Hello and welcome to Business Today. I am Siddharth Zarabi, and we are continuing our coverage here from the World Economic Forum at Davos. With me now is C Vijay Kumar, the CEO and Managing Director of HCLTech. Welcome to our studios, Vijay. I know there's so much that you've been talking about, meeting people, and with the pavilion that your company has, you must have got a sense of what's happening in the world. But I want to start with this one big thing: the United States, a new administration, a new president, a flurry of executive orders. How do you read this new administration and its likely impact on overall global business that is likely to pan out?
I think overall it's going to play out well. That's my view, because every country needs to do what is right for their own people. And if everybody does that, there will always be points of intersection where we can collaborate and create more value. So, I think, of course, there is going to be a reset on a lot of areas, and as businesses and corporations, we have to adapt to the newer rules. And I think it should all be okay.
You know, one of the things that has come out, and this in the run-up to the US elections, it became a massive debating point there. But President Trump, post being sworn in, has endorsed H1B, and that leads me to my next question: do you think the cloud over H1B, overall—not for your company, I'm saying as an industry and for India—it has lifted, and therefore there is now some sanity around that debate?
I'm not sure. It's still very early days; how everything will pan out, we do not know. But overall, as an industry or as HCLTech, our dependence on H1B visas is very, very low. Probably every year we need maybe less than a thousand visas, and we've always continued to build local talent, local hiring. All of that has scaled up over the last many years, maybe 15 years. So today, our dependence is very less, and I don't think it'll create any change in our overall business.
One of the other features of the emerging situation is this wave of optimism in US CEOs with regard to growth in America. A $27 trillion economy—even 2.5% is a very massive number in economic terms. And the sense that I get from my limited interactions here is they're optimistic, inflation is under control, and they feel that even this point about bringing back manufacturing into America will play out well in the long run. As a company CEO, how's your reading of this situation, and what will it mean down the line for India, Indian IT, and your company?
Yeah, I think based on all the conversations—I've met 35-plus C-level leaders—I see that last year at this time, there was a lot of uncertainty in people's minds, and most of them were on a holding pattern. And I see that that's not there. People have a good understanding of what is likely to happen because directionally a lot of things are clear, may not be the specifics. So I think everyone is starting to adapt to what potentially could be the new kind of regimes, rules, and regulations. And I think that optimism or clarity is kind of triggering people to think that we just cannot be in a holding pattern for a very long time. We have to kind of take this as given and see what best we can do in terms of new initiatives, new projects, leveraging new technology—all of that seems to feel like a restart.
Where is the Indian IT industry in terms of a cycle, post-COVID cycle? We saw one massive boom. Yes, we've also seen the recent year, the past year being unprecedented in terms of the total cutbacks in jobs. Wage growth has also been muted, and perhaps new hiring as well. Where do you read the cycle? Is the worst in those terms now behind the sector?
Yeah, we already in the last couple of quarters, we've already been seeing some improvement in the growth profile and improvement in demand. We've already seen that in the September quarter, in the December quarter as well. So there is a nice momentum building up, and we think it will continue. And what geographies will contribute? Of course, US is our biggest geography; more than 60% of our revenues come from US. About 30% comes from Europe, and 10% in other geographies. Even in Europe, we see that, of course, there is a lot more pressure and a lot more efficiency and cost optimization type of opportunities which are playing out, but it's still good. I mean, we did deliver good growth, and we see a good outlook for Europe as well.
And if I can ask you to sort of talk about the pipeline for the full year, how much more incremental additions do you feel happening as far as deal pipeline is concerned?
A deal pipeline is already at an all-time high, maybe just near all-time high. The last time it was a peak was in the beginning of last year when we had a mega deal in the pipeline. Today, even though we don't have a mega deal, our pipeline is near all-time high, and that's quite good. Both US and Europe has contributed to that increased pipeline.
