Traditional IT in a spot; betting on 4 midcap platform companies: Dipan Mehta

Economic Times

5 hours ago

Dipan Mehta, Director, Elixir Equities, says traditional Indian IT software services companies face disruption from global platform companies, specialized local players like Newgen Technologies, Aurionpro and Sagility, and Fortune 500 clients establishing global capability centers (GCCs) in India. These clients are investing heavily in innovation and leveraging India's human resources directly, impacting the traditional software services model. This shift is redirecting employment and innovation away from established Indian IT firms.
ADVERTISEMENT Mehta further says companies like RateGain Technologies, Affle India, Zaggle Prepaid, IndiaMART InterMESH are the future.
Where do you think Indian IT is headed given that certain global factors are not completely at rest and the kind of exposure IT has to the US?
Dipan Mehta: Indian IT industry is in a bit of a spot. The growth rates have secularly come down. I have been tracking the industry for the last 25 years. The Y2K moment was about 25-26 years ago or so. These companies have shown phenomenal growth over the past several decades. But in the last three-four years, growth rates have come down to a trickle. They are as low as 3.5-4% profit growth for the top five-six companies.
There are many reasons we can go into IT. But from an investor's perspective, when we are reviewing a sector or a company, we want a minimum 15% topline growth rate on a consistent basis over a three-five-year period. Only then can we get decent returns and have some sort of a wealth building process and that does not seem to be happening in any of the traditional software services companies with the exclusion of maybe a Persistent Systems or a Coforge. By and large, the largecap and midcap software service companies are in a secular slow growth mode and that is a big problem for investors in those companies.
We are looking at AI becoming more centrestage. We are looking at more and more tech in everyone's life. Tech usage is going higher, but Indian IT companies are losing their importance. So, who will be the beneficiary in India and what should Indian investors look at because if AI and tech enablement is the basic theme, how can one maximize profit from IT?
Dipan Mehta: Who are the winners is a billion dollar question. There is no doubt that India has a lot of tech talent and the industry is investing heavily into training for AI but there are very few in the listed space. But there is another trend that we should talk about. There was a time when a lot of the enterprises would develop their own systems, meaning either they make it themselves or get it made by Indian software services companies. That was application development and application maintenance and the IP for these applications was with the enterprise. Now, the entire thinking has changed and company after company wants to go on the cloud, wants to use a platform or a product and they want to reduce the cost of investing in technology. Also, there are so many technological disruptions taking place and they want to avoid those risks as well.
ADVERTISEMENT So, the companies which focus on platforms and products will be the winners and right now in the Indian ecosystem, only two or three companies come to mind. One is Newgen Technologies, which is more of a platform product company; then there is Aurionpro, which is more of a platform product company, and then there are certain very specialised players like Sagility.So there are certain specialised players with focus on specific verticals which may do well. But it is very difficult to find good plays within the technology space listed in India.
ADVERTISEMENT Given the fact that the sector is going into such an environment where we do not know what discretionary spending will be like, and what AI will do for the IT space, what should investors do and how should they read onto the valuation picture?
Dipan Mehta: Valuations come into play when you actually see growth. If there is no growth, what is the point of taking any further study in the company in terms of where it is trading at, and what its valuations are? Sure, they can get cheap from time to time, we could have solid rallies in them, but at the end of the day, when you take a two, three, five, ten-year view, I am not sure these companies can deliver solid returns going forward.
I think finally the Indian IT company has been disrupted by these product platform companies, global companies, and also they have been disrupted by their own Fortune 500 clients coming into India. The clients are the biggest source of employment. They are setting up their own global capability centres (GCCs). They are investing heavily in the front office, back office. Top level innovation teams are coming into India. So, globally India is still taking advantage of the massive amount of human resources available at a reasonable cost within India, it is just that it is not flowing through the software services companies.
ADVERTISEMENT I think these companies are truly in a big spot and there is no scenario where they can go back to that double-digit, 12-13% type of growth rate. The unfortunate part is that – as I read from Accenture's management commentary – even a 7-8% growth year-on-year is a good quarter for them. So, if a 7-8% growth is a good quarter for the management of such a large company, what does it tell the investor? Investors are not going to be happy with 7-8% topline growth. There is a mismatch of expectations of the investor versus what the managements expect they can grow at.
If I use the word new tech, there is this entire digital brigade, Policybazaar or for that matter Zomato or Swiggy, or even Paytm. Then, there are niche product companies like RateGain which essentially are in the business of SaaS or providing software services. Where would you pick your spots in this niche IT space? Which are some of the unique companies like Affle, which are small today but can really become giant in five years?
Dipan Mehta: You have taken the discussion in the right direction and there are these whole host of B2C tech platforms and that is where a lot of Indian investors are focusing on. Right now, we are classifying them as consumption players or as fintech players or as edtech or for that matter travel tech. But these are the real technology companies in India that investors should focus on. And there are some great stories over there.
I will give the usual disclosure that our views are biased. I think companies like RateGain Technologies, Affle India, Zaggle Prepaid, IndiaMART InterMESH are the future. Of course, there are the larger ones like Paytm and Swiggy and Zomato, but these large platform companies including Policybazaar are still bleeding in a way and eventually when they get into profitability we will see what returns they can give. But there is a whole host of midcap platform companies that I named which are generating solid profits and cash flow. They have their ups and downs, but at the end of the day, they will deliver very good returns over the next three to five years as they scale up the business model and take advantage of operating leverage.
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