, managing director of Quatrro started, which continued through most part of his career at Spectra Mind and Quatrro. In an interview with FE’s Malvika Chandan, Varadarajan talks candidly about Quatrro and the acquisitions it has made in the BPO space. Excerpts:

•What has been Quatrro’s journey in the BPO arena?

We realised the full potential of the BPO sector at Spectra Mind while bringing up the company from just a few people in the year 2000 to 16,500 people in 2004. In 2005, we went on to sell Spectra Mind to Wipro and after taking time off to assimilate the experience and learnings, the management regrouped and founded Quatrro in 2006 with 20 employees, which has now grown to more than 2,800 people. Acquisitions have been an integral part of the Quatrro growth strategy. We acquired Scope eKnowledge in Chennai, Flextronics’ BPO, a gaming BPO in London and Montreal, a finance & accounting BPO in Chicago and a mortgage outfit in San Francisco. Today the company is into several services, including legal process outsourcing, mortgage process outsourcing, risk & fraud, technology services group, finance & accounting and gaming.

•What were the lessons learnt from these acquisitions?

Quatrro particularly prides itself on the size of the acquisitions we have made. The Chicago-based finance & accounting company was one of our larger acquisitions and because of our hands on involvement, we had “no leadership loss” in the transaction.

•What was the target-evaluation process you followed?

Our most important parameter was that the target was able to demonstrate that the systems and processes were in place and that they had a clear niche. There is no one key that fits all formula when evaluating acquisition targets. For instance, some had investors who were part of the management team and, therefore, more functionally involved, while others had more hands-off investors who were completely independent of the management team.

Post-acquisition, each of the target companies has grown in terms of revenue. Quattro’s approach of not applying too much force and trying to immediately integrate has worked.