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Top jobs from Ikya

2011-05-07T16:29:00.001+05:30

A Leading IT & BPO Services Firm Director BFSI Operation 15-18+Yrs Chennai divya@ikyaglobal.com A Leading IT & BPO Services Firm Director Finance - IB Operations 15-18+Yrs Hyderabad divya@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading IT & BPO Services Firm GM F&A 13-15+yrs Chennai/Hyderabad divya@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading IT & BPO Services Firm GM FP&A 13-15+yrs Hyderabad divya@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading IT & BPO Services Firm GM Product Control 13-15+yrs Hyderabad divya@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading IT & BPO Services Firm SDM Quality Blackbelt - Process Consulting 8+yrs Chennai ashag@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading IT & BPO Services Firm SDM Insurance Operations P&C 8+yrs Chennai maria@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading product online Firm AR Manager - Cash Application, Collections 7+yrs Hyderabad arunbg@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading product online Firm AVP Accounts Payable 10-12+yrs Hyderabad arunbg@ikyaglobal.com

A leading Captive Center Manager Recruitment - IT (Lateral & Leadership) 10+yrs Hyderabad maria@ikyaglobal.com

A leading BPO AVP L&D 10-15yrs Bangalore maria@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Financial Services firm Manager Business Operations (Business Intelligence & Analytics), Only Tier I & Tier II Institutes 6-10years Mumbai sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Financial Services firm Sr Manager Admin (well versed with Konkani language) 6-10years Goa sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Financial Services firm Manager Finance Reporting (CA / MBA) 6-10years Bangalore sharada@ikyaglobal.com A Leading Financial Services firm Manager Procurement - IT & Telecom 8-12 years Bangalore sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Financial Services firm Manager Operations Mortgage 6-10years Bangalore sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A leading Investment Bank Manager / AVP / VP / Corporate Legal (BFSI Domain) 2-12 years Mumbai sharada@ikyaglobal.com A leading audit & Consulting firm Consultant / Sr. Cosnultant / Engagement Manager Consulting (need people from FMCG / Telecom sector doing brand management & product lauching 2-12 years Mumbai sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A leading audit & Consulting firm Assistant Manager Internal Audit & Risk Management (ICWA / CA ) 4-8 years Baharain sharada@ikyaglobal.com A leading audit & Consulting firm Deputy Manager Internal Audit & Risk Management (ICWA / CA) 4-8 years Baharain sharada@ikyaglobal.com A leading audit & Consulting firm Manager External Audit (ICWA / CA) 4-8 years Baharain sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A leading audit & Consulting firm Sr. Associate Internal Audit & Risk Management (ICWA / CA) 4-8 years Baharain sharada@ikyaglobal.com A Management Consulting Firm Principal Consultant (Tier I institutes only) should have worked on BD / projects / industry studies in Education space 4-10 years Mumbai sharada@ikyaglobal.com A leading Investment Bank Vice President / Director Product Control 12-15 years Pune sharada@ikyaglobal.com A Leading Investment Bank Quantitative Analyst (data management, model implementation or fraud / risk detection) 3 - 9 years Gurgaon sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Investment Bank Quality Assurance & Software Testing Analyst 3 - 9 years Gurgaon sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A leading Investment Bank Analyst/Assistant Manager ETL Developer Analytics (• 2+ years within the field of ETL Development. Knowledge and understanding of financial services preferred) 3 - 11 years Gurgaon sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A leading Investment Bank Product Analytics ( 3+ year of proven statistical analysis or equivalent. Knowledge and understanding of financial services preferred) 3 - 9 years Gurgaon sharada@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Manager Ops Risk - F&A / FP&A 8-10 years Gurgaon pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Sr Manager Ops Risk - Home Loan & Insurance 8-10 years Mmbai pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo TL / AM Fianncial Reporting (CA / ICWA / CIMA / & Igaap / US Gaap / UK Gaap / Irish Gaap) 4-12 years Pune pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Global Mobility Consultant (Expat Mgmt / onsite employee mgmt) 3-5 years Pune pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo OTC Pricing Valuation Analyst 1-2 years Pune pallavi@ikyaglobal.com A Leading Captive Banking Bpo AVP HR Business Partner 7-12 years Pune pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Manager / Senior Manager HR Business Partner (8 to 12 years) 8-12 years Pune pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Manager Training (Investment Banking / Capital Market process training) 8-12 years Pune pallavi@ikyaglobal.com A leading Investment Bank VP Product Control 8-12 years Mumbai pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A leading Investment Bank Director Product Control 12-16 years Mumbai pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Structured Trade Review - TL (trade review for exotic / structured products) 4+ years Hyderabad pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Structured Trade Review - Manager (trade review for exotic / structured products) 8+ years Hyderabad pallavi@ikyaglobal.com A Leading Captive Banking Bpo AM Datawarehousing & Reporting (SAS Base & SQL & UNIX) 4+ years Gurgaon pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo First Year Analyst & Analyst - CA / CFA / MBA good institutes / IIT Graduates freshers 1-3 years Mumbai pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading IT & BPO firm GM R2R 12+ Noida mita@coachieveindia.com

A Leading IT & BPO firm GM Intercompany 12+ Noida mita@coachieveindia.com

A Leading IT & BPO firm GM Insurance Ops 12+ Mumbai mita@coachieveindia.com A Leading IT & BPO firm VP Insurance Ops 15+ Mumbai mita@coachieveindia.com

A Leading IT & BPO firm VP Domestic BPO Sales 15+ Mumbai mita@coachieveindia.com

A Leading IT & BPO firm DGM Healthcare Ops 10+ Pune mita@coachieveindia.com

A Leading IT & BPO firm GM HRO Ops 12+ Bangalore mita@coachieveindia.com

A Leading IT & BPO firm GM Process Training (F&A) 12+ Bangalore mita@coachieveindia.com

A Leading Online Player Sr. Business Analyst 5yrs to 7yrs Chennai indrani@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Online Player (SQL Data Analysis) A Leading KPO firm Engagement Manager 7yrs to 12yrs Bangalore ayesha@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo AVP (Campaign Management & Statistical Modeling) 9Yrs to 13yrs Bangalore Shivika@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading IT & BPO firm FP&A 5yrs to 7yrs Bangalore Shivika@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading IT & BPO firm Sr. Business Analyst / Lead 3yrs to 6yrs Bangalore indrani@ikyaglobal.com A Leading IT & BPO firm (BCP, Incident Management, Risk & Compliance)

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo AVP/VP - Master Black Belts 10-15years Bangalore/Chennai/Hyderbad prithiv@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking Bpo VP Projects & Programs ( IT Transformation projects) - Bschool 10-15 years Bangalore prithiv@ikyaglobal.com

A leading Investment Bank VP Recruitment ( leadership) 10-15 years Bangalore vijay@ikyaglobal.com A Leading Online Player Sr Manager HR BP 8-12 years Chennai/Hyderabad/Bangalore vijay@ikyaglobal.com

A leading Investment Bank Vp L&D 10-15 years Bangalore vijay@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Online Player L&D Specialist 1-3 years Chennai vijay@ikyaglobal.com

A Leading Captive Banking BPO AVP Recruitment - Analytics 8-12 years Bangalore vijay@ikyaglobal.com

Top jobs from Ikya

2011-04-22T19:14:00.002+05:30

1 A Leading Financial Services firm Manager Business Operations (Business Intelligence & Analytics), Only Tier I & Tier II Institutes 6-10years Mumbai sharada@ikyaglobal.com

2 A Leading Financial Services firm Sr Manager Admin (well versed with Konkani language) 6-10years Goa sharada@ikyaglobal.com

3 A Leading Financial Services firm Manager Finance Reporting (CA / MBA) 6-10years Banaglore sharada@ikyaglobal.com

4 A Leading Financial Services firm Manager Procurement - IT & Telecom 8-12 years Banaglore sharada@ikyaglobal.com

5 A Leading Financial Services firm Manager Operations Mortgage 6-10years Bangalore sharada@ikyaglobal.com

6 A leading Investment Bank Manager / AVP / VP / Corporate Legal (BFSI Domain) 2-12 years Mumbai sharada@ikyaglobal.com

7 A leading audit & Consulting firm Consultant / Sr. Cosnultant / Engagement Manager Consulting (need people from FMCG / Telecom sector doing brand management & product lauching 2-12 years Mumbai sharada@ikyaglobal.com

8 A leading audit & Consulting firm Assistant Manager Internal Audit & Risk Management (ICWA / CA ) 4-8 years Baharain sharada@ikyaglobal.com

9 A leading audit & Consulting firm Deputy Manager Internal Audit & Risk Management (ICWA / CA) 4-8 years Baharain sharada@ikyaglobal.com

10 A leading audit & Consulting firm Manager External Audit (ICWA / CA) 4-8 years Baharain sharada@ikyaglobal.com

11 A leading audit & Consulting firm Sr. Associate Internal Audit & Risk Management (ICWA / CA) 4-8 years Baharain sharada@ikyaglobal.com

12 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Manager Quality Process Improvement (BB) / AVP Quality (MBB) 4-10 years Hyderabad / Chennai sharada@ikyaglobal.com

13 A Management Consulting Firm Principal Consultant (Tier I institutes only) should have worked on BD / projects / industry studies in Education space 4-10 years Mumbai sharada@ikyaglobal.com

14 A leading Investment Bank Vice President / Director Product Control 12-15 years Pune sharada@ikyaglobal.com

15 A leading Investment Bank Associate Market Risk 0-3 years Mumbai twinkle@ikyaglobal.com

16 A leading Investment Bank Consultant - Quant 0-3 years Mumbai twinkle@ikyaglobal.com

17 A leading Investment Bank Quant Manager 0-3 years Mumbai twinkle@ikyaglobal.com

18 A leading Investment Bank AVP Credit Risk 8-12 years Mumbai twinkle@ikyaglobal.com

19 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Structured Trade Review - TL (trade review for exotic / structured products) 4+ years Hyderabad pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

20 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Structured Trade Review - Manager (trade review for exotic / structured products) 8+ years Hyderabad pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

21 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo AM Datawarehousing & Reporting (SAS Base & SQL & UNIX) 4+ years Gurgaon pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

22 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo First Year Analyst & Analyst - CA / CFA / MBA good institutes / IIT Graduates freshers 1-3 years Mumbai pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

23 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Sr. Manager Incident Management 8-10 years Gurgaon pallavi@ikyaglobal.com 24 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Manager Quality Process Improvement (GB /BB) 8-12 years Mumbai / Hyderabad pallavi@ikyaglobal.com

25 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Sr Manager Ops Risk - IB 8-10 years Hyderabad pallavi@ikyglobal.com

26 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Sr Manager Ops Risk - Home Loan & Insurance 8-10 years Mumbai pallavi@ikyglobal.com

27 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo TL / AM / Manager Fianncial Reporting (CA / ICWA / CIMA / & Igaap / US Gaap / UK Gaap / Irish Gaap) 4-12 years Pune pallavi@ikyglobal.com

28 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Global Mobility Consultant (Expat Mgmt / onsite employee mgmt) 3-5 years Pune pallavi@ikyglobal.com

29 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Investment Analyst (Portfolio Mgmt & Risk Mgmt - Asset Mgmt / Investment Bank companies) 3-5 years Pune pallavi@ikyglobal.com

30 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Risk Analyst (risk reporting for any fund management company) 3-5 years Pune pallavi@ikyglobal.com

31 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Manager Operations (AML / KYC / Account Setup / Global Client Documentation) 7-10 years Pune pallavi@ikyglobal.com

32 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo HR Business Partner (8 to 12 years) 8-12 years Pune pallavi@ikyglobal.com

33 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Manager Training (Investment Banking / Capital Market process training) 8-12 years Pune pallavi@ikyglobal.com

34 A Leading Captive Financial Services SDL Transition (9 to 12 years of experience) 9-12 years Noida pallavi@ikyglobal.com

35 A Leading Captive Financial Services SDL Presales 9-12 years Noida pallavi@ikyglobal.com 36 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo AVP-MBB 12-Sep Hyderabad,Chennai Karishma@ikyaglobal.com

37 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Manager-BB 6-8 Years Hyd,Chennai,Bangalore, Kolkata,Vizag Karishma@ikyaglobal.com

38 A Leading BPO Manager Operations – Tech Support 8+yrs Chennai divya@ikyaglobal.com

39 A Leading BPO Head Training 10-15yrs Chennai maria@ikyaglobal.com

40 A Leading BPO Manager/Sr Manager HR Generalist 8+yrs Chennai ashag@ikyaglobal.com

41 A Leading Online Player Manager -F&A,FP&A,GL Recon with IFRS+US GAAP 8 - 10+yrs Chennai arunbg@ikyaglobal.com

42 A Leading BPO GM Healthcare – Coding experience 12+yrs Chennai divya@ikyaglobal.com

43 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Sr Analyst – Fund Derivatives Trading (Analytics) – Risk Monitoring/test/VAR – Exceptional Modelling skills 2-5yrs Chennai maria@ikyaglobal.com/divya@ikyaglobal.com

44 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo Manager/AVP Quality – BB/MBB 7-12+yrs Chn/Hybd/Kolkata/B’lore ashag@ikyaglobal.com/divya@ikyaglobal.com

