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Sandeep Sahai, President and Chief Executive Officer, Headstrong
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Sandeep Sahai is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Headstrong. Under his leadership, Headstrong doubled its revenues and quadrupled its profits between 2004 and 2008. He also architected a multi-year strategy that saw Headstrong evolve from a predominantly onsite consulting firm to a domain-led, globally distributed outsourcing company and eventually to a platform-based managed services multinational.
Mr. Sahai, 46, was a founder and partner of the consulting firm TechSpan that merged with Headstrong in 2003. He has over 19 years of IT consulting experience. Prior to Headstrong and TechSpan, he was the CEO of Virginia-based SkanSoft, and also served a ten-year tenure with the HCL group.
Mr. Sahai has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and an engineering degree from the Institute of Technology, Varanasi.
Q: What services does Headstrong provide and how does it compete with the IT majors?
A: Headstrong’s differentiation lies in its ability to provide end-to end solutions to the financial services industry, and to the capital markets segment in particular. We focus almost exclusively on the securities sector – over 70% of our onsite staff has prior experience on Wall Street. This gives us an unparalleled level of domain expertise and enables client engagement across the consulting spectrum – from business and strategy management to technology services to operations. At close to $200 million in revenues, we may not be as big as the IT majors - but we are the best at what we do, and clients recognize that. Our client list reads like the Who’s Who of the global investment banking world.
Q: How did you ride out the recession, given that the financial services sector was severely hit?
A: We’ve undoubtedly been through challenging times. Hallowed institutions like Bear Stern and Lehman (both were our customers, incidentally) simply vanished overnight. Regulations were changing continually. Budgets were being dramatically cut. Risk avoidance replaced time-to-market as the paramount consideration in the minds of customers. To be able to take this in stride, and actually improve our profit margins over 2008-09 is indeed a matter of joy to us. I would rate our domain capabilities (which kept us critical to our clients’ core operations) and a strong and responsive management team as the reasons for our continued profit growth.
Q: What catalysts do you see that could accelerate your company’s growth, moving forward?
A: As a company, Headstrong already has a stupendous talent pool; well differentiated, end-to-end market offerings; and a razor sharp focus on domain-led financial services consulting. At this point, I would therefore rate Leadership and Execution as the primary catalysts for accelerating further growth. We are at the cusp of greatness, as we transition from a medium-sized niche company to being a large IT giant, a global leader in our chosen verticals. The ability of our leadership to continually shape and share this vision internally and externally, and to translate it into reality through relentless, process-driven execution is therefore critical.
Q: Given the recent improvements in the broader market, do you plan to implement any changes to your business to capitalize on the improved sentiment, e.g. accelerate capital expenditures, hire additional sales staff, etc.?
A: Signs of improvement in market conditions are increasingly visible this year and we intend to ride the ‘wave’ and aggressively increase market share. We are therefore targeting three areas of enhanced attention and investment – sales, marketing and training. Sales teams are being expanded and are separately focusing on both new account acquisition and business growth from current clients. Marketing efforts have been stepped up to enhance brand recognition and consolidate our positioning as thought leaders. Finally considerable efforts are going into competence building and training for our delivery teams, so as to sharpen our service offerings and enable Headstrong clients derive increased efficiencies from our platform-based managed services.
Q: Are there particular market verticals that you believe will contribute more significantly to your company’s growth? If so, please elaborate?
Given the regulatory changes in financial markets and the continual emergence of newer financial products, Compliance and Operational Risk is a vertical we are seeing increased traction in. Clients require not just strategic guidance but also end-to-end implementation services as they roll out risk management practices and infrastructure.
Similarly, Wealth Management is another area that is directly benefiting from improving market conditions. Wealth management firms are empowering their relationship managers with systems and applications that can provide on-demand asset views, trigger-based communication to clients in crisis situations, client suitability assessments for products, and monitoring tools for asset allocation and risk management – all of which fall in Headstrong’s sweet spot.
Q: What is your outlook for your company and/or the economy for 2010?
A: Last year’s crisis and the recession saw a lot of IT companies consciously reduce their exposure to financial services, and to the North America geography as a whole. We however, saw this as an opportunity and in fact reaffirmed our commitment to these segments. This has begun yielding dividends, now that the economy is improving. Headstrong should see a 42% growth in earnings in 2010, on enhanced revenues. Of course, we remain cautious on G&A spending and are continually tracking economic conditions to keep expenses in line with revenue growth.
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Updated on:
05 Feb, 2010
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