FACT FILE CEO Ranjit Singh POSITIONING A producer of cross-media content for the publishing industry STARTED IN 1988 OWNERSHIP Blue Water Capital, Ticonderoga Capital TOTAL FUNDING $9 mn REVENUE (2002-03) $34 mn (bpOrbit estimate) NO. OF PEOPLE 1757 (as on 31 Oct 2003) CORPORATE ADDRESS 11150 Main Street, Suite 402, Fairfax, Virginia 22030, US WEBSITE www.techbooks.com  NO OF CLIENTS 25 (major) QUALITY ISO 9001 certified LOCATION FACILITIES: 3 (Delhi) SALES & MARKETING: York, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, London

Leveraging the offshore model from a time when the phrase ‘business process outsourcing’ had probably not even been coined, TechBooks today is the biggest company in its domain—outsourced publishing services. Calling it the ‘Delhi Model’, TechBooks convinced big publishers across two continents to outsource their copy-editing, composition, proofreading, and format conversions to thousands of miles away in India. The innovative offshore model was supplemented by inorganic growth strategies. It acquired four companies between 1999 to 2002, though in 2001, it sold off its print division that it had formed in 1999 by acquiring York Graphic Services. The company did that to focus on its core activity of content solutions. The focused strategy helped the company register impressive growths in 2000 and 2001, propelling it to the Inc magazines list of 500 fastest growing companies (Inc 500) for both the years.

The revenue figure of TechBooks looks very high, compared to other BPO players. This is because of the way TechBooks is organized. Most BPO companies started on the offshore model by offering the cost advantage as the selling proposition and have billed the clients mostly on cost plus basis. Whereas being the first in its area, TechBooks started with project management teams in the US/UK and the backend in India, thus using a model is similar to the transfer-pricing model used by captives. However, with competition, these rates will come under pressure. Revenues have already dropped in the last few quarters.

However, it has an impressive client portfolio that is likely to help it retain its leadership. It has four strategic business units—the educational-publishing group whose clients include companies like McGraw Hill, Prentice Hall, Pearson, John Wiley etc; professional-publishing group that works for publishers like Earlham School of Religion, Royal Society of Chemistry, Kluwer, IEEE, Elsevier, Wiley and Cambridge University Press; information-publishing group that works for specialized content aggregators like Law Writer, HW Wilson, NetLibrary, and Books 24x7; and a lot of companies for whom it prepares annual reports, SEC files.

Interestingly, TechBooks has been hiring from smaller locations for years. It regularly recruits from places like Kolkata, where people with written English skills are available in plenty. An estimated 60–70 percent of employees have been recruited from outside the NCR region. Though TechBooks is in a growth mode, it may face competition from others who may locate in less costlier locations. TechBooks could either move to smaller locations or cut down the US headcount by bringing the project management jobs to India, resulting in dropping billing rates but helping the bottomline.

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