45 A Leading IT & BPO firm DGM F&A Transition 12+yrs Bangalore arunbg@ikyaglobal.com/maria@ikyaglobal.com

46 A Leading IT & BPO firm DGM F&A Solutioning 10+yrs Bangalore arunbg@ikyaglobal.com

47 A Leading IT & BPO firm DGM R2R CA’s 9.6+yrs PQE Bangalore ashag@ikyaglobal.com

48 A Leading IT & BPO firm DGM Taxation CA’s 9.6+yrs PQE Bangalore divya@ikyaglobal.com

49 A Leading IT & BPO firm GM F&A MBA/CA 12+yrs Chennai divya@ikyaglobal.com/arunbg@ikyaglobal.com

50 A Leading IT & BPO firm GM BD Insurance (Bid Mgmt) 13+yrs in Insurance Chennai divya@ikyaglobal.com

51 A Leading IT & BPO firm SDM/DGM/GM Quality – BB/MBB 10 – 15yrs Hyderabad divya@ikyaglobal.com/ashag@ikyaglobal.com

52 A Leading IT & BPO firm GM R2R 12+ Noida mita@coachieveindia.com

53 A Leading IT & BPO firm GM Intercompany 12+ Noida mita@coachieveindia.com

54 A Leading IT & BPO firm GM Insurance Ops 12+ Mumbai mita@coachieveindia.com

55 A Leading IT

& BPO firm VP Insurance Ops 15+ Mumbai mita@coachieveindia.com

56 A Leading IT & BPO firm VP Domestic BPO Sales 15+ Mumbai mita@coachieveindia.com

57 A Leading IT & BPO firm DGM Healthcare Ops 10+ Pune mita@coachieveindia.com

58 A Leading IT & BPO firm GM HRO Ops 12+ Bangalore mita@coachieveindia.com

59 A Leading IT & BPO firm GM Process Training (F&A) 12+ Bangalore mita@coachieveindia.com

60 A Leading Online Player Sr. Business Analyst 5yrs to 7yrs Chennai indrani@ikyaglobal.com

61 A Leading Online Player (SQL Data Analysis)

62 A Leading KPO firm Engagement Manager 7yrs to 12yrs Bangalore ayesha@ikyaglobal.com

63 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo AVP (Campaign Management & Statistical Modeling) 9Yrs to 13yrs Bangalore Shivika@ikyaglobal.com

64 A Leading IT & BPO firm FP&A 5yrs to 7yrs Bangalore Shivika@ikyaglobal.com

65 A Leading IT & BPO firm Sr. Business Analyst / Lead 3yrs to 6yrs Bangalore indrani@ikyaglobal.com

66 A Leading IT & BPO firm (BCP, Incident Management, Risk & Compliance)

67 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo AVP/VP - Master Black Belts 10-15years Bangalore/Chennai/Hyderbad prithiv@ikyaglobal.com

68 A Leading Captive Banking Bpo VP Projects & Programs ( IT Transformation projects) - Bschool 10-15 years Bangalore prithiv@ikyaglobal.com

69 A leading Investment Bank VP Recruitment ( leadership) 10-15 years Bangalore vijay@ikyaglobal.com

70 A Leading Online Player Sr Manager HR BP 8-12 years Chennai/Hyderabad/Bangalore vijay@ikyaglobal.com

71 A leading Investment Bank Vp L&D 10-15 years Bangalore vijay@ikyaglobal.com

72 A Leading Online Player L&D Specialist 1-3 years Chennai vijay@ikyaglobal.com

73 A Leading Captive Banking BPO AVP Recruitment - Analytics 8-12 years Bangalore vijay@ikyaglobal.com

IT, BPO to create 30 mn jobs by 2020: Nasscom

2010-08-25T14:06:00.001+05:30

After a tough year that saw the IT & BPO industry cutting back on hiring, software lobby Nasscom has now given a positive forecast for the next decade. Nasscom estimates that the IT & BPO sector will provide direct employment of 10 million and indirect employment of 20 million by 2020.

Nasscom president Som Mittal said, “There has been a 6-fold increase in direct employment. The number of direct employees in 2001 was around 4.3 lakh and now it has zoomed up to 23 lakh in 2010.” Mr Mittal, who was in Chennai for the Nasscom HR summit 2010, added, “The contribution of the private sector in this regard has seen a 3-fold increase. It has grown from 5% in 2001 to 15% in 2005-06.”

By 2020, the industry expects to have around 5 million women employees on its rolls. Currently, the industry has around 37% women employees and around 26% of the female employees are chief wage earners.

Mr Mittal also stressed the need for adopting best practices in the IT-BPO industry and wanted companies to follow rules like ethical hiring, insisting on relieving letters, campus hiring in eighth semester, support reference checks and mandate background checks for all employees.

“This would help the company and employer. It would ensure that the employee serves his/her notice period correctly with the previous employer,” he said. The industry is also looking at discouraging frequent job-hoppers in less than 6 months. “There are some employees who join an organisation undergo the soft skills and product training and quit. They then go and join another company and do the same. This practice should be strictly discouraged,” Mr Mittal pointed out.

In the coming decade, the industry would witness multi-cultural workforce with 15-20% foreign origin. “Employers would look for talent pool with multiple, specialised domain expertise. They would look for talent with value add capability through innovation and analytics,” he said.

IBM Daksh, Aegis, 24/7 Customer eye $500-mn deal

2010-08-24T14:41:00.000+05:30

Business process outsourcing firms IBM Daksh, 24/7 Customer and Essar Group’s Aegis are eyeing an outsourcing deal worth $500 million (around Rs 2,330 crore) in West Asia and Africa.

The deal from a leading telecom player in West Asia and Africa will cover the firms entire BPO lifecycle, including managing its call centre, billing process, auditing and training, among others

The telecom player with about a 25-million user base has presence in Kuwait, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and South Africa.

When contacted, an IBM spokesperson refused to comment on the issue. “We do not comment on market speculations,” said a spokesperson from Aegis.

The deal is expected to be finalised by the end of this month and will be one of the largest in the telecom sector in recent times. While the telecom segment has bore the brunt of the recession, analysts are of the view that they have been big IT spenders and will continue to be so.

“If you look at the Middle East and African telecom players, very few have opted for outsourcing their non-core activity. Besides, IT spends among the telecom players will continue to grow in the coming years. Moreover, if you look at the revenue growth of some of the leading global players, it was hardly impacted during the slowdown, especially in the consumer market segment,” said Alok Shende, principal analyst, Ascentius Consulting.

After banking financial services and insurance (BFSI), telecom along with Hi-Tech is the second largest vertical for Indian IT/ITeS players, accounting for 22 per cent of BPO exports in FY2010, said the Nasscom Strategic review 2010.

Last year, despite the industry being laggard in its growth, the total contract value from the telecom (including media) sector touched $7 billion in the second half of 2009 — an increase of 23 per cent from $5.7 billion in the first half of 2009.

India-centric cos corner 5% of BPO cream revenues

2009-04-21T09:56:00.001+05:30

INDIA-centric business process outsourcing (BPO) players have given a competition to their western counterparts by cornering 5% share in the total revenue generated by the top-150 service providers in 2008, according to a study by Gartner.
Gartner expects the growth momentum to continue and the share of Indian vendors to nearly double by 2010. In 2002, there were few Indiacentric vendors in the top-150 worldwide providers but by the end of 2008, the top-20 Indiacentric BPO providers accounted for $4 billion in revenue, representing 5% of the $80-billion revenue of the top-150 BPO vendors.
“Indian BPO providers are swiftly evolving to balance exposure to vertical industries, currency and legislation issues,” said Mr Arup Roy, senior research analyst at Gartner. Their strategies include investing in onshore and nearshore delivery, and pioneering in analytics or KPO.
Indian BPO providers have met with success servicing English-speaking requirements from North America and the UK. North America has been the most successful sales location for Indian BPO providers, where the top-20 India-centric BPO providers generate about $2.2 billion in revenue. Western Europe showed strong growth, mostly in the UK, and accounted for $1.4 billion in revenue for the top-20 Indian BPO providers in 2008. The verticals where Indian BPO providers had more success are telecom, manufacturing, insurance and banking.
Indian BPO company Genpact is ranked number one among the top five India-Centric BPO providers with worldwide BPO revenue of $833 million for 2008 followed by Aditya Birla Minacs with $392 million.
Although there are still no Indian vendors in the top-20 global BPO players, half of the top-20 India-based BPO providers now operate local US and European sales and delivery centres.

Logica to recruit 3,000

2009-04-13T09:47:00.000+05:30

Chennai: IT and business services company Logica plans to recruit about 3,000 people in the Philippines, Czech Republic, Morocco and India by 2009, the company said. Chennai will corner 2,000 of the jobs, said Logica India CEO Abhay Gupte.
Logica provides consulting, outsourcing solutions and services and blended delivery services across many industry verticals. In India, it provides support services like infrastructure management, BPO services and financial accounting outsourcing.
It employs 5,700 people and plans to ramp it up to 8,000 by the end of this year. The Chennai centre has about 900 employees. Gupte said.

Sallie Mae to shift 2K jobs back to US

2009-04-08T09:41:00.000+05:30

THE Virginia-based Sallie Mae, America’s biggest student loan provider, will shift 2,000 positions from its offshore facilities in India to US cities. By seeking to consolidate its resources in the US as part of a reverse offshoring measure, the firm is likely to incur almost $35 million on higher labour costs every year. Sallie Mae manages $180 billion in education loans and serves 10 million student and parent customers through its subsidiaries every year.
The company’s centres in Pune, Bangalore and Philippines offer loan origination, servicing and collection services. “For 37 years, we have been dedicated to help America’s students enhance their lives through an investment in higher education,” Albert L. Lord, chief executive of Sallie Mae said in a statement. “The current economic environment has caused our communities to struggle with job losses. They need jobs, and we will put 2,000 of them into US facilities as soon as we possibly can.” Sallie Mae expects to hire these employees over the next 18 months.
SALLIE MAE WITHDRAWS
THE TRIGGER
Obama said he can save $4 billion by making loans directly to students, ending subsidies to middlemen like Sallie Mae and leaving them to survive on higher-cost private loans
RESPONSE
Offers Democrats what they want:
Jobs in their districts
ALBERT LORD, Chief Executive, Sallie Mae
The Announcement
Sallie Mae to fire its contract workers in India and Philippines and ship 2,000 jobs back to several US sites
The Effect
The move will cost Sallie Mae $35 million a year, compared with hiring contractors in Asia US cos trying new model
ACCORDING to the US department of labor, unemployment rate during Dec 2008 rose from 6.8-7.2% with two million workers losing their jobs between Sept and December. Apart from Sallie Mae, many outsourcing services providers are attempting to offer a compelling alternative to customers seeking to offshore jobs to cheaper locations including India, where a software project can be delivered at almost half the US costs.
For instance, smaller US firms such as Rural America Onshore Sourcing and Xpanxion are attempting to build a sustainable rural outsourcing model in the US at a time when offshore locations like India are facing a backlash and unemployment rates have touched an all-time high.
Xpanxion, an Atlantaheadquartered software firm, which shifted its software testing work from Pune to Nebraska a few years ago is among a handful of such firms seeking to create a more comfortable and cost-effective alternative to offshore outsourcing. Customers such as NCR, Coca-Cola and Goldleaf Financial Solutions are outsourcing software projects to Xpanxion. At a time when political lobbyists such as Senator Chuck Grassley are leading a campaign against offshore outsourcing by American firms, some customers might prefer to outsource smaller projects to local providers and avoid being seen as supporting the outsourcing of US jobs.
However, Indian offshore companies say such initiatives are yet to become mainstream, and that many medium-sized to large customers continue to send more projects to India. “Sallie Mae’s move seems more like a nationalist initiative, and not something to be worried about as many customers still want to bring down their operational costs by outsourcing to India,” a senior executive at a top Indian tech firm told ET on conditions of anonymity.

Expansion mode: RBS may set up backoffice in Chennai

2009-03-31T09:35:00.000+05:30

ROYAL Bank of Scotland (RBS) plans to expand its financial backoffice operations in India with a new facility in Chennai with potential to develop into a 4,000-seater hub over time.
The banking major, which operates as ABN Amro in India at present, has leased nearly 4.6 lakh sq feet of office space, considered by realty players as a large deal particularly in hard times such as these, in Chennai’s Ambattur suburb.
Sources said the new leased facility would be a fresh backoffice offshoring centre of RBS globally and not necessarily a consolidation of ABN Amro’s existing operations under one roof in the city. RBS, which acquired ABN Amro, is talking about possible cost savings of over £2.5-billion in the next few years.
“India could be a net beneficiary in the context of technology development and backoffice offshoring by RBS even though it is too premature to detail the same,” said a source. When contacted, an RBS spokesperson said: “...As a result of acquisition, we now employ 8,000 people in India, serving our operations globally, and we employ more than 70,000 people outside the UK. In the last year, we have been progressing with work to integrate the two businesses and develop all our centres in the UK, India and across the globe.”
At Rs 26 per sq feet per month, the deal is literally in the sub-$1 rental regime, that is witnessing a traction from companies looking at tightening rental costs. At about 100 sq feet of space per person, the capacity of the facility would be over 4,000, a source said. Realty sources said RBS will occupy the Ambattur facility in a phased manner.
RBS has already consolidated its technology development arm with ABN Amro’s back-office operations with an overall employee count of roughly 7000. Overall, RBS staff strength in India, along with ABN Amro, is pegged at around 10,000.
The banking giant, through ABN Amro India, signed up the lease agreement with Harish Fabiani-led India Land at its 1.7 million sqft IT park. India Land has attracted investments from Americorp Capital. India Land has ongoing IT SEZ projects in Chennai, Coimbatore and Pune.
ABN Amro has a significant captive BPO presence in Chennai. At present, ABN Amro backoffice operates out of two facilities in Chennai’s business districts of Mount Road and Guindy. Realty sources said the new lease is for expansion of its overall captive BPO capacity.
Ambattur, traditionally an industrial belt, is emerging as a destination for IT/ITES activities. Located 19 km from Chennai airport, it enjoys good connectivity.

