![]() He says he’s cut down on human recruiters over the past two years (they still have 1,000, mostly based in India) and instead relies on AI to sift through its proprietary database of more than 15 million resumes scraped from the internet, including from job boards, and find the best candidates to match a job description. “We are not at the edge where just a 10% revenue drop and we’re out of business,” he says. ![]() Sardana believes that the company’s financial discipline will see it through this tricky macroeconomic landscape. Wipro earlier this month announced it will invest $1 billion over the next three years to build out its AI capabilities, including training its entire 250,000 person workforce in the technology, while Accenture bought the generative AI platform Writer in September. It’s still unknown just how many jobs can be done by algorithms, but some of Innova’s competitors have already started to move aggressively to get ahead of the trend. The hiring decline could be the least of its worries, though, as advancements in generative AI threaten to upend the industry. Outsourcing giants like Tata Consultancy Services, Accenture, Infosys and Wipro have a ll slowed hiring or cut staff this year amid a slowdown in IT spending. The so-called “rollup” strategy of buying up IT services competitors can be risky even in good times, explains Jeff Silber, an analyst who covers the industry for BMO Capital Markets. ![]() Sardana’s newest home, Loudermilk estate, is his second residence in Georgia and his third overall he also owns a penthouse in a St. But there are plenty of signs that things may get tougher. He’s projecting Innova’s revenue to surpass $3 billion this year and insisting that margins are on the rise (though he wouldn’t project net earnings for 2023). The ever-optimistic Sardana positions this as an opportunity to wring out profits from poorly run businesses. Innova has about $370 million in net debt after these purchases. Innova’s net profits totaled just $65 million last year, translating to a tiny net margin of just 2.7%, well below Accenture, for instance, which netted 12%. Volt, for instance, added $830 million in revenue but just $1 million in net profit and $60 million in debt. While these deals boosted Innova’s top line, none has so far helped the bottomline. As a result, only 41% of Innova’s growth during this period was organic. It bought up six companies in 20, including New York-based staffing firm Diversant and publicly-traded Volt Information Sciences. It’s not easy to make it big in the overpopulated world of outsourcing, and Innova’s breakneck growth has mostly come from an aggressive acquisition strategy that has involved buying up struggling competitors with attractive clients (Tesla and Harley Davidson both came from acquisitions), and then cutting the “deadweight” from the inherited staff. “Yes, you have to work hard, but at least this country gives us an opportunity to get somewhere.” “This truly is a land of dreams,” says Sardana, who earlier this year splashed out $8.6 million for a 14-acre spread in Atlanta’s upscale Buckhead neighborhood, designed as a (much bigger) replica of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, replete with a life-size statue of a buck on its front lawn. Sardana owns the company with his wife Nita and is worth an estimated $2 billion (he claims the number is double that), making him one of the country’s most successful immigrant entrepreneurs.
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