FACT FILE CEO Aparup Sengupta POSITIONING Largely a voice company STARTED IN Jun-05 OWNERSHIP GTL Ltd TOTAL FUNDING Funded from internal approvals of GTL Ltd REVENUE (2002-03) Rs 109 crore NO OF PEOPLE 1300 CORPORATE ADDRESS ES IV, MIDC, TTC Industrial Area, Mahape, Navi Mumbai 400701 WEBSITE www.globalecms.com  NO OF CLIENTS 10 QUALITY ISO 9001:2000 certified COPC 2000 for Inbound, outbound and back Office processes to be certified in Q1 2004 LOCATION FACILITIES: 2 (Navi Mumbai—1, Pune—1*) * to be operational in Jan 2004 SALES & MARKETING: New York, US; Surrey, UK

GTL’s call center business dates back to the days when many major players of today were yet to wake up to the opportunity. Though GTL GlobalCMS business has grown considerably, it has not really been able to leverage on its early mover advantage and move to one of the top slots.

This looks especially unimpressive when one considers the fact that as a company with a stable ownership, GTL has had no major hiccups on the way. There are not many companies who can claim that.

The comparatively sluggish growth can be attributed to the non-impressive growth in the earlier years, though in 2002-03 it had a growth of 55 percent. However, with a healthy bottomline (an operating profit margin of more than 30 percent), the growth has been robust and can be scaled up fast.

With good capability and abundant infrastructure it won’t be difficult to do that provided the company ensures stability and continuity in the operational management structure, which has not been the case so far. Many companies that have changed ownership more than once have managed to grow primarily because of management stability.

GTL’s challenge is now two-fold. Apart from the fact that it has to catch up fast by making up for the lost time, it also has to quickly scale up non-voice offering. At present, the company does have some offering there but that is only a small fraction of the total operations.

Also, GTL has a large volume of outbound processes some of which would be affected by the FTC’s Do-Not-Call regulations. However, a large volume of this is targeted more or less at the UK market and hence, may not impact the overall revenue so much.

The strong UK presence (GTL probably has the highest percentage of UK processes among all India-based call center/BPO companies) will also help the company to grow faster. In fact, for a large non-life insurance company in the UK, GlobalCMS sells more than 6,500 policies a month, of which 60 percent mature into yearly premiums. Nine of its clients are in the BFSI sector. GTL has also started offering legal processing work with 50 people working on the process.

The company has already taken a few steps to grow aggressively. Apart from shifting the base of the division’s CEO to the US, which it hired last year, it has also strengthened its operational-management team in India. This has resulted in widening of the client portfolio.

The company has also got into a partnership with US-based GBS. Under this agreement, GBS will market GTL’s capabilities to medium and large US corporations, the segment that is expected to drive the growth in the next phase.

The company is planning to set up a near-shore center in Canada or Ireland, besides developing onsite facilities in the US or UK. It is also setting up another 500-seat facility in Pune that would be operational soon.  Though GTL’s outbound business may not be affected immediately, the company needs to widen the portfolio to include non-voice services to sustain the profitability. With more competition expected in UK from other Indian BPO companies who are now setting up base there, the UK margins may come under pressure. This year could very well be a testing time for GTL.

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