IT/ITeS TOP 10 PREDICTIONS FOR 2009

2009-03-26T09:50:00.000+05:30

IDC India predicts that the domestic IT/ITeS market will grow by 13.4 per cent in 2009

According to IDC India, the domestic India IT/ITeS market will grow at 13.4 per cent in 2009, the slowest since 2003. The much awaited annual IT/ITeS market forecast suggests that important structural changes, taking place on the back of a global economic meltdown, will propel a new ‘market order’ in the domestic Indian IT/ITeS industry.
This new ‘market order’, termed as Growth Phase 2.0, will be quite different from the earlier phase, Growth Phase 1.0 (2003-08), during which the domestic market witnessed unprecedented growth, nearly tripling the market size from Rs 34,000 crore in 2003 to Rs.1,01,031 crore in 2008, a CAGR of over 24 per cent.
IDC’s report titled ‘India Domestic IT/ITeS Market Top 10 Predictions for 2009’ states that Growth Phase 2.0 will leverage the IT infrastructure built and consolidated during Growth Phase 1.0.
Growth Phase 2.0, expected to evolve 2009 onwards, will be built on the back of new and innovative services sought by consumers and enterprises alike. The technology behind these services—infrastructure, applications and connectivity—will need to orchestrate and re-orient completely in order to support their mass adoption.
IDC expects the India domestic IT/ITeS market growth rate to come down from an average of 24.3 per cent recorded during 2003-08 (Growth Phase 1.0) to 16.4 per cent in the coming five years till 2013. This relatively slower growth will see enhanced competition leading to a rapidly changing strategy and continuous market re-alignment on the part of ICT market participants.
2009 domestic IT/ITeS market to grow at 13.4 per cent (against
17.3per cent in 2008)
The combined India domestic IT / ITeS market grew by 17.3 per cent in 2008 to touch revenue of Rs.1,01,031crore (over Rs 86,101 crore recorded in 2007). The domestic IT market (excluding domestic ITeS) grew at 15.4 per cent in 2008 over 2007 to report revenue of Rs. 94,185 crore. The domestic ITeS market grew 53.2 per cent in 2008 to report revenues of Rs. 6,846 crore (from Rs. 4,468 crore in 2007).
IDC expects the combined India domestic IT/ITeS market to grow at a slower 13.4 per cent in 2009 to achieve revenue of Rs. 1,14,574 crore. The domestic IT market is expected to grow at 11.4 per cent in 2009 to post Rs. 1,04,937 crore, while the domestic ITeS market will post revenues of Rs. 9,637 crore, a growth of 40.8 per cent.
* Others include printer consumables, individual IT training, accessories and other revenue streams.
The major product categories expected to grow at a rate higher than the industry average include Collaborative Applications (23 per cent), Storage Software (19 per cent), System and Network Management Software (19 per cent).Within the ambit of IT services, segments reporting higher than average growth include Desktop Management (22 per cent), Information Systems Outsourcing (32 per cent), Network Management (23 per cent) and Application Management (20 per cent).Among IT solution categories the faster growing ones would be Virtualization (28 per cent), Unified Communications (25 per cent) and Business Continuity Services (20 per cent).
All these categories point towards the need for better management of IT infrastructure for their most optimal deployment and use in achieving enterprise business goals.
The India Domestic IT/ITeS Market Top 10 Predictions for 2009 are:
SLOWDOWN TO ACCELERATE IT/ITES MARKET TRANSFORMATION FROM GROWTH PHASE 1.0 TO GROWTH PHASE 2.0 The market transformation of the India domestic IT/ITeS market has already started, with market players preparing for a new landscape. As this new landscape is about a relatively lower growth rate regime, they need to innovate, leverage the existing infrastructure and align continuously to market opportunities.
Growth Phase 2.0 will be an era of following dynamic strategy as any existing strategy will not remain effective for long and would need to be re-constructed. The economic slowdown will only accelerate this transformation, which would manifest itself in terms of cost savings, productivity enhancement and customer retention in the short run, giving way to new engagement and delivery models in the long run.
INDIA TO BE THE FASTEST GROWING MARKET IN APAC The top five growth markets in the APAC region are India, China, Vietnam, Thailand and Philippines. India will continue to lead the pack with 11.4 per cent growth in domestic IT spending projected for 2009.
IT OPTIMIZATION TECHNOLOGIES ADOPTION AND USAGE TO GROW IDC believes that the emerging IT optimization technologies will move from ‘being at the tipping point’ to ‘being mainstream’ in 2009. On account of the slowdown the technologies that deliver significant cost savings such as virtualization, unified communications, open source etc. will see heightened interest and adoption by enterprises in 2009.
Technologies that can deliver near-term cost savings will remain in focus while the larger capital-intensive green investments with longer payback cycles will move down the priority list.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR IT SPENDING GROWTH WILL BE FASTEST As the economic meltdown forces enterprises to slash their IT budgets across industry verticals, the telecommunications sector, would continue to grow at higher than average growth rate and will be the least impacted by slowdown.
THE OUTSOURCING SERVICES MARKET WILL MOVE TOWARDS CONSOLIDATION IN FAVOUR OF LARGER PLAYERS IN 2009 IDC believes that the economic slowdown will further increase and accelerate the adoption of outsourcing services by the Indian enterprises.
However, the two ends of the outsourcing services market i.e. lowend services like support services and high-end services like Business Transformations services will undergo consolidation. Low-end volume services, because of increased competition, will find margins coming down and larger players will acquire their counterparts, while at the same time accelerating their movement towards Business Transformation Services in 2009.
EXPERIMENTATION WITH ‘CLOUD
COMPUTING’ MODEL WILL INCREASE BUT WILL NOT BECOME MAINSTREAM IN 2009
IDC India predicts that in 2009, IT ‘Cloud Computing’ service offerings—including software as a service (SaaS), hosted delivery model—will get tested and adopted on a larger scale and will perform even better than in 2008. The cloud model’s advantages of lower capital outlay and operating costs, coupled with the reassurance of more major players coming on board and building capabilities (including enabling and educating the channel), will encourage more customers at the margin to invest in cloud offerings.
Enterprises, which have been shying away on account of issues of security, connectivity etc., will be forced to re-evaluate the model. Organizations across verticals will evaluate different models with services delivered through the cloud, hosted and managed by suppliers (IT vendors), TSPs (Telecom Service Providers), System Integrators or pure-play hosting players.
THE STAGE WOULD BE SET IN 2009 FOR NEW CHANNEL FORMS TO EVOLVE
The channel space had undergone shift during Growth Phase 1.0 (2003-08) with linear distribution models giving way to multiple types of channels. These multiple channels (like system integrators and ISVs) added more value to the technology adopted by the end user. Keeping the key attribute of ‘value addition’ intact newer forms of channels would emerge during Growth Phase 2.0, with the market transforming yet again. The key differentiator for the new channel forms will be their ‘services’ play as compared to the ‘product’ play of the past. This services play will occur around the emergence of ‘Cloud Computing’ technologies and the need for reliable hosting and delivery channels.
CONSUMER 2.0 ELUSIVE! DELAY IN ORCHESTRATION OF CONTENT, CONVERGENCE AND CONNECTIVITY
‘Consumer 2.0’ is not about Connectivity, Content and Convergence in isolation, but their orchestration in an integrated fashion. Not only would the consumer spending on IT moderate (growth rate of 13.7 per cent in 2009 compared to 23.6 per cent in 2008), but the emergence of Consumer 2.0 will also be affected by further delays in the 3G rollout and dismal performance on the broadband adoption front (subscribers expected to touch nine million in 2009).
ENTERPRISES TO LOOK AT AN INTEGRATED SECURITY APPROACH, REVAMP BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANS
As enterprises look at optimization technologies like virtualization, cloud computing, hosted delivery model, a key challenge will be information security. Keeping the entire data secure on the cloud while at the same time making it accessible remotely and addressing other vulnerabilities will force organizations to look at integrated security solutions. The heightened security risk perception in view of the threat of terrorist attacks will force enterprises to look at Business Continuity services seriously. As a consequence, the Security Solutions space is expected to evolve and grow by 20 per cent in 2009.
GLOBAL IT GROWTH WILL BE HALVED
Global growth will be cut in half and take three years to come back. Taking into account a dramatic slowdown of global GDP, IDC predicts that global IT spending will decrease to 2.6 per cent in 2009 – half of 2008’s five per cent and far below 2007’s seven per cent growth rate.
Note:
IDC’s India Domestic IT/ITeS Market Top 10 Predictions for 2009 report covers only the domestic Indian information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services (ITeS) markets. IT/ITeS exports from India are not covered as part of this study.
(Source: IDC India)

Lenovo to start analytics work from B’lore hub

2009-03-21T09:34:00.001+05:30

AROUND two years ago, Lenovo made headlines when it made Bangalore the marketing hub for its global businesses. After Lenovo took over IBM’s PC business, it found that all the marketing functions were fragmented across various regions and one of the drivers was to centralise these functions. Now the company is expanding the range of functions to include analytical work on how to maximise revenue from customers.
“The average price of a product keeps dropping every month. The challenge is how to increase the order size. So we do some predictive analysis out of our Bangalore centre about what customers who buy a certain product would also like buy. For example, what are the other accessories a laptop customer would like to buy,” said Ranjeet Kulkarni, GM and Analytics head, Lenovo.
WNS Global Services, which has done extensive work with Lenovo on marketing effectiveness optimisation, said there has been 7-10% increase in associated revenue because of these efforts, and many global firms are now centralising analytics work in India. “Earlier, analytics was a fairly distributed function across multiple product lines and geographies. Now the firms have understood the benefits of a having a single pool of people in a location like Bangalore,” said Sanjit Bhaumik, vice-president, WNS.
A leading global consumer products, which started off by outsourcing some analytical works from two of the countries it operates in, has now expanded the engagement to 44 countries. A top auto manufacturer in America, which started off by outsourcing the analytical work to measure the effectiveness of specific sales campaigns, is now setting up an integrated centre for analytics that will help it optimise employee costs, track fraudulent transactions, in addition to analytical functions in sales and marketing.

Diacritech buys US-based KPO firm

2009-03-19T13:58:00.001+05:30

CHENNAI: Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) company DiacriTech, which has a headcount of 700 and facilities in Chennai, Madurai and Kottayam,
recently acquired US-based e-publishing outsourcing firm LaurelTech Integrated Publishing Solutions for an undisclosed sum. “The acquisition will help position the company to work in a hybrid onshore/offshore model, capable of delivering design, editorial and project management capabilities in the US,” DiacriTech vice-president Gopinath ARM told ET. Although he refused to comment on the size of the deal, Mr Gopinath conceded the slowdown did help in getting a more favourable takeover price, but added that it had not affected the momentum of the educational KPO segment substantially. Industry sources estimate DiacriTech's annual business to be in the Rs 20 crore-Rs 30 crore range. LaurelTech is also said to be of a similar size. The educational KPO segment has had a presence in the country for the last two to three decades. India is a hotbed of educational outsourcing, followed by Philippines, China and some African countries. Globally, the segment is estimated at about $4 billion. Of this, roughly $1.2 billion worth of projects are outsourced to India and the segment has been showing a y-o-y growth rate of 30%. Apart from education, e-learning, e-book services and STM (science, technology and medicine) are some of the other segments under the KPO industry, which is estimated to be a $20-billion industry in the country. While the US, UK and Australia are the biggest market for Indian KPO firms, Germany and France are also emerging as big markets. “Command over the English language and our strength in science and mathematics had proved favourable for the industry in India,” Mr Gopinath said. The company is open to more acquisitions and is scouting for targets in the US and Europe.

ACS announces plans to acquire e-Services Group International

2009-03-19T13:55:00.000+05:30

Affiliated Computer Services Inc (ACS) (NYSE: ACS), a provider of business process outsourcing and information technology solutions, announced on Monday (16 March) that it is in discussions to purchase e-Services Group International, a business process outsourcing (BPO) and customer care company based in the Caribbean, to expand its global delivery platform.

ACS said that the addition of e-Services, which has approximately 4,000 employees, would provide the company and its clients with a highly-trained, English-speaking workforce capable of handling complex business functions from a location and time zone convenient to North American businesses.
Upon the completion of the acquisition of e-Services by ACS, no workforce restructuring is expected.
The company said that e-Services would continue to be managed by its management team and operations would continue to be performed by e-Services' employees at their current facilities.
In addition, the clients and employees of e-Services would be backed by a FORTUNE 500 company offering a diversified suite of BPO solutions with demonstrated global delivery capabilities serving clients in more than 100 countries.
Financial details were not available.

