Quess Corp expects 25% headcount addition, wage inflation seen only in IT segment

Quess Corp’s general staffing division has crossed the 2,50,000 associates’ mark. It is the first Indian staffing company to achieve this milestone. To discuss the company’s outlook, CNBC-TV18 caught up with Lohit Bhatia, president - workforce management, Quess Corp.

Bhatia said, “Quess Corp has become the first company in its general staffing division to cross the 2,50,000 mark and this has also happened because of net addition of 50,000 people in the last 12 months. Primarily, this has come from a host of secular-based growth across the portfolio. But if you were to call the large ones, it would be BFSI, telecom, manufacturing and industries, followed by IT, IPAS, agro, and then followed by e-commerce, logistics, and the others.”

According to him, only retail has not participated in the last 12 months. “However, we keenly look forward to getting that growth back as more consumerism happens in Q3 and Q4. It is also the festive season,” he mentioned.

“At 2,50,000 mark, this is also a proud moment for India because not just an Indian company has crossed this mark, but Quess Corp has also become the fifth largest in the world with respect to volume and all of this has happened in just 14 years for our staffing business,” said Bhatia.

On topline impact, he said, “This is approximately a 25 percent-plus growth in a 12-month period if we take August 2020 as base. Having said that, wages are holding up and huge wage inflation is happening only in the IT sector and for obvious reasons of demand, there’s worldwide wage inflation in the IT index. However, for all the other segments, we have had a rather lull period of wage inflation. So at this point, it would be safe to say, 25 percent headcount addition would almost mirror in terms of the revenue addition as well, taking August 2020 as the base.”

The one complaint that a lot of investors have had with Quess Corp is that there are many overseas and domestic subsidiaries and it is a bit of a complicated corporate structure. On being asked if there were any plans to simplify it and assimilate all their acquisitions, Bhatia said, “We have been talking about this across every quarterly earnings call. Our MD and CEO has been mentioning this, our CFO and the corporate finance team have been working in rationalising that structure. Today, we have three distinct platforms. So, the way for a client, an associate or an investor to look at Quess is that there are three distinct platforms of workforce management, operating asset management and global technology solutions. At this moment, there are synergies being created across subsidiaries, there is an amalgamation process going on. Also, some of the subsidiaries can be absorbed into the larger unit itself. At some distinct stage, the platforms by themselves will have a life. However, today each platform is independently run by a president and each business is run by a CEO, so internally the company has a very robust structure and there are subject matter experts managing each of these businesses.”