How a little-known IT services firm is taking on giants, and winning

IT companies and workers are riding the cloud. Photo credit : ndjohnston / 123RF.

IT outsourcing, which helped put India on the global tech map and was responsible for the coining of the term “Bangalored,” has been caught in a catch-22 for some time.

Global clients have been cutting down on deal sizes, and many have moved significant parts of their operations to the cloud. This has forced giants like Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and others to focus on what is called SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, and cloud) services.

IT firms are rushing to update their operations and acquiring smaller companies in the hope this would be easier than re-training all of the hundreds and thousands of engineers on their rosters. Meanwhile, a crop of digital service providers have reared their heads, making many think that Indian IT’s cheap-talent fueled growth is running out of breath.

Global delivery models (read: servicing clients’ Oracle and SAP enterprise resource planning) have given way to artificial intelligence, data analytics, Internet of Things, mobile technologies, and cloud-based computing.

While giants like TCS and Infosys are feverishly remodeling themselves to be in sync with the times, this flux has allowed smaller companies, IT startups, if you will, to approach tech outsourcing in newer, more flexible ways.

ET Marlabs, a four-year-old IT services firm, is hoping to ride the wave of Salesforce’s success. Founded in 2012 by former Infosys employees George Varghese and Sreekanth Keshava, the company is using Salesforce’s customer relationship management product to service clients like Urban Ladder, Flipkart, Cleartrip, CEAT, Coca Cola, Unilever, United Breweries – the total client tally goes up to 100.

George Varghese, CEO. Photo credit. ET Marlabs.

ET Marlabs came into existence when Marlabs, a digital technology solutions provider, bought a stake in Extentor Tquila (ET), a Salesforce partner. Marlabs bought the stake held by Tquila in ET, and Tquila was acquired by Accenture.

See: The startup guy at Salesforce talks growth, tools, and building culture

Last year, ET Marlabs billed US$1.7 million in revenues. This year, George is expecting a 70 percent growth. That’s peanuts compared to the US$16 billion India’s biggest IT company, TCS, raked in last year.

But the rise in growth at ET Marlabs is telling of a much broader trend in the industry.

“A TCS or an Accenture are competitors to us. They do the same thing as us and provide the same services. In fact, most of the time we face them in the market during pitches,” George said as we met up one afternoon in Bangalore.

Up in the cloud

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