Source: http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2225616/

IBM to continue outsourcing

2009-03-19T10:07:00.000+05:30

US IT Majors Feel Obama’s Anti-Outsourcing Policy May Affect World Trade

HIS anti-outsourcing views may have helped Barack Obama strike a chord with middle class Americans during his presidential campaign. But he is having a tough time selling his policies among some of the largest US corporations.
The IT companies such as IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems that run large outsourcing operations in India feel that the policies of the Obama administration aimed at generating more American jobs will not affect their operations here. Top executives of these firms, currently touring India, say the anti-outsourcing policy could be detrimental to world trade. Software maker Microsoft has already aired its opposition to Obama administration’s curb on H-1B visas that provide jobs to non-US professionals in the US.
Indian subsidiaries of IBM, Sun, Microsoft, Oracle and HP combined employ over 150,000 people. IBM, which has more than 70,000 employees in India, sees no merit in US government’s protectionist policies. “We manufacture products and deliver services from virtually every country in the world. We are present in more than 170 countries. IBM goes wherever the talent and the market is,” said Edward Orange, IBM’s director – Lotus Business Unit, software group, Asia-Pacific.
Obama’s decision in February to offer a tax shield of $5,000 per employee per year to companies that keep jobs in the US had invited criticism from several quarters, especially from the $60 billion Indian IT-ITeS industry that depends on the US market for 65% of its revenues.
The local sourcing push by the US administration is unlikely to be effective in a globalised world, said Marius Haas, senior vice-president, HP ProCurve.
“We have labs spread across Bangalore, Costa Rica and Europe. It’s a competitive economy and you go where the talent is. The local sourcing policy on hardware is unlikely to work as 80% of the world now sources manufacturing from countries like Taiwan and China,” he said. HP ProCurve competes with Cisco in networking products such as switches and routers. It has R&D labs in India.
Analysts also do not see such policies making a big impact. “Companies won’t give up offshoring strategy because of this,’’ said Suvojoy Sengupta, partner of a consultancy firm Booz & Co.
Sun Microsystems, a large IT firm, says the US administration’s move could affect the competitiveness of the industry. “The policy may shrink global trade in the long run. Not every job can be outsourced. But a job has to be done at the right place and at the right time. Outsourcing is like a bag of trail mix of nuts and dry fruits, which are sourced from all over the world.

Infy BPO eyes more revenues from back-office products

2009-03-04T09:41:00.000+05:30

INDIA’S second biggest software exporter Infosys Technologies aims to increase its revenues from platform-based back-office solutions from around 2-3% currently to almost 10% of its total revenues over next three years, as the company seeks to grow its revenues without hiring more professionals. With around 17,000 professionals in Infosys’ BPO division, the company wants to pursue a non-linear model of growth by serving different customers using the same platform.
“Platform-based BPO services has widened its scope with increasing number of clients interested in this service,” said Anantha Radhakrishnan, VP and head strategic platforms, key solutions and alliances, Infosys BPO.
Infosys BPO has four such platforms — hire to retire, source to pay, order to cash and newspaper in a box. Mr Radhakrishnan added that customers are increasingly seeking to outsource their entire back-office needs, and a platformbased approach can help address the potential in a better fashion. Under platform-based model, payments are made based on the outcome of service, and costs are shared by vendors and customers. For now, Infosys BPO will be focusing on the verticals of financial services industry, manufacturing, energy and utilities, consumer packaged goods, food distribution companies for this service. “Early wins have been in the human resource outsourcing segment,” said Mr Radhakrishnan.

Wal-Mart Bangalored

2009-02-11T09:50:00.000+05:30

Retailer Looking To Outsource Back-Office Work To Vendors

WAL-MART, world’s biggest retailer, which until now has been dependent on its inhouse information technology division, is evaluating a contract worth around $300-$500 million to outsource non-core processes of procurement, merchandising, finance, accounting and payroll.
IBM, alongwith TCS, WNS and Wipro are exploring the opportunity, sources familiar with Wal-Mart’s outsourcing decision told ET on conditions of anonymity. “Despite becoming such a case study for global retail, Wal-Mart had not yet looked at BPO or IT outsourcing,” he said. “However, the current economic challenges are making the retailer seek more cost saving options including outsourcing of non-core processes.” This year will see many new outsourcers such as Wal-Mart and Sony offshore work to India, as traditional customers such as Citibank and GE take more time for awarding new contracts.
“We expect Wal-Mart to structure these BPO contracts within 2-3 months. Top officials at the retailer are currently in discussions,” said an outsourcing expert familiar with the development. He also requested anonymity. He added that the retailer wants to support its local and global supply chain by outsourcing to India. While Wal-Mart officials could not respond to an e-mail query sent by ET on Monday, a factsheet available on the company’s website provided details about Wal-Mart’s future IT outsourcing from India.
“Wal-Mart will expand staffing of certain elements of IT application maintenance and development with some of India’s leading information technology firms,” the company said in a statement. “India is one of several countries that the company is targeting as part of its remote sourcing model for IT activities.“
US companies including Wal-Mart, GE and many financial institutions have slashed over 5,00,000 jobs last month alone. By cutting down these local jobs, these companies are expected to outsource their back-office work to vendors in locations such as India, where these could be executed at almost half of the US costs. Retailers such as Tesco have been leveraging outsourcing and offshoring for lowering their operational costs, and focus better on their core processes.
UK’s biggest retailer Tesco for instance, saves over $60 million every year by sending IT projects to India.
According to Forrester Research, the US will have a 34% share of the global market for IT services and outsourcing in 2009 and 2010, just ahead of Western and Central Europe at 27% and Asia Pacific at 23% for 2009.

MphasiS axes 200 jobs at Bangalore centre

2009-01-31T09:46:00.000+05:30

MPHASIS, the Hewlett Packard (HP)-controlled IT and BPO services firm, has once again issued pink slips to nearly 200 employees at its Bangalore centre.
According to sources, the job-cuts were announced two weeks ago. The lay-off exercise cuts across various levels including mid-level managers. It is estimated that a majority of the employees affected were on the bench while some received the pink slips ostensibly on performance-related grounds.
When contacted, a spokesperson for MphasiS said: “MphasiS has not announced any staff-cuts. MphasiS continues to grow and has posted stellar financial results in 2008-09.” For the seven months ended October 31, 2008, MphasiS had a total headcount of 28,795. Around nine months back, the company had cut around 200 jobs at its Chennai development centre.
According to sources, job-cuts have been an ongoing exercise at the company. It is because MphasiS may be over-staffed, particularly in the cadres of project lead, delivery head and project managers, they reckon.
MphasiS’ operations also include the erstwhile EDS India. Since its takeover by HP, there has been much speculation over the duplication of roles at both the IT services units. Unconfirmed reports have actually said that MphasiS could be looking at reducing its headcount by around 6,000.
Sources said, over a period of time, MphasiS has become more or less the delivery centre for its erstwhile owner EDS and now, HP. It has also been losing some of the smaller clients, which account for a million dollar in revenue or less. Some of its bluechip clients are JP Morgan Chase, Fedex, Merrill Lynch, AIG and Citi.
MphasiS reported a revenue of Rs 1,906.5 crore for the seven-month period ended October 31, 2008, with a net profit of Rs 295.4 crore. Recently, MphasiS also announced that its CEO Jeya Kumar had quit the organisation to join Patni Computers. He has been replaced by Ganesh Ayyar, a long-time veteran with HP. MphasiS was one of the first Indian IT services companies to be acquired by an MNC IT company — EDS.

Over 80k jobs axed on Monday

2009-01-28T09:56:00.001+05:30

A STAGGERING 80,000-plus job cuts were announced in a single day across the world on Monday, reflecting how deep the economic meltdown has run. Construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar, pharma major Pfizer, telecom firm Sprint Nextel and home improvement retailer Home Depot together accounted for 61,000 lay-off announcements.
The global job losses represent yet another evidence that the financial crisis that erupted on Wall Street has now infected the whole of the corporate world, engulfing industries ranging from health care to heavy equipment makers.
Dutch banking and insurance group ING said it would slash 7,000 jobs, while another Dutch company Philips announced 6,000 job losses. The electronics major has 2,500 workers in the UK. Britain’s largest steelmaker Corus had said it would cut 3,500 jobs from its global workforce, with more than 2,500 of them in the UK.
On the other hand, some companies are taking extreme measures to avoid job cuts. Virgin Atlantic introduced a pay freeze at all levels on Monday and many companies have already introduced short working weeks and cuts in hours.

MNCs hire staff to boost offshoring

2009-01-28T09:48:00.001+05:30

Captive Organisations Of US, UK Firms Plan To Hike Offshore Teams To Cut Operational Costs

Top MNC tech firms such as IBM, Accenture and Cap Gemini are stepping up hiring in India, at a time when their Indian rivals plan to slow hiring new staff in order to cope with a lower demand of software services in the top markets of US and Europe.
While European IT major Atos Origin plans to double its workforce in India from the existing level of 3,300 to 6,000 by 2010, Accenture has already announced that it would be increasing its India headcount from around 37,000 professionals currently to almost 50,000 within one year.
Captive organisations of large enterprises in the US and UK are seeking to increase their offshore teams in order to lower their operational costs. Tesco, the world’s second biggest retailer, plans to add few hundred more professionals to its existing team of around 3,000 employees at the Bangalore centre. “We want this centre to become the engineering hub for us, and there is a lot of scope for
scale expansion,” Mike McNamara, operations and information technology director at Tesco, told ET in an interview earlier this month. The retailer saves around $60 million every year by outsourcing to India.
Captives such as Tesco are hiring professionals with specialised skills, opening newer avenues for experienced professionals working at the Indian software companies.
Indian tech biggies, on the other hand, continue to see attrition rates of anywhere between 11-13%, and even more, as their MNC rivals alongwith captive organisations of large customers such as Tesco continue to attract professionals with niche skills and domain knowledge.
“Our attrition rate is still around 11%, which is not significantly down,” said Pratik Kumar, executive vice-president (HR), Wipro. “We find that smaller captives operating in niche areas, apart from MNCs, are still hiring,” he added. “Today, openings in the IT industry have more to do with specific skills and for professionals who are in the five-seven years experience,” said GC Jayaprakash, principal consultant at Stanton Chase International.

Caterpillar to cut 20k jobs

2009-01-27T10:34:00.001+05:30

CATERPILLAR said on Monday that quarterly earnings fell more than 32% and warned of a tough year ahead as the downturn that began in the US gre into a full-blown global recession that hit sales of its earth-moving equipment. The company also warned that profit in 2009 would be under severe pressure and that it would cut about 17,000 workers and buy out 2,500 others, to reduce costs in the face of what it predicted would be the weakest year for business since the end of World War II. The news sent the company’s shares skidding more than 10% in pre-market trading. The company reported a fourthquarter profit of $661 million, or $1.08 a share, compared with $975 million, or $1.50 a share, last year.
Results last week from rival CNH Global and a profit forecast cut from Komatsu starkly confirmed that global demand for construction and mining equipment took a sharp turn down in the fourth quarter.

IBM, Infy in final push for Fidelity IT captive

2009-01-23T09:34:00.000+05:30

INFOSYS Technologies and IBM are locked in a battle to acquire the Indian IT captive unit of the world’s largest mutual fund firm, Fidelity Investments. The deal may involve $150-180-million upfront cash payment in return for an assured multi-year outsouring contract, at least two people involved with the matter said. A senior official at one of the firms bidding for Fidelity’s back-office business, requesting anonymity, said, “IBM has offered to pay around $150 million for the unit, while Infosys has indicated that it could pay up to $180 million.”
Though Wipro is still left in the fray, the tussle is between IBM and Infosys as of now, a person involved in the negotiations said.
Fidelity outsources around $50 million worth of projects to Infosys every year. For IBM, Fidelity is an over-$200-million customer. Officials at Infosys and IBM did not offer any comments in response to an email query sent by ET on Thursday. A Fidelity spokesperson said: “We can confirm that as part of our global business transformation strategy, we are exploring options to optimise our Technology Delivery Model. We are evaluating sourcing options with leading global technology service providers to maximise the value we can offer our stakeholders, including employees. It is too premature in the process to talk about specific details and anything else is purely speculation at this stage.”
Banking sources said other bidders such as Capgemini, Accenture and HP-EDS have dropped out of the fray. Tier-II Indian firms such as iGate explored the possibility of bidding but did not make much advance with Fidelity laying down stiff conditions for the race. Fidelity’s IT captive is part of India-based Fidelity Management & Research (FMR), with centres in Bangalore and Chennai employing approximately 2,000 people. Accenture is believed to have quit the fray after indicating it may not absorb the entire employee count, but this could not be verified independently. An outsourcing expert, who did not wish to be quoted, told ET that IBM could score over Infosys because of its over two-decade-old relationship with Fidelity. Captives sold in recent times
“AROUND 15-20 years ago, Fidelity and IBM had come together to form Fidelity Employee Services Company, or FESCO — so IBM has much deeper relationship with Fidelity,” he said. While Infosys brings pure offshore expertise, IBM derives three times what the Indian giant gets from serving Fidelity globally.
In the last six months, US financial behemoth Citigroup and UK insurance giant Aviva sold their captive back-office operations. WNS Holding paid Aviva $228 million upfront cash and received $1 billion outsourcing contract spread over eight years, while Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) acquired Citigroup’s BPO arm for $505 million in return for business worth $2.5 billion in the next nine years.
Citigroup also exited its IT captive unit last month when Wipro acquired Citi Technology Services for around $127 million. This came with Citigroup’s commitment to outsource all future infrastructure management contracts to Wipro, potentially worth almost $1 billion over six years. Customers such as Fidelity and Citi plan to focus on their core banking businesses by selling off their captive IT and back office units to vendors such as IBM, Infosys and Wipro. Since these transactions come with assured annual revenue commitment for suppliers, customers are able to bargain for lower billing rates, depending upon the kind of projects.

