Page 44 - CIJ April 2024 - Digital Edition

INDUSTRY TALK

Updater Services Pvt. Ltd

Transforming

the Business

Services

Landscape

At an early stage, Updater Services Ltd
(UDS) shifted its focus to “Services”
which “definitely was the future”. Being
among the leaders in the organized sector
way back in the 80s, UDS rose to pan India levels

by the mid-90s and today is operating from over 40 regions across
India. Doing the service business is one thing “but to scale up to
doing larger facilities with a bouquet of services, especially with an
engineering stronghold, is probably possible only for an UDS”, says
Raghunandana Tangirala, Managing Director, UDS. In an exclusive
interview with Clean India Journal, he shares UDS’ 35-year
journey to becoming a ‘business services leader’ in the IFM space.

espite running How did you navigate these evolving expectations. Our
profitable ventures, I track record and investments in
saw the need to shift the challenges of people, systems, and technology
towards a less capital- convincing businesses helped us secure trust and establish
Dintensive industry. ourselves as leaders in the sector.
This led me to explore sectors like to adopt comprehensive
facility services, where scalability services rather than the What has been your
could be achieved without large traditional piecemeal expansion strategy to
capital investments. The FM
sector then was not organised, and approach? include various business
I saw an opportunity to provide Initially, it was indeed services?
comprehensive services beyond challenging to sell the concept of
offering an array of services like integrated services, as businesses Over the last decade, the metrics
cleaning or plumbing. I embarked on were hesitant to consolidate all of doing services with double digit
establishing an organized Facilities their needs into one provider. margins crashed to single digits,
Management service, foreseeing its However, as the IT boom swept in largely due to the advent of IPCs
potential for growth and scalability. during the late 80s and early 90s, entering markets globally.
UDS is the first such company to businesses started demanding more Recognizing the changing
have private equity in early 2000, comprehensive solutions, including landscape and the challenges posed
which was unheard of then in the international standards in facilities. by margin compression in the FM
service sector. We gained traction by meeting sector, we strategically diversified

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