CHENNAI: One of the pioneers in the Indian HR staffing industry and sitting MLA in the TN Assembly K Pandia Rajan on Wednesday announced his group’s re-entry into the HR industry. Pandia Rajan, who founded and ran the largest HR staffing company in India, Ma Foi, before it was bought out by Dutch firm Vedior plans to take the new firm Ciel HR Services to the Rs 1,000 crore turnover mark within eight to 10 years.
In 1992, K Pandia Rajan began Ma Foi Management Consultants with an initial capital value of Rs 60,000. By the time he let go off all his stakes in the company 18 years later, Ma Foi was a Rs 1,000 crore business. Over that period the company not only grew at a CAGR of 66 per cent but had become the largest staffing and HR Services company in the country.
KPR, as he is known in business circles, is banking on turning the new venture into another Rs 1,000+ crore business by banking on leveraging the analytical strengths of the companies still in the Ma Foi group. “We have very strong assets in analytics and this is something with which we seek to differentiate from our competition,” said Rajan.
However, one thing that he is not planning to do is take the same route in rasing capital for the new venture that he took with the earlier venture. By the time he had an option to go IPO or opt for strategic investment in 2004, the nearly 276 investors he had brought into Ma Foi virtually tied his hands in making a choice. He opted for strategic investment and a JV with Dutch firm Vedior, which was eventually taken over by HR giant Randstat.
“That is a route I will not take this time. All funding will be handled in-house and through an IPO when it is feasible,” he said. In fact it is the association with Randstat that has seen the firm not able to use the ‘Ma Foi’ name for the new firm. Randstad holds the licence for the name and discussions are on to effect a transfer currently.
The new firm will be headquartered in Bengaluru and has four promoters with the majority stakes lying with Rajan and wife Latha Rajan, who is a Director and Co-Founder of CIEL HR Services. Other founders include CEO Aditya Narayan Mishra and Santosh Nair - Director & COO. “Our equity in this company is Rs 3 crore. We expect first year revenue to be Rs 10 crore,” said Rajan.
The firm has offices in Bengaluru, Baroda and Mumbai currently and will be expanded to New Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune soon.