Aegis plans to acquire Satyam BPO arm

2009-01-16T10:42:00.000+05:30

ESSAR Group’s outsourcing arm, Aegis BPO, is set to approach Satyam Computer Services to buy its BPO operations. The company will submit an expression of interest (EoI) to Satyam within the next couple of days.
“Satyam BPO’s international clients and its presence in telecom, banking and financial services make it an attractive target,” said a person in the know of the development. A top Aegis executive, who declined to be identified, confirmed that the firm is interested in acquiring Satyam BPO. When contacted, the company said in a statement, “As a group, we constantly keep looking at growth opportunities. We would not like to comment on any specific transaction.”
Satyam BPO (formerly Nipuna Services), a wholly-owned arm of Satyam, has about 3,500-4,000 employees.
It reported revenues of Rs 55.6 crore for the quarter ended September 2008, down 8.65% over the same quarter of the previous year. Satyam BPO works with clients such as telecom firms BellSouth and Verizon, construction equipment firm Caterpillar and healthcare firm GlaxoSmithKline. It operates from delivery centres in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai, apart from onsite delivery teams. Aegis BPO, which has revenues of about $450 million, has been on an acquisition spree, buying 11 companies in the last four years. In August 2008, it bought Nasdaq-listed offshoring firm PeopleSupport for Rs 1,057 crore.
The BPO firm has 30,000 employees in 31 locations worldwide. Aegis BPO claims to be the largest domestic BPO provider with a significant presence in telecom, banking and financial services.

Coming in ‘09: $4-bn offshoring deals

2009-01-12T09:47:00.000+05:30

But Lower Rates Could Dent Earnings By Around $300 Million

TOP outsourcing customers like BT, Citi, GE and Bank of America will award new contracts worth $4 billion to Indian tech biggies TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL this year, as these companies seek to cope with tighter IT budgets by sending work to offshore locations such as India.

Among some of the top deals coming to India this year, the $250-million outsourcing contract considered by Australian phone firm Telstra, will be finalised this month end. This will be followed by several $50-$100 million-plus contracts from Citi, BT, GE and other customers. Outsourcing expert Sabyasachi S Sathyaparasad of Mindplex Consulting said new contracts worth almost $4 billion will include long-term application maintenance contracts. However, even as these customers seek to award new projects by renewing existing contracts, Indian vendors could lose over $300 million because of lower billing rates, he added. Vendor rationalisation, savings focus

“MANYlarge customers have reduced their IT budgets by upto 10%, and they plan to seek output-based deliverables from service providers in these difficult times,” he said.

Telstra plans to reduce the number of vendors, have one supplier for each domain across product lines and thus bring down the cost of managing IT systems. “The company wants to move more than half of this contract to an offshore location such as India, and that’s why pure Indian offshore vendors including Infosys, Satyam and EDS-Mphasis are being seriously considered,” said a senior executive at one of the top tech firms bidding for the Telstra contract. He requested anonymity.

Reducing the number of IT vendors from four to two is part of Telstra’s overall transformation strategy. On the procurement side, Telstra has already reduced the number of suppliers by almost 20%, translating into saving of $226 million this year. At a time when companies are seeking ways to cut costs, renegotiation and renewal of contracts by Best Buy, Visa and Nissan, is aimed at achieving significant savings.

Last year, when BT renegotiated its contract with Xansa, the company aimed to save around $123 million over the next six years. However, BT’s restructured deal also witnessed more work for Xansa, estimated to be almost 80% of BT’s overall back-office projects.

Customers including Citibank are also seeking to send more IT projects to offshore locations such as India. “As we face these (economic) challenges, there will be greater demand for moving more work to offshore locations,” Jagdish Rao, global technology head for Citi said during his visit to India last month.

Rao was in the country to announce a six-year and over $500 million, master services agreement with Wipro for infrastructure services and application development. As part of the deal, Wipro acquired Citi Technology Services for around $127 million, which came with Citigroup’s commitment to outsource all future infrastructure management contracts to the company. For phone firms such as Telstra, offshore outsourcing is about consolidation their IT needs and leverage India-based vendors for bringing down the costs. Telstra plans to bring down the number of IT systems from around 1,350 to almost 300 by 2010.

Meanwhile, companies such as Tesco, the world’s third biggest retailer, are already seeing their offshore outsourcing initiatives fetching rich dividends. Mike McNamara, director operations and information technology at Tesco told ET last week that his company would continue to outsource more work to India at its captive centre and to top Indian software vendors such as TCS and Infosys. Tesco saves around $60 million every year by outsourcing to India, which was a compelling enough reason to funnel more work to the country, he said.

Smaller US businesses turn big for BPO firms

2009-01-06T09:51:00.000+05:30

EVEN as large outsourcers cut down their information technology budgets, smaller companies in the US seeking to save costs by adopting offshore outsourcing, will help outsourcing vendors cope with the slowdown, according to a recent study by Tholons. “We expect to see a revival in outsourcing, and we are already seeing a rise in outsourcing-related activity for engagements that will come to fruition in 9-12 months,” Tholons said in its study titled ‘Top ten trends in services globalisation 2009.’ The current economic downturn and financial sector consolidation will lead to increased outsourcing from companies in the sectors of healthcare, education, retail, telecom and legal services, the study added. “Service buyers will need to re-assess their outsourcing strategies and implement a better mix of multisourcing combining nearshore and offshore models, while service providers will look to tap growing domestic markets (such as China, India, Argentina, Brazil and even the US) as a means to hedge against volatility of existing offshore contracts,” said Avinash Vashistha, chief executive of Tholons. Customers with reduced IT budgets, will be forced to be more selective, and will demand far more stringent service-level agreements (SLAs), greater contractual flexibility and business-outcome-based payment schemes. “We will see clients negotiating hard with suppliers to reduce costs while suppliers will try and protect rates but offer more value-added services,” it said.

Caretel Infotech hires 600 people for BPO ops

2008-12-27T11:43:00.000+05:30

NEW DELHI: Dalmia group company Caretel Infotech is upbeat about the opportunities in the BPO space and has hired about 600 people, even while
others are handing out pink slips to employees amid the current slowdown. "In last 30 days, we have recruited 619 employees for our various projects from metros and even small towns like Chindwara at Rajasthan for our Kisaan Call Centre Project. For our various assignments, we will be recruiting more and more people from all over India and train them for the future," Caretel Infotech Chief Executive Officer Amit Roy said in a statement. The company also said it is looking at the downturn as as an opportunity to bag more deals, both in the country and overseas. "We are looking at this slowdown as an opportunity and have started international outsourcing process for some part of the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand to manage the slowdown impact. We have also increased our national clientele as we have bagged assignments from reputed brands like DDA ... and soon will close a DTH service provider in India," Roy said. Caretel has 13 business centres in India and employs over 6,000 people. It is now expanding its operations overseas and is targeting a significant growth from its global clients. For our international clients, we will be hiring 200 or more people in near future, he added.

BPO not the choice of graduates: BCG survey

2008-12-27T11:42:00.001+05:30

In a recent survey, Boston Consulting Group has found that only 5% Indian graduates are seeking a career with the BPO industry. This poses a serious challenge to the industry which needs to hire more in the next five years than it did in the past few years. Educated young Indians are shying away from joining the sector. This stark reality could further affect an industry that is already grappling with threat from countries like Philippines, China, Vietnam, among others said a report in CNBC-TV18.From 2004 to 2008, employment in the BPO grew at a whopping 26%. But 2008 saw a drop in these figures and attrition became the crying misery. With attrition levels at 30%, the requirement for professionals is expected to rise by more than 25% in the next five years. Such figures pose a serious threat especially in the light of the job loss figures being churned out by various lobby organizations. The latest is from UNITES India, a politically neutral union of ITES professionals has stated that the IT and BPO industry together would slash over 50,000 jobs over the next six months.Janmejaya Sinha, Senior Partner and MD, BCG, said, "In March this year, when we were talking to every CEO, their biggest constraint was not being able to find enough people to hire. So, when we looked at it at a macro level, there is a shortage of about 760,000 gradates. But when you adjust that to employability, you know, people who can perform productive growth, that number goes up to 5 million."This makes quality manpower the key issue inflicting the BPO industry today. The question now is that with an economic slowdown, competition at its peak, and ITeS clearly not being the of choice for graduates, how will the Indian BPO sector maintain its edge considering that the industry is staled to witness a slew of job cuts in the coming months.

Mphasis forces employees to move to low-cost locations Or else, just quit

2008-12-27T11:40:00.000+05:30

By Subhankar Kundu @ Thursday, December 25, 2008 2:13 PM

IT and BPO firm, Mphasis has asked its BPO employees to relocate to the company’s low-cost locations like Indore and Vadodara. The other option given is to quit. More than 1,000 employees in its Noida centre have been given this condition for their survival in the company.
Most of these employees are reportedly going for the second option, that is, to quit. There's just a week left for them to decide as the company has given a deadline of the end of December.
While opening the BPO centre in Vadodara earlier this month, Mphasis said it aims to expand the facility from the existing 400 seats to 800-2,500 seats in a year long time.
Mphasis declined to comment on the relocation but said that Noida operations will be on.
Shaping up operations could be just an excuse but the reality is company is aiming to move out to low-cost facilities to cut sown the costs.
The company has also invited other IT and BPO firms to recruit from its employees.
In this crisis situation, relocation to low-cost locations is not a bad idea to avoid mass job-cuts.
If the employees move to these low-cost locations, the operations may fall in place smoothly as per plans. But, if the majority employees refuse to do so and quit, then the company might have to compromise with the quality with new recruits, most of them could be local candidates also.
EDS, a company that holds the majority stake in Mphasis, was bought by HP earlier this year.

Wipro buys Citi Technology Services for $127 mn

2008-12-27T11:37:00.000+05:30

December 23, 2008
Wipro buys Citi Technology Services for $127 mn
In a move that can well send out a signal to the industry about the state of the affairs in the captive delivery centres of global banking giants in India, Wipro Technologies, the flagship business of consumer care to IT major Wipro, has announced to acquire Citi Technology Services, the captive delivery centre of IT services and solutions centre of Citigroup in India, for a consideration of $127 million (around Rs 609 crore) in an all cash deal.This is Citigroup's second India-based asset which is being sold out to one of its service provider, after the company recently sold its captive BPO arm Citigroup Global Services to TCS for about $505 million.While acquiring Citi Technology Services along with 1,650 odd employees working across its four delivery centres in Mumbai and Chennai, Wipro has managed to get a revenue commitment of about $500 million over the next six years, what Citi's Global Technology Head Jagdish Rao termed as 'minimum commitment' to the buyer.Citi Technology Services which started its operations in India in 2004, has reported a revenue of $53 million in the calendar 2007, and the company is expecting to corner a revenue of $80 million in the ongoing calendar."It is just the starting point. We feel there will be greater demand for their services as we go forward. This ($500 million of committed revenue) is what the minimum commitment we are making at this point of time," Rao told media persons on Tuesday.Citigroup has been working with Wipro for technology services during the last four years. The present commitment along with a BPO service contract what Citi has awarded to Wipro in the ongoing quarter, will make Wipro the 'top service provider for the company from anywhere in the world', he added.Wipro's BFSI practice which was one of the largest revenue earning vertical for the company with contribution of about 27 per cent to the company's consolidated revenue is under pressure much in the same way like most of its peers owing to global financial turmoil, which has hit the BFSI sector the hardest. The committed revenue from Citi as a part of the transaction is supposed to be the driving factor for going after the deal, according to industry analysts.Girish S Paranjpe, Joint CEO, of Wipro's IT Business, however, said the company decided to acquire the unit because of the values it brings to the table."We acquired it because of the quality of the unit that has been set up; and the knowledge and expertise of the people there. A very few global banks actually have done this kind of sophisticated works out of India. This brings us a unique capability which is not only in terms of people, but the experience on how to run a global operation like this. More than that, it also gives us the chance to scale it up and take it to the next level. I think this is a wonderful opportunity," Paranjpe told Business Standard.Wipro said that the Master Services Agreement that they have signed with Citi does not restrict them from serving other clients out of the centres. "We are under obligation to make sure that the works for Citi does not suffer," Soumitro Ghosh, senior vice president, Finance Solutions, Wipro said. Wipro will provide technology infrastructure service and application development & maintenance services to Citi as part of the transaction.Wipro has a cash reserves of close to $1 billion, including a short-term loan of close to $500 million it raised in March last year.Source: Business Standard

BPOs Back In Demand...

