July 10, 2024
Nitin Rakesh, CEO, Mphasis
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The world’s largest private equity firm acquired a majority stake in Mphasis—a $1.6 Billion multinational technology services company with 37,500 employees working with large enterprise clients around the globe.
The deal was Blackstone’s largest tech. investment and biggest acquisition in India. With a long rough history, being owned by the likes of EDS and HP, Blackstone saved Mphasis by making it independent and agile once again. Since the deal Mphasis has been on a tear, securing some of their largest deal wins in history. Mphasis CEO, Nitin Rakesh, is no stranger to reboots.
Watch or listen in as we unpack how he has been building the future, accelerating digital products and AI services while acquiring and partnering with some of the world’s leading tech companies.
A Winding Road Journey
Mphasis has had an interesting history since its start in 1998. Through all of their acquisitions and mergers, they were never completely consolidated into companies like EDS or HP, which saved them when those companies began to fail and shed assets. Then in 2017, according to Nitin, they made their most important reboot to date, which was “we decided to make a few big bets and then go all in on them.” Knowing that they were not able to do everything, Mphasis decided that they should instead become the best at a handful of things, which has done very well for them. A bit risky if those baskets end up breaking, but luckily they were able to pull through and make a great business from it.
The Future Impact Of AI
Since AI is all the buzz we had to get Nitin’s perspective on what AI is going to impact in the future. Nitin says AI is the “Next big productivity lever that we had been missing for the last couple of decades.” Nitin also notes that AI is going to remove a lot of friction from businesses like customer support, contact centers, and business operations, as well as reduce to amount of time it takes to get a new mortgage application.
Nitin’s Personal Reboot
As with all our guests, we asked Nitin about some of the biggest challenges he has faced up until this point and the lessons he has learned from them. One of those challenges is that Nitin has “switched industries and continents four times in the last 25 years.” So not only did he have to learn about a whole new industry, he had to adapt to a whole new culture and country to boot. In both cases, you will probably feel like a fish out of water for some time, but some advice for switching industries is “In the end business is business. In every business, there are levers and dials you push, and you find ways to show value to the customer.”
