Staffing firm Teamlease reports 132 percent increase in quarterly profit

R-L: Manish Sabharwal is the Co-Founder and Chairman (and Ashok Reddy Co-Founder and Managing Director TeamLease  Services  at BMTC Commercial Complex, Bengaluru office
Image: Bmaximage


Teamlease, a temp staffing provider to the Indian IT services companies, reported that its December quarter profits rose by 132 percent as it added more associates and expanded margins.

Profit for the three months ended December 31, 2016, rose to Rs 11.5 crore from Rs 5 crore for the year-earlier period, Teamlease, which counts more than 1,900 IT servies and other companies as customers, said in a press release on Thursday.

India’s $108-in-exports IT industry is facing increased cost of operations in its biggest markets as a slew of stricter visa rules are being considered in America and Britain. This is at a time when large corporations are already moving away from the traditional outsourcing model to cloud computing. Hiring specialist temp staff at Indian wages in Bengaluru and other cities could help the IT companies mitigate some of the impact, as they seek to move more work to India.

Fiscal third-quarter sales at Teamlease rose by 29 percent to Rs 814.7 crore from Rs 631.1 crore. “This growth is mainly attributable to increase in our associate headcount,” Teamlease said in its release. Associates grew by approximately 16,500 year-on-year and about 8,700 from the previous quarter in the company’s main general staffing business.

Total staffing associate headcount increased to 125,207 at the end of the December quarter from 116,500 at the end of the previous quarter, and 108,630 as on December 31, 2015.

The company concluded its acquisition of Bengaluru-based specialist IT staffing firm Keystone Business Solutions as of February 1, Teamlease said in its release. Keystone is a Bengaluru-based niche IT staffing company and will be integrated with Teamlease’s Nichepro Technologies unit under its IT staffing vertical. Nichepro too came to Teamlease as an acquisition, as did ASAP Info Systems, helping the acquirer consolidate its position as the leading staffing provider in India.