2008-12-27T10:41:00.000+05:30

...as cos take to outsourcing in uncertain times

THE global economic slowdown is beginning to spell a windfall for some BPO firms. Companies such as WNS, EXL, Steria and Quatrro are finding new opportunities as clients aggressively pursue cost-cutting. “With reality dawning that these are going to be tough times, companies have become more aggressive on outsourcing,” said WNS (Holdings) CEO Neeraj Bhargava. The BPO firm recently renewed its contract with Centrica that includes a new, three-year transformational plan for streamlining the energy firm’s operations. WNS, which is witnessing traction in utilities, telecom and insurance, is in active discussions for 5-6 deals that it expects to close in the next quarter. BPO firm ExlService Holdings says the last few weeks have seen clients cut down on their decision-making time to four weeks from 12-18 weeks earlier. “There is a healthy business pipeline and there is a fair number of companies looking to cut costs,” president and CEO Rohit Kapoor said. Apart from insurance vertical, the firm is also seeing demand for finance and accounting work in retail and manufacturing. Clients are now looking towards their outsourcing vendors to suggest ways to cut costs, Genpact president and CEO Pramod Bhasin had said recently. “There are some project cancellations but there are new opportunities too.” As per a report by telecom and software consulting firm Ovum, BPO will overshadow the importance of IT in the outsourcing market in 2009. While there is lower level of offshoring in BPO at present, it is more non-discretionary in nature. “As companies cut back on resources, they will look at outsourcing more work,” Ovum’s Asia Pacific software and sourcing principal analyst Jens Butler said. For outsourcing services vendor Steria, its large exposure to public sector—about 36% of revenues come from the vertical—is an advantage. “We have seen orders go up in the public sector as governments try to revive the economy by spending more,” Steria CEO Mukesh Aghi said. The firm’s joint venture with UK’s Department of Health recently won outsourcing contracts worth £13.8 million to provide finance, accounting and payroll services to 12 national health service organisations. Quatrro BPO solutions has seen great demand for foreclosures and legal process outsourcing (LPO) work. MD Raman Roy says his top management is focusing on bringing out solutions related to government bailouts. Amid all this, banking and financial services is also showing some activity. While WNS is seeing some pick-up in demand from banking companies, EXL’s Mr Kapoor said financial services firms in the US are looking at outsourcing partners for regulatory compliance work.

Wipro buys Citi IT arm for $127 m

2008-12-24T10:55:00.000+05:30

IPRO Technologies on Tuesday announced that it is buying the IT arm of Citigroup in India for around $127 million in a deal which could yield contracts worth up to $1 billion for India’s third largest software exporter from the global financial services provider. The all-cash deal to acquire Citi Technology Services (Citos) comes with a commitment by Citigroup to outsource all future infrastructure management contracts to Wipro, which will absorb the around 2,000 staff of Citos in Mumbai and Chennai. As part of the deal, Wipro will deliver infrastructure services and provide application development and maintenance to Citi for six years, assuring the Bangalore-based company of at least $500 million in revenues over the period. “It could be twice as much over the next few years,” said Jagdish Rao, Citi’s global technology head. “As we face these challenges, there will be greater demand for moving more work to offshore locations,” he added. ET had reported the likelihood of Wipro acquiring Citos in its edition on November 4. The online edition of this paper was the first to publish details of the acquisition on Tuesday ahead of the official announcement. Girish S Paranjpe, joint CEO of Wipro’s IT business, said the acquisition will help the company better serve its customers in the banking sector.” “While banking and financial services customers have done application development outsourcing, they have not really done much of infrastructure and business process outsourcing. This presents a huge opportunity for us,” he said. IT’S A DONE DEAL The deal, $127 million in cash, adds another pearl to Wipro's growing acquisition string Deal comes with Citigroup's committment to outsource all future infrastrcuture management contracts to Wipro With this deal, Wipro and Citi have signed a master services agreement that assures Wipro of at least $500 m in revenue over 6 yrs Wipro will now takeover around 2,000 people of this captive spread across Mumbai and Chennai Citos sales at $80 m INFRASTRUCTURE services contributed almost 17% to Wipro’s revenues from its IT business during the three-month period which ended in September. Citos, which reported revenues of $53 million for 2007, is seen closing this year with sales of $80 million. Mr Paranjpe said that the deal is expected to close in the quarter ending March and revenues from Citos may be partially reflected in Wipro’s accounts for that period. Captive organisations of large customers have always been an attractive target for technology vendors such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro. In October, TCS acquired the Indian BPO arm of Citibank for around $505 million in a deal which came with assured business of some $2.5 billion over nine years from Citibank. Citigroup Global Services, the BPO arm, is expected to generate revenues of around $278 million this year alone. The Citos transaction marks the exit of Citigroup from its captive operations in India. “We are not selling these captives because of the financial meltdown. We would have done it in any way to get the next level of growth for these operations,” said Mr Rao. “We do have similar captive centres of excellence in other locations across the globe, but I cannot comment if we are evaluating anything similar for those operations.” Wipro’s last major IT acquisition was the $600 million purchase of Infocrossing in the US in 2007. Mr Rao said that Citigroup’s IT budget will remain mostly unchanged in 2009 as the company attempts to cope with pressures of the global economic downturn. “We will spend around 8% of our revenues on IT next year. The focus is how much more can we get out of the existing budget,” he observed. Citigroup outsources IT contracts to leading vendors such as IBM, TCS, Wipro and Infosys. “A large part of our IT budget is dedicated to infrastructure and application maintenance, and that will remain a mandatory spend.”

Infosys bags 5-year outsourcing deal from AstraZeneca

2008-12-16T10:37:00.000+05:30

INFOSYSTechnologies has won a five year, multimillion dollar global sourcing deal from pharma giant AstraZeneca. The companies, however, did not provide the financial value of the contract. Under the agreement, Infosys will deliver end-toend application maintenance services to AstraZeneca’s global operations in manufacturing, supply chain, finance, human resources and other corporate functions, according to a release. Infosys will be delivering the services through a global sharedservices model that offers fixed price for outcomebased deliverables, and flexible, unit pricing for managing changes in the base scope of the engagement. According to the release, AstraZeneca is transforming its operations in multiple phases, with the first one spanning across the United Kingdom and the Nordics, and the subsequent phases focusing on the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia. In addition, as part of the transition, AstraZeneca employees in Sweden and the UK will be transferred to Infosys. Earlier this year, Cognizant announced a fiveyear, $95 million agreement with AstraZeneca for clinical data management for all of the pharmaceutical giant’s global clinical development.

Outsourcing clients may delay IT spend

2008-12-16T10:34:00.000+05:30

Finalisation of IT Budget Only By February-March
PP Thimmaya BANGALORE
FOR the second year in a row, outsourcing customers in the US and Europe are expected to delay decision on their information technology budgets. They are likely to decide on their annual IT spend only by February-March next year. Usually outsourcing customers have been finalising their budgets by December-January. However, such decisions are being deferred now as more firms seek to cope with economic recession. “Clients have delayed their budget cycles as they are trying to figure out the impact on their businesses,” says Cognizant Technologies’ CFO Gordon Coburn during a recently held technology conference with Credit Suisse. Meanwhile, Forrester Research has revised its 2009 US IT spending forecast and is now forecasting 1.6% annual growth in the spending for the next year. “The US IT market outlook is down but not as bad as the 2001-02 technology depression.” Even Infosys is expecting a delay in finalisation of IT budgets of its clients. Sandeep Mahindroo, senior manager, investor relations at the Credit Suisse event, said it is very likely to be delayed and they are not sure when it is going to finalised. While tech spend may be dropping, but Forrester has said IT outsourcing will remain moderate in 2009 and 2010. “IT outsourcing will get a small lift from an economic slowdown in 2008 as companies turn to vendors that can help cut IT costs.” However, there seems to be a silver lining. Mr Coburn added that the IT spend might be down, but it does not necessarily indicate any dip in offshoring of IT services. He further added that the concern for now is not about adding new clients but on the ramp ups and projections of the existing IT contracts. Industry observers believe that the recovery may happen only during the third or fourth quarter of 2009. Avinash Vashistha, CEO, Tholons also felt that there would be six to nine months delay in deciding on IT outsourcing projects. PROS & CONS THE DOWNTURN FALLOUT Outsourcing decisions, usually finalised by December-January, are being deferred as more firms seek to cope with economic recession Forrester Research has revised its 2009 US IT spending forecast and is now forecasting 1.6% annual growth in the spending for the next year THE SILVER LINING IT outsourcing will get a small lift from an economic slowdown in 2008 as companies turn to vendors that can help cut IT costs IT spend might be down, but it does not necessarily indicate any dip in offshoring of IT services

Rio Tinto outsources, saves $1 b

2008-12-16T10:01:00.000+05:30

AUSTRALIAN mining firm Rio Tinto, which recently awarded an outsourcing contract to India’s second biggest software company Infosys, aims to save over $1 billion in operating costs annually by pursuing offshore outsourcing of IT work apart from a massive consolidation of its operations. The move will result in around 14,000 job cuts across the mining firm’s global operations. Rio Tinto, which is the world’s third biggest mining firm, currently works with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and Infosys. Infosys was awarded over $50 million outsourcing contract by Rio Tinto two months ago for managing the global mining giant’s IT applications and some back-office procurement activities. In a detailed package announced by the company, Tom Albanese, chief executive of Rio Tinto, said that his company will reduce functional and operating costs by atleast $2.5 billion per annum by 2010. “Measures to reduce costs include rapid acceleration in 2009 of outsourcing and offshoring of IT and procurement,” the company said. Reducing global headcount by around 14,000 itself will help the company achieve annual cost saving of around $1.2 billion, with upfront severance cost of $400 million. When contacted by ET last week, Rio Tinto officials provided details of the outsourcing and offshoring initiatives. “We have awarded two outsourcing contracts to date. These are to CSC, for IT help desk and site support for the Australia/ New Zealand region, and to Infosys for global IT applications and some back office procurement activities,” said Nick Cobban, principal advisor, media relations, Rio Tinto. “Infosys has been working with Rio Tinto for three years on several IT programmes and is a major provider of these services globally,” added another Rio Tinto spokesperson. When asked about the specific cost savings by moving more IT projects offshore, Rio Tinto spokespersons declined to comment. “We will not be commenting on aspects such as management of the contract and potential cost savings at this stage,” the company said. “These impact the jobs of around 350 people. This is an ongoing process which will continue in 2009. The Infosys contract will take effect by the end of this year and the CSC contract by the end of January 2009,” the spokesperson added. While Australian enterprises are not as severely impacted by the global economic recession when compared to their rivals in the US and Europe, country’s leading corporates including Rio Tinto and phone firm Telstra have recently intensified their efforts to reduce their operational costs by working with Indian service providers, at a time when global demand for their products and services is weakening. Customers such as Telstra have already started revisiting their outsourcing engagements in order to squeeze their IT spend further. Telstra has invited Infosys, Satyam, IBM and EDS to bid for a $100 million restructured application development and maintenance contract, in order to bring down its IT costs further and retain only two of the four vendors it currently works with. The company is expected to finalise its outsourcing contract by this month end.

The transition from BPO1.0 to BPO 2.0

2008-12-15T10:20:00.000+05:30

AQUICK glance at the performance of the BPO/ITeS industry shows that India is now an established destination of choice. Despite the recession and the recent weakening of the dollar, this sector has done extremely well with export revenue of $11 billion, compounded annual growth rate of 35% and employing 900,000 directly. Even the domestic market has started picking up with revenue of $1.6 billion. While growth rates are rising, there is a discernible shift from the cost arbitrage based value proposition to optimisation and business transformation; from operations in the metros to tier-I and tier-III cities with the domestic market growing stronger; from BPO 1.0 to BPO 2.0. The Opportunity: The addressable market — locally and globally — is huge and growing. There is an opportunity to earn export revenue of over $50 billion by 2012 at a stretch-growth target of 45%-50% every year for the next five years. This opportunity implies 2.5% of GDP from exports; two million direct employment; expansion and growth in tier I/III cities. There will be strong secondary impact on employment in related service industries. However, if the industry has to achieve export revenue of $35-$50 billion and the headcount has to grow by 15% a year, there will be a shortage of 0.8 to 1.2 million entrylevel graduates by 2012. There will be an increased demand for talent from other services like retail, insurance, banking, telecom and the domestic BPO sector. Moreover, a number of offshore/nearshore BPO destinations like Philippines, Eastern Europe, Latin America and China are emerging as viable options. Cost arbitrage continues to be a driver of global sourcing for most buyers. However, the benefits of cost arbitrage may diminish over time due to the business model itself changing. Therefore, we cannot just rely on a costsavings-driven value proposition. It has to be more constructive, solid and differentiating value proposition The Solution: Given these challenges, the BPO/ITeS industry must optimise between continuing the cost arbitrage-driven value proposition and innovating to a higher value proposition for buyers. The buyers too are changing their expectations. More than 70% of the parent companies expect their captive operations to deliver value beyond cost savings. So, the BPO firms also need to focus on moving from rulebased work to complex judgment-based work. But how can this be done? First, the BPO industry needs to work with the government and academia to create a greater link between the current education system and the industry requirements. Other initiatives should include introduction of BPO-specific curriculum and training teachers in sync with the future requirements of the BPO industry. Secondly, they need to invest in employees to develop domain knowledge and process expertise. Other steps could be to encourage job rotation. Also, BPO jobs should become a career of choice. Firms should work to make the environment safe and secure and implement outreach programmes to influence all stakeholders. They should also highlight the learning and growth opportunities in the BPO industry through success stories and case studies. And third, providers should also work to become business transformation partners (BTP) — from cost advantage to optimisation and transformation of business. GUIDELINES • The BPO industry needs to work with the govt & academia to create a link between the education system and industry requirements. • They need to invest in employees to develop domain knowledge & process expertise

WNS Renews Contract With SAS Airlines

2008-12-15T09:54:00.001+05:30

WNS (Holdings) Limited has signed a six-year contract with SAS Airlines, an airline company in Scandinavia. This new contact is a renewal of WNS’ existing five-year agreement to provide passenger revenue accounting services for SAS.
Under the terms of the new contract, WNS will transition SAS from an in-house revenue accounting system to the Sirax AirFinance Platform. The new financial management system, combined with WNS’ process expertise, staff training capabilities and technical support, will enable SAS to manage over 40 million tickets annually and is expected to enable SAS to reduce spending on revenue accounting. Once the implementation is complete, WNS will deliver the full suite of services critical to revenue accounting accuracy, including sales accounting, inward and outward billing, coupon matching, refunds and fare audits.

