Happiest Minds bets on IP-led revenue to fuel growth

Happiest Minds Technologies Ltd is betting big on intellectual property (IP)-led revenue to complement its services and drive growth. Currently, IP-led revenue contributes about 10% to the overall topline for the Bengaluru-based IT services firm.  

“We are fundamentally a services company and not trying to be a product company. So, our IPs are supposed to be designed to fuel our services that we are delivering to our customers,” Sridhar Mantha, chief technology officer, Happiest Minds said in an interview.  

In several cases, Happiest Minds is helping clients define their requirements which involves various new technologies in the market. “In such situations, we have to create our own products or solutions or solution accelerators ahead of time…only then we can go and help our customers with those solutions that they want to build, and our IPs can be baked within them,” Mantha said.

Since inception in 2011, one of the core elements of Happiest Minds’ vision has been to drive IP-led revenues, Mantha said. “The reason we call them as IP-led is that we are essentially a services player, and our IPs are an integral part of them that can lead to additional revenues.”  

Mantha cites an example of an IP-led anomaly detection solution Happiest Minds has built that can capture deviations from certain patterns of data. The solution has been created using statistical and machine learning algorithms. “This concept is applicable across industries in multiple areas and the solution is agnostic of any vertical or any solution and this component can be embedded as part of the largest solution we are building for our customers in terms of providing security across any solution space,” he said.   

As part of building a technology roadmap for the future, Happiest Minds has built a ‘Technology Council’ where the team is responsible to keep a watch on the technology horizon and anticipate the changes that are going to take place in the next 3-5 years. “It helps us gauge how well we are prepared and what more we should be doing. Every year, we constantly look at the new technologies coming in…based on that, business strategists will take those as inputs across the company and formulate their strategy.”   

Based on where the demand could come from in the future, the company is currently working on emerging technologies like blockchain, computer vision, and drones.    

It already has centres of excellence (COEs) in three different areas where senior leaders of the company are involved in. These three COEs include: Internet of Things (IoT); analytics and artificial intelligence (AI); and automation including robotic process automation (RPA) focussed on low-code, no-code platforms.  

“The COEs focus on the end-to-end spectrum of the technology…We keep looking at things that are beyond five years…But we don't know it yet because none of us have a crystal ball…quantum computing and other areas will emerge in the future,” Mantha said.