Genpact CEO on analytics driving the company’s growth amid digital transformation

Tiger Tyagarajan, Genpact CEO, joins Yahoo Finance the discuss Genpact’s Q2 2021 earnings, digital transformation, and return to the office amid the pandemic.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation for many businesses. And one company helping to guide them through that transformation is Genpact, the global professional services firm. The company recently reported quarterly earnings that beat on both the top and bottom line. They even raised their full year outlook. And joining me now is Genpact CEO Tiger Tyagarajan. Tiger, always good to see you. Thanks for being with us.

I'm curious where you are seeing growth in the short term that made you so confident that you were able to raise your full year outlook.

TIGER TYAGARAJAN: Alexis, thank you. And great to be back on the show again. Yeah, we saw a very, very buoyant second quarter. And we see that continuing, primarily carried out by what you just described, digital transformation, a lot of large enterprises changing the way they run the business. And I would say data and building insights from data to deal with a rapidly changing world, in order to be able to predict demand, predict supply, move agilely is, I would call out, probably the biggest driver.

So our analytics business was the biggest engine of our growth across all industry verticals that we saw. So I would probably call that out, as a secular trend that we're going to see for, probably, quite a few years to come.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Tiger, I know that a lot of your clients are Fortune 500 companies. And I'm wondering what you're hearing from them as they look to reopen and bring more employees or attempt to bring more employees back into the office.

TIGER TYAGARAJAN: It's a mixed bag, Alexis. And I think it's dependent on the industry. It's dependent on what kind of services and work the people do. I think it's a very measured, systematic approach that most people are following. We are doing the same thing. It's by location different, by geography and country different. I just heard Dr. Peter Hoge talk about different waves, different variants, vaccination rates. Most enterprises are taking all of that into account.

And when they do bring employees, back I'm beginning to see more and more of our customers, large enterprises, kind of start talking about ranging from soft mandate to hard mandate on being vaccinated if you want to be in the office. And then, of course, in some cases, like in our office, as we bring some people back, we are actually implementing at least twice a week rapid antigen testing. Because I think it makes a difference. You know, when I know that the other 20 people in the office are all vaccinated, but I also got tested.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Right. Right. It's that-- it's that extra layer of ease of mind and protection, for sure. I know that at Genpact, your largest employee base is in India. And we know the second wave of COVID there was catastrophic. Some are worried there may be a third wave on the horizon. How is that impacting Genpact's business there on the ground in India and also the clients that you work with there?

TIGER TYAGARAJAN: Yeah, so I think, Alexis, the best way to describe clearly the India situation was tragic. And it impacted pretty much the entire population. Therefore, it impacted our population. And there were some pretty tragic incidents as well, which led to fatalities, et cetera. And the health care system had to cope with that. Is there going to be a third wave? I mean, clearly, scientists are better at predicting that. And they are talking about it.

The fact is that everywhere across the globe, there have been multiple waves. I think the country is probably better prepared for another wave. That's the first statement I'd make. The health system is better prepared. I think people are more prepared. And I think our employee base, I would say, we are at about 60% plus of being vaccinated on the ground in India, much better than the country average. Because we are driving vaccination campaigns in our population.

And we expect that to get close to the 100% mark by the time we get to the-- maybe towards the end of the fourth quarter. But our business hasn't been impacted, because we've been able to deliver services for the last 18 months, working from remote locations, working from home, continuing our service to clients, in fact, driving innovation, which has been the most fascinating part of the last 18 months. Innovation has actually peaked for us for our clients in the last 18 months, which has been a fascinating thing to watch.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: For sure. All right, Genpact CEO Tiger Tyagarajan, thanks as always for being with us and best of luck to you.