“When we decided to move to the new Sirax platform, we had the option to change providers but decided to continue our relationship with WNS. WNS has both the industry knowledge and technical capabilities to ensure a smooth transition without disrupting our current revenue accounting operations. This allows us to deliver our weekly and monthly forecasts on time, which is particularly important given the current industry climate,” said Steen Wulff, director, passenger revenue accounting, SAS Airlines. “Over the last five years, WNS has operated as an extension of our business, demonstrating a strong commitment to our success, and we look forward to expanding our partnership.”

“Whether delivering services through the current SAS system or Sirax AirFinance, WNS has the expertise to work with a broad spectrum of passenger revenue accounting platforms, customising processes to meet specific needs,” said Eric Selvadurai, managing director, WNS, Europe. “We are pleased to continue our relationship with SAS Airlines, automating and transforming their revenue accounting operations.”

AT&T opens first data centre in Bangalore

2008-12-12T09:48:00.000+05:30

AT&T has opened its first data centre in Bangalore which will cater to the demands of its multinational customers having operations in the country. The new Bangalore facility is part of AT&T’s previously announced $1-billion global investment planned for 2008. Data centre customers will have access to AT&T’s fully integrated managed hosting, application and networking services to support their data and e-commerce needs.

Quatrro BPO plans $300 m expansion drive

2008-12-05T10:12:00.001+05:30

QUATRRO BPO Solutions is in ‘fairly advanced’ talks to acquire about half-a-dozen companies, one of them valued at over $300 million, its managing director said on Thursday. “It’s an exciting environment to acquire. Some good companies are available at very good prices,” Quatrro MD Raman Roy said. The BPO firm is looking at acquiring companies doing legal process outsourcing and outsourcing in healthcare, financial services and insurance verticals. Mr Roy said Quatrro is likely to complete one acquisition, valued at over $100 million, before March 2009. Quatrro, which employs 2,500 people with annual revenue of $70 million, has lined up funding commitments worth $300 million for acquisitions. It uses structured transactions to acquire, where the funding partner picks up a stake in the parent company or the acquired entity in return for financing the deal. In July, it acquired UK-based Babel Media, a specialist outsourcing firm in the gaming industry, for an undisclosed sum. The deal, done with DE Shaw group, was pegged at $100-150 million by industry sources. Founded by Mr Roy, the management holds a majority stake in the BPO firm while private equity firms Olympus Capital and DE Shaw are the other shareholders. While Olympus had invested $100 million in Quatrro for a ‘significant minority’ stake last year, DE Shaw picked up a ‘low, single-digit stake’ in Quatrro this year. Commenting on the business environment for BPO industry, Mr Roy said that growth rates would be muted but Indian companies can gain by tapping opportunities presented by the slowdown. Quatrro, for instance, has become a leading outsourcing firm in the area of foreclosures.

Quatrro BPO plans $300 m expansion drive

2008-12-05T10:12:00.000+05:30

Offshoring to dent tech cos’ profits

2008-12-05T10:11:00.000+05:30

IT Firms will see their EBITDA margins plunge below 20% over the next 3 years

TOP Indian tech firms such as TCS, Wipro, Satyam and HCL will see their EBITDA margins, a measure of operating profit, plunge below 20% over the next three years, as these companies move more information technology projects to India, and align their operations with rising wages apart from the currency fluctuations. Leading outsourcing customers such as General Electric, Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of America plan to increase their offshore outsourcing in order to lower their cost of managing IT in the US and UK, where billing rates are more than twice of what can be achieved by sending work to offshore locations such as India. “It’s going to be growth vs margin dilemma for us — till now, we have protected our margins and fared better than the likes of IBM and EDS,” said a senior executive at a leading Indian tech firm who requested anonymity. “However, in the long run, I would say that even 15% of EBITDA will stand much better than our rivals who hardly achieve 10%,” he added. EBITDA (short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ) margins, reflect a firm’s profitability. While HCL Technologies is expected to see its EBITDA decline by half from 22.2% in 2008 to 11.2% in 2011, country’s biggest software company TCS could see its margins go down from around 26% last year to 18.2% over next three years, according to Anand Rathi Research. Country’s third biggest tech firm Wipro is also expected to see its EBITDA decline from around 20.1% last year to 13.5% by 2011, the brokerage firm said. (see table). Barring Infosys, the top four Indian software firms will see their EBITDA margins go below 20% over the next three years, the report added. Infosys is expected to see its EBITDA decline from 31.4% to 23.6% by 2011. This sharp decline in margins can also be attributed to the currency fluctuations. A large proportion of Indian tech firms’ costs are rupeedenominated, and at a time when the revenue growth (primarily in US Dollar) is expected to be lower, their rupee costs will not see any significant decline. Moreover, the rising wage costs are also expected to impact the margins. In their November report, Anand Rathi analysts Tarun Sisodia and Naushil Shah said that while revenues for the top tech firms will grow at 15% during next three years, “the impact on EBITDA is expected to be more severe—just 2% growth.” “The fall in EBITDA growth is far worse (23% to 2%) as the cost base does not change much, while the revenuedrop-led profit-drop is significant,” Mr Sisodia and Mr Shah added in the report. As India’s tech biggies deliver more IT projects from the country, they will have to manage with billing rates of anywhere between $18 to $27 per man hour. In comparison, a typical application development and maintenance project executed in countries such as US and UK will command hourly rates in excess of $60. Meanwhile, country’s second biggest software exporter, Infosys continues to protect its margins. “Margin is a function of how efficiently you run a company,” Infosys chief executive S Gopalakrishnan told ET in an interview on Monday. “We have chosen a profitable growth and have balanced our portfolio by using multiple levers such as fixed price contracts,” he added. Cognizant, which maintains its operating margins in the range of 19-20% even at a time when Indian offshore rivals are trying to protect their 20-30% margins, says it follows a different model. “Cognizant has consciously maintained its operating margins in the 19 to 20% range (non-GAAP) and reinvested anything in excess of it back into the business for industry-leading revenue growth,” a company spokesperson said. “This lower operating margin, compared to its top-tier offshore competitors, is also reflected in its higher SG&A (Selling, General and Administrative) which is in the 23 to 25% range

IT cos with BPO arms to steal show

2008-12-04T10:39:00.000+05:30

HAVING won more than half of large BPO contracts announced during past one year, leading software services firms with back-office arms are set to become bigger players in the BPO market, according to research firm Datamonitor.
Companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Cognizant also accounted for almost 80% of the total value of large BPO contracts awarded in the past one year. According to Datamonitor, 54.3% of all large BPO deals were signed by IT services vendors having BPO arms, and not specialist BPO firms. “While the BPO players did account for 44.7% of all announced deals, their cumulative contract value reflects only 19.5% of overall deal value,” said Vamshi Krishna Mokshagundam, analyst with Datamonitor India. “BPO services are being increasingly signed on as part of a bigger IT services contract.”
The largest BPO deal announced in recent times, amidst a period of financial turmoil and instability, was Citigroup’s $ 2.5 billion contract to TCS following its acquisition of Citi’s BPO arm in India. The deal is noteworthy from the point that a multi-billion dollar BPO deal went to an IT services player and also that TCS was keen on acquiring the asset despite questions surrounding Citigroup’s own financial stability. BPO deals are also coming to IT players as part of larger integrated contracts. TCS itself won a BPO piece to handle finance and human resource processes for AC Neilsen as part of a larger $ 1.2 billion contract to handle its IT and operations functions.
Similarly, Cognizant Technology Solutions, which has traditionally been strong in healthcare and lifesciences, has won a $ 95 million deal for clinical data management from Astra Zeneca — probably the largest publicly announced deal in knowledge process outsourcing. When Merck extended its relationship with Cognizant in December last, it made it a key technology partner providing applications outsourcing, IT infrastructure management and BPO.
The revenue figures also bear out the higher BPO focus of IT firms, in recent times. Number two software firm, Infosys Technologies, has grown its IT services revenues from $ 931.5 million to $ 1101 million in the twelve-month period to September 2008. Its BPO revenues have grown from $ 53 million to $ 72 million in the same period. In other words, IT services have grown by 18% compared to a 36% growth in BPO revenues. “IT firms are now seeing BPO as one of the growth engines. They have also been strong in application development and maintenance but in BPO, they haven’t yet scratched the surface, so they see it as an area with a lot of potential,” said an executive with one of the IT firms who did not wish to be identified.
In some cases, pure-play BPO firms are also seeing undercutting by a few tier 2 firms. “In these tough times, customers want to consolidate with fewer vendors, and get the best rates,” admitted a senior executive of a leading Indian tech firm requesting anonymity. “At times, some portion of back-office project is also being bundled for free execution by bigger IT services firms.”
Pure-play BPO vendors such as WNS Global Services admit that back-office contracts are becoming more IT-driven, although it is from a tools and optmisation perspective.

Wipro rules out salary change in case of BPO shift

2008-12-03T09:51:00.000+05:30

INDIA’S third-biggest software exporter, Wipro Technologies said on Tuesday that it will hire around 13,500 engineering graduates as committed earlier, even as the company prepares to cope with a slowing demand for its services in the markets of the US and Europe.
Wipro, which offered these graduates an option of joining the company’s BPO arm, said it will not change the salary structure for those opting to join Wipro BPO. As reported by ET last week, Wipro had offered these graduates to join its BPO division, anticipating a slowdown in projects in its software services business.
Pradeep Bahirwani, vice-president for talent acquisition at Wipro said on Tuesday that more than 95% of the engineering graduates have already accepted the option of working in Wipro’s BPO centre in Kolkata.These fresh hires would be transitioned to the IT services segment in the span of 12-18 months as their BPO experience would be considered relevant.
The company also clarified that the engineers who opt for BPO work will be compensated as originally promised for their software services roles. These graduates will make anywhere between Rs 2.75-3.25 lakh per annum.
Meanwhile, fresh hires who are not willing to join Wipro BPO will have to wait for around two quarters before they are accommodated in IT services. The company added that the nature of work will be in the non-voice segment.

Telus arm to set up captive in India despite slowdown

2008-12-03T09:47:00.000+05:30

Likely To Hire A Few Hundred; Location Not Finalised

N Shivapriya & Rashmi Pratap
MUMBAI

UNDETERRED by the terror attacks on India, Telus International, the contact centre arm of Canada’s second-largest telco, Telus Mobility, is planning to set up captive operations in the country.
“The company has identified a few people for senior positions in India. It is likely to recruit a few hundred people to begin with. The exact location and city has not yet been finalised,” a source familiar with the development told ET. The Canadian operator is planning to set up back-office functions from the captive and may also look at IT functions at a later date, he added.
In an e-mail to ET, Telus’ senior communications manager, Shawn Hall, said: “Telus is looking at several countries around the world for new sites. While I can confirm India is among the countries Telus International is considering, we have no firm plans we can discuss at this time.” Telus International provides contact centre solutions, applications management, technology infrastructure management and BPO services to some of the world’s largest companies in IT, telecommunications, consumer electronics, financial services and energy and utilities.
Telus has over 7,000 employees in the Philippines. It plans to set up another office there at Cubao, Quezon City, by 2009. The majority of the workforce employed in the Philippines is used for North American call centre support.
Gaurav Dua, country head and principal of research firm, Everest Group, said despite all the noise about captives closing down and becoming unviable, new captives continued being set up. “In Q3, 21 captives were set up globally. In India, at least three firms have announced additional or new centres. Captives are used as a means to expand and do more work as opposed to work with third party firms, which is more limited,” he said. Decisions to set up captive units are being evaluated more carefully especially with third-party vendors now having scale and capability for many functions.
“Telus International has three contact centres in Manila that are reaching capacity. In response to customer demand we are looking at sites that afford us the opportunity to offer customers service in new languages, in particular Spanish, as many of our clients are USbased. We are also seeking geographical diversity — sites in different regions of the world to minimize the impact of any natural or man-made disaster on our operations,” according to a Telus spokesperson.

Banking outsourcing deals to look up by ’09

2008-11-29T09:38:00.000+05:30

ndian Suppliers Smarting Under Recessionary Pressures Have Reduced Hiring Compared To Last Year

THE financial crisis has slowed down outsourcing in the banking and financial services sector in the short-term but it is likely to recover in early 2009, as per a report by a sourcing advisory firm.

As per the report, Market Vista: Q3 2008, by Everest Research Institute, outsourcing deals worth $3.2 billion (in annualised contract value) were signed between July and September, or in the third quarter, this year. About 480 outsourcing transactions were signed in the period, 15% more than the previous quarter. Banking, financial services and insurance firms signed 81 transactions, against 54 in Q2 this year.

Everest Research Institute managing principal Eric Simonson said a slowdown is emerging among financial services firms due to delays in initiatives and the managements’ keen focus on the economic crisis. “In the medium-term, restructuring, integration, and redefinition of sourcing strategies by large financial firms will lead to an increase in project-based work for suppliers and increased pressure on captives,” he said.

