IT companies are hunting deals rather than waiting for clients to float tenders

Mint

2 days ago

The country's largest information technology (IT) services companies are actively hunting for deals rather than waiting for clients to float tenders, as uncertain macroeconomic conditions and a need to outperform competition are prompting IT outsourcers to become deal hunters.
While IT service providers, including Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Zensar Technologies Ltd, said they are bagging deals through such client mining efforts, peers Birlasoft Ltd and Firstsource Solutions Ltd are focusing on creating large deals.
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'See, there are two types of large deals. One, where things are coming as RFPs (request for proposals) in the market. And the second is where you have to create large deals. So the pipeline for where we are trying to proactively create large deals is very good. The pipeline for RFPs where anyway the probability of selling is very low, that is fairly muted, and that has been muted for us for quite some time," said Manish Tandon, chief executive of Zensar Technologies, during the company's post-earnings conference on 25 April.
Zensar ended last fiscal with $624.5 million in revenue, up 5.4% on a yearly basis.
IT outsourcers generally win large deals through RFPs, which include a client floating a tender for IT-related work. Multiple IT outsourcers bid for such contracts and pitch their offerings to the client. Ultimately, the tech services company bidding a low price and doing more for less is awarded the contract.
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However, such RFPs are rare in this macroeconomic situation, with governments imposing tariffs on imports. This is causing companies to pull back their tech expenditure, which is considered non-essential at times of such uncertainty. As a result, tech services companies are actively mining clients to bag deals.
Finding deals
Last week, Nasdaq-listed Cognizant announced that it bagged two deals through its mining efforts, fetching upwards of $500 million in revenue.
Surya Gummadi, the company's Americas president, said in a fireside chat with Bank of America analyst Jason Kupferberg last week that both mega deals came after Cognizant passed on artificial intelligence (AI)-led productivity gains to clients, leading to additional investments in IT work.
'Both the mega deals that I spoke about, they were originated by us, they did not come from an RFP," said Gummadi, adding that 'the ideas originated from us." Cognizant ended last year with $19.74 billion in revenue, up 1.98% year-on-year.
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While Cognizant and Zensar spoke about client mining paying dividends, two of its peers highlighted a shift in focus.
'We have identified an existing very senior leader to take the mantle of opening accounts, and we have identified about 19 or 20 accounts that we are going to go after, so that we can create pipeline and close them," said Angan Guha, chief executive officer (CEO) of Birlasoft, in a post-earnings call with analysts on 29 May.
His views were echoed by a larger peer, which is the newest entrant to India's $1 billion IT club.
'We are engaged very deeply with all our existing customers. And at this stage, we are trying to see how we can help them and use the current environment actually to our advantage to provide them proposals which allow them to create operational efficiencies further in their business," said Ritesh Idnani, CEO of Firstsource Solutions, as part of his prepared remarks during the post-earnings analyst call on 28 April.
Active search
Notably, each of the companies ramping up new deal creation,except Cognizant, earns less than $1 billion in revenue annually. Firstsource Solutions and Birlasoft reported $944 million and $635 million in revenue for the year ended March 2025, respectively.
At least one analyst attributed the drive to a lack of macroeconomic clarity.
'As it is, demand is slow, and outsourcing deals have slowed down because we are entering a weak economic situation. In such a scenario, IT outsourcers have to create their own demand rather than just for deals to come to them through RFPs," said Pramod Gubbi, founder of Marcellus Investment Managers.Tariff flip-flops and an uncertain demand environment have prompted large Fortune companies to stop awarding large IT deals.
Gubbi added that smaller IT outsourcers first try to win small deals and get a foot in the door of large clients. Once they have a fair understanding of the client's IT systems and the extra IT work that they can do to modernize them, they mine those accounts for more IT work.
A second analyst attributed the reason behind companies chasing large deals to eliminating competition.
'The moment a deal gets into the RFP stage, there will be price competition. If IT service providers have an existing relationship with the client, they will understand the problem and will try to proactively create a solution that can help them get ahead of their competition and eliminate chances of a price war," said Abhishek Kumar, research analyst at JM Financial.
Kumar added that AI is an integral part of such conversations when it comes to creating large deals.
Another analyst said this was an effort by IT outsourcers to increase their footprint in their accounts.
"This is an aggressive move to encourage enterprise clients to consolidate more of their services with them, and benefit from economies at scale, take advantage of more automation and AI," said Phil Fersht, CEO of HFS Research.
The bid to push clients for more business comes as Fortune companies are narrowing the number of IT outsourcers they work with.