UST Global Inc. is on a fast track to becoming Orange County’s next $1 billion company with its aggressive expansion plan in emerging markets around the globe.
The privately held information technology services provider aims to be the biggest player in the segment by establishing training centers and employment hubs in Mexico, India, Spain and central Africa, among other locations that meet its stringent prerequisites to set up business.
“We just don’t go to a place and find business,” Chief Executive Sajan Pillai said during a recent interview at the company’s Aliso Viejo headquarters. “We go with business.”
That business is booming.
UST posted 37% revenue growth last year to about $800 million.
It expects revenue to grow this year by about 23% to nearly $1 billion through its stable of 128 Fortune 500 customers.
“Fewer clients but more attention and strategy,” Pillai said of the business model.
The company has added 3,000 workers in less than three years and now employs 15,000. About 100 corporate and engineering positions are in Orange County, which beat out more tech-centric areas of the country in landing UST in 1999.
A 1-million-square-foot facility in India houses 8,000 employees, and the company plans to add another 2,000 in the next few years. In Mexico, where UST signed a partnership in 2012 with former President Vicente Fox, the company has hired about 1,000 people for its 300,000-square-foot training center.
It has been challenging for Pillai to convince UST’s roster of large corporate customers to offshore IT work in far-flung, second-tier markets, but last year was a breakthrough.
“We managed to convince nine global Fortune 500 companies to come to Mexico,” Pillai said. “This year, I expect the number to go up to 30.”
Costa Rica, Rwanda
A recent expansion into Costa Rica has added another 1,000 employees. About 60 workers are based in an office in Rwanda in the company’s first entree into Africa, where it plans to boost employment to 150.
A trio of acquisitions starting in May added more than 630 employees in Pune and Bangalore, India; Oldenburg, Germany; Singapore; and U.S. locations in Georgia, Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas.
UST also runs operating centers in Philadelphia; Dallas and Austin, Texas; Bentonville, Ark.; the U.K.; Malaysia; and the Philippines.
In October, it acquired IT consultant TCP on undisclosed terms, adding 600 employees in the Spanish cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Valladolid and in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The company has initiated a plan to hire as many as 3,000 engineering graduates over the next five years in Spain, where it established ties with the University of Salamanca’s Science Park.
The Spain expansion is centered on digital services, a segment Pillai has zeroed in on for survival and explosive growth.
“It doesn’t matter what aspect in business or life it is, digital is going to be the difference,” he said.
Spain had an unemployment rate of nearly 24% at the end of last year, according to the National Statistics Institute.
Cyber Security
UST, in an effort to curtail corporate security breaches and commercialize prevention services, is launching a program with Israeli intelligence agencies to build a cyber defense center that will employ up to 10,000 engineers in the Middle Eastern country.
The news comes amid a spate of recent data and identity leaks, including the breach at Sony Pictures in December in which hackers released sensitive information and emails involving roughly 47,000 celebrities, contractors, and current and former employees, which prompted the movie studio to postpone and edit the release of “The Interview.”
Pillai said the National Security Agency and the U.S. government are outmanned in defending cyber attacks against corporations, which have little expertise in the area.
“The best expertise in the world resides in Israel, by far,” he said. “The vulnerability is high, and it’s a concern.”
Construction on the center is slated to begin next month.
