We recently brought in a new Head of Sales in Europe and have added significant sales fire power in that geography too.

Q: How many employees do you have in India and what are your hiring strategies?

Ans: As of June 30th, we had about 11300 employees in India. Right now, with the current economic uncertainty, we are employing a “just in time” hiring model in order to maximize our utilization and operate our business more efficiently. However, we do have both campus and lateral recruitment plans in place, and we can engage these to bring in staff more quickly should we see a sudden increase in demand.
 
Q: What are your investment/ growth plans for the company going forward?
Ans: Syntel continues to invest aggressively in India.  Almost all of our capital investments in the past several years have been focused on our India infrastructure. Our capital expenditures were $32.4 million in 2007, $36.4 million in 2008, and we expect to spend between $30 and $35 million in 2009, excluding land purchases in India. 
Over this three-year period, we have finished almost 6,000 seats in Pune will complete the construction of over 5,000 seats in our new Chennai campus - scheduled to come online later this year.

We have always been confident in our ability to grow the company organically, and this is the approach that Syntel will be focusing on for the foreseeable future.
 
Q: What in your opinion will be the biggest learning that outsourcing vendors will come away with from this recession?

Ans: For me it is the realization that clients have now gotten used to counting paper clips and that is never going to change again. Also, the fact that only those firms will survive that provide "more for less." Companies that have innovation built into their DNA and can help the client grow their topline and bottom line w