UK communications services firm Cable & Wireless Worldwide is looking at India as a key market at a time growth in the telecom market in the UK remains flat. The company recently planned a new centre in Bangalore which would be the hub for developing and customising existing products such as those based on IP services and ethernet solutions for its global markets. Shali Thilakan, managing director (India and South Asia), Cable & Wireless Worldwide, tells FE?s Ajay Sukumaran about the company’s focus areas for business in India.

You have about 150 customers in India currently. How do you plan to grow that number?

We have a very focussed market penetration strategy. We are not after every new logo and we leave out a lot of customer opportunities which do not fit our portfolios. We get excited in customer accounts where we can increase our depth of offering so it?s not just give connectivity and stop. We can go beyond connectivity where we can talk infrastructural services which is like hosted IP contact centres, managing video conference and managing security. We see retail, we see media in a big way. We did a lot of business with some of the largest media houses.

What is India?s share of the company?s revenues?

Generally, the global markets, Asia and India in particular, are the biggest and fastest growing markets.

Global markets (those outside the UK) contribute about 25% of our entire firm?s revenue. So, that gives you an idea about India?s large role, going forward.

Most of your business in India comes from IT/ITeS and BFSI, but you are saying that retail is growing now?

Our international strategy has been extremely strong in terms of BFSI, so it?s only complementary for us to bring that expertise to the Indian market. If you looked at IT/ITeS, their largest customers are banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI).

Retail is interesting because if you look at Marks & Spencers or Tesco in the UK, we provide their end-to-end connectivity and a host of services to them. So, we as a partner in your largest market will make investments on your behalf and build connectivity for you. Today, we connect all the Marks & Spencers stores in India.

So what does the boom in Indian retail mean to you?

The retail market is more exciting for domestic players. For me, with a Tesco coming to India, I get happy. More and more international retail giants are coming to India. These are very different kind of organisations, they value service and don?t believe in do-it-myself model. They are more about how can I outsource this, how can I have the right partner. I think we are ready to have those conversations.

You are now planning for 15 new products out of your new innovation centre in Bangalore. Can you explain what your strategy will be?

The strategy in India is a independent one. Its not about moving heads from the UK and putting them here and trying to do something for UK and something for India. What we discovered is that we need people in the same time zone as our sales people, as our customers.

Here, what is happening is we are hiring people from the local market, we are hiring people from our own internal network operating centres and using that as a leverage to fuel product innovation. So, these are people who understand what is the local market all about.

The product will have the same name (as in the UK), but a different adoption in terms of the way we price it. Here, what we are talking about is making it the right fit for the wallet size in the Indian market.

Technology innovation is a part of it, but I think there is a lot of commercial innovation expected and lot of speed in delivery expected as well.