The report noted that Indian suppliers are experiencing slowdown pressures and have reduced hiring compared to last year. Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest IT services firm by sales, is on track to hire 25,000 people this year, 8,000 less than last year. Fourth-largest Satyam Computer Services recently trimmed hiring plans to 8,000-10,000, against 14,000-15,000 earlier.

In the July-September quarter, outsourcing activity in Europe grew 10%. The report noted that Central American countries, especially Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica, are taking active measures to improve their nearshore proposition for outsourcing.
Captives continued to see momentum, with about 24 new ones coming on board during the third quarter.

CRIPPLING EFFECT

• Infosys Technologies is going to hire 25,000 people this year, 8,000 less than last year

• Satyam Computer Services recently trimmed hiring plans to 8,000-10,000, against 14,000-15,000 earlier

• In the July-Sept, outsourcing in Europe grew 10%

Employee referrals dominate IT/ITeS hiring

2008-11-21T09:39:00.000+05:30

WHILE campus recruitment continues to be the dominant mode of recruitment, IT/ITeS companies have substantially ramped up hiring through employee referrals and internal promotions. This could be the fallout of cautious and slow hiring phase that most companies are going through.
The global slowdown, which has adversely affected most sectors, has also led organisations to take stock of the situation and restructure their working conditions. The hiring plans across the IT/ITeS have been attracting much attention, since they are associated with massive hiring of fresh talent. “Now almost 40% hiring is through employee referrals and 80% of our promotions are internal,” says Piyush Mehta, Senior vice-president and HR head at Genpact.
“We are more inclined towards it, as apart from saving time on comprehensive background checks and scanning, it also helps in better camaraderie among employees.” When a candidate is employed through a referral programme, there is a less probability of the candidate leaving the organisation in a small span of time.
This fact is well established at Genpact, which has a low attrition rate of 25%. That apart, hiring through referral route also saves time searching, headhunting and calling candidates. Recruiting people and retaining them is becoming a challenge, faced by the HR departments across sectors. In such a scenario, IT/ITeS industry has chosen this mode to ensure effective hiring.
“There has been an increase in hiring through employee referrals by 50% across sectors, and at all levels,” says A Sudarshan, vice-president sales and marketing, Expertus, a talent management and recruitment firm. “The IT/ITeS sector takes the lead in it. At a time when most companies are looking at cost-optimisation, it is a definite tool of cutting on expenses, But it has an adverse impact on head-hunting and recruiting firms like us.”
Employee referral schemes are popular in most Indian IT companies. There are monetary and intangible benefits for employees in case the referred candidate is finally selected. To ensure a successful referral system, it is important to suitably reward those employees who are bringing suitable candidates to the organisation.
This is a strong motivating factor. MindTree Consulting, for instance, has an employee referral scheme ‘Each One Bring One.’ Currently, Infosys BPO is also focusing at maximum recruitment and promotions happening internally. “It also helps in developing employee relations as the employee’s social needs are met and they have a feeling of belongingness towards the organisation,” says Shailesh Mehta, CEO of Gurukulonline Learning Solutions.
However, headhunting and recruitment firms, which have created a good base in the market since long, should not be affected to a major extent as there is always a skill gap or difference between the goals of the organisation and the personal goals of an employee.
“Although there is rampant internal hiring, especially in the IT/ITeS, there would always be a need for specific talent and even cross-border appointments. In such cases, it is necessary to leverage on expert recruitment and hiring firms,” said E Balaji, CEO of Mafoi Management Consultants.

Outsourcing sector strong on hiring

2008-11-20T10:04:00.000+05:30

THE Indian outsourcing industry is one of the few sectors to be directly hit by the woes of overseas firms. But it is also one of the few sectors to still be hiring in tens of thousands despite the slowdown. The top five IT firms are recruiting over 80,000 people this fiscal after considering revised hiring targets.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies, have adopted a strategy of staggered recruitments but so far neither has scaled back their hiring targets announced earlier this year. TCS, in fact, will add a shade lesser than what its number one customer will axe. While Citigroup, which is now its number one client, has said it will shed over 50,000 jobs, TCS will hire about 48,000 people. Of this, 30,000-35,000 will be new hires and 12,500 will come through its acquisition of Citigroup Global Services. Infosys, which attracted flak from shareholders in the tech slowdown of 2000-01 for pampering employees despite the business downturn, has also taken a strategic decision to honour all the 25,000 job offers it has made. About 11,000 have already joined the firm and another 18,700 are expected to join before the fiscal end. Some like Satyam have revised their hiring targets for the fiscal from 15,000 to 8,000 after the crisis deepened with the fall of Lehman Brothers and other financial institutions.
Both Wipro and HCL Technologies, the number three and number five software exporters respectively, do not put out hiring targets but a Wipro spokesperson said the firm had added about 8,000 people in the last 12 months. HCL Tech’s senior vicepresident, head — talent management group, Ravishankar B, said the firm added 5,597 employees as on September ’08. The list of firms hiring in India also include the likes of CapGemini, which has offshore operations in the country. CapGemini India executive chairman Salil Parekh said, “We will end 2008 with 21,000 employees and grow the number by 25-35% next year. Our Q3 numbers indicate we are still seeing demand. We will have greater clarity about next year’s numbers once the budgeting exercise is completed.”

GM fighting hard to stave off bankruptcy

2008-11-17T10:22:00.001+05:30

Reuters NEW YORK

GENERAL Motors has been telling US government officials that a bankruptcy filing by the automaker would set off a chain reaction hitting hundreds of its suppliers and dealers as well as its Detroit rivals, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ reported.

Citing people familiar with the situation, the Journal said on its that GM’s auto-industry bailout lobbying effort in Washington was reaching out to congressional leaders, the outgoing Bush White House and members of the transition team of president-elect Barack Obama, with meetings going on over the weekend.

Central to the campaign is the idea that a bankruptcy filing by GM would trigger a domino effect, potentially crippling the nation’s industrial base, the newspaper said.

Detroit automakers have sought emergency assistance to help them survive a steep and worsening drop in sales that they blame on the global credit crisis and slumping economy. GM has said it could run out of cash by early next year.

Democrats are proposing a bailout of distressed automakers through $25 billion in loans from the Treasury Department’s $700-billion corporate rescue programme.

The White House opposes that move and says that $25 billion already appropriated for loans to make automobiles more fuel-efficient should be accelerated. According to the newspaper, GM is arguing that bankruptcy would threaten jobs and the government’s pensionbenefit insurance arm, which covers millions of workers outside the auto industry, by swamping the fund and further burdening a strained federal budget.

“There is no Plan B being discussed beyond a government bailout,” the Journal quoted one top GM adviser as saying on Friday. Another person close to the company said executives recently told the board they were “increasingly optimistic” GM would receive a liquidity infusion before December, it said. GM is also flooding dealers, supplier executives, employees and union members with letters encouraging their participation in the effort, the newspaper said.

United Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger said in a rare news conference that US automakers urgently needed a federal loan to survive, but added their work force should not be blamed for the industry crisis.

Global financial crisis closes in on General Motors

2008-11-12T10:47:00.000+05:30

AFP NEW YORK

THE global financial crisis on Tuesday closed in on General Motors, which said it would need a government. The news capped another day of gloomy developments in the US, undermining hopes that co-ordinated action by governments around the world could keep the global downturn from getting worse.

Fannie Mae, the US mortgage giant bailed out by the government earlier this year, posted a $29 billion loss. The latest dire reports from the US triggered more woe for Asian stock markets, which lost ground Tuesday in line with US shares. Tokyo lost 3.0% while Hong Kong was off 0.6% at the mid-day break.

General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner said the US automaker would need state help before Barack Obama takes over the White House in January, telling industry publication Automotive News that time was of the essence. “This is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently,” he said, calling on the government to “overshoot, not undershoot” the level of assistance. His call for support came as GM shares lost 23% Monday after analysts at Deutsche Bank said they expected the stock eventually to be worth nothing at all. “Even if GM succeeds in averting a bankruptcy, we believe that the company’s future path is likely to be bankruptcy-like,” the bank said.

Obama asks Bush to aid automakers
President-elect Barack Obama asked president George W Bush during a White House meeting for immediate aid for the struggling US auto industry onTuesday. Bush said he could support some aid in exchange for approval of a freetrade agreement with Colombia, however, neither Obama nor Democrats in Congress, who been blocking the trade pact, seem willing to bend on Colombia. US labour leaders oppose the agreement in protest over numerous murders of trade unionists in Colombia at the hands of right-wing paramilitary squads who, critics say, are often closely linked to the Colombian armed forces.

IT cos, BPOs loath to say Obama zindabad

2008-11-06T09:50:00.001+05:30

THE US president-elect Barack Obama’s conservative stance on outsourcing and the current global financial mess will have a negative impact on offshoring in the short term. Concerns over US job losses will ensure that new contracts are difficult to come by, even as repeat business particularly from BFSI space, will be under pressure. But in the mid to long term, that is from Q2, 2009-10, things could look better for the $50-billion IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) sector as companies see significant growth in new business. Experts point out that IT services and BPO will eventually grow as offshoring is part of the solution — helping global companies to cut costs — and not a problem. And with Mr Obama’s promise to incentivise businesses that create jobs in the US, IT and BPO companies might expand onsite presence, via acquisition or organic growth along with growing global delivery. Infosys Technologies chairman NR Narayana Murthy said: “We believe president-elect Obama to be a pragmatic leader who understands that American industry needs to be competitive not just in America but in third countries as well.” He added: “The US has voted for compassionate capitalism over laissez faire capitalism. Besides, this election has shown that meritocracy matters most. This election has also proved that the internet is a powerful medium for raising funds.” Quatrro BPO CMD Raman Roy said: “In the mid to long term we see more offshoring. They (US) don’t have that many engineers. How will they manage without offshoring.” It may not translate to quick offshoring arrangements as businesses take time to emerge out of the financial crisis. But the industry is optimistic about the long-term prospects. “There are no new strategic deals in BFSI. Eventually there will be pressure on companies to manage cost structures better and hence they will increase offshoring,” Firstsource Solutions MD and CEO Ananda Mukherji said. The company has over 19,000 staff — about 3,000 in the US. “Obama’s statements on outsourcing comes in the context of the rising unemployment rate in the US. The unemployment is largely in the manufacturing sector. His statements on H1-B visas are in tune with our stance. He has supported a temporary increase in the visas until US workers are skilled enough to meet the industry demand,” said Nasscom vice-president Ameet Nivsarkar. In a similar vein, Gartner India vice-president Partha Iyengar said: “Obama’s comments about bringing jobs back to the US were primarily in the context of manufacturing jobs. Once the election rhetoric dies down, I do not expect that this — trying to discourage offshore outsourcing — will be a strong issue.” While most representatives in the IT sector feel a change in leadership at Washington will be good for the US economy and would hence benefit the sector, they also apprehend that Mr Obama may resort to some protective measures to prevent job losses in the US.

Wipro likely to buy Citi’s tech arm for $150 million

2008-11-04T10:22:00.000+05:30

FINANCIALservices major Citigroup is once again in talks to sell its subsidiary, Citi Technology Services (CTS), formerly called Citos. Wipro is believed to be front-runner for the bank’s captive technology and infrastructure outsourcing arm. The deal size, pegged around $150 million, is likely to be announced by the end of third quarter, said a source. However, both the parties refused to comment. “We do not react to market rumours and speculations,” said a Wipro spokesperson in an email response. ET had reported on June 27 that Citi was in talks to sell CTS. The multinational technology vendor IBM, India’s largest IT exporter, TCS, and major IT firm Infosys were also believed to be in talks with Citi. However, Wipro is pursuing this more aggressively and had even concluded due diligence process of the firm last week. If this deal is concluded, it would be the second time that Citigroup, which is under pressure from mounting credit-related losses in the US, will sell part of its India back-office operations. In early October, it had sold its captive BPO Citigroup Global Services to TCS for $505 million. No investment bank is believed to have been appointed. “As the transaction size is small, the company has not hired an investment bank. But could be handling it internally,” said a banker. CTS, a 100% subsidiary of Citigroup, provides critical technology infrastructure support, development and deployment of strategic software applications in the BFSI domain. It provides application development, maintenance and testing support for credit cards, core banking, equities and treasury to Citi entities worldwide. It employs close to 2,500 people and has offices in Mumbai and Chennai. Acquisition of CTS will strengthen the infrastructure and facilities management business of Wipro. Acquisition of CTS would help Wipro bag Citigroup as a key client.

Orange to consolidate India BPO operations

2008-10-15T11:32:00.000+05:30

CONVERGYS, IBM TO HANDLE ALL OFFSHORE WORK

IN AN about-turn in its outsourcing strategy, Orange UK, the mobile services arm of France Telecom, is now consolidating its offshore work amongst two vendors — Convergys and IBM Daksh — taking it from other vendors such as EXL and 24/7 Customer. In June this year, Orange UK had announced that it will reduce dependence on BPOs in India for its backoffice work.
And in a first of its kind recruitment experiment in India, Orange along with its largest BPO vendor Convergys is also advertising jointly to ‘transplant’ or simply poach Orange-trained erstwhile employees working in other BPOs back to Convergys. The ads are being published in large national dailies. Orange had earlier taken back some processes from 24/7 Customer and Convergys this year and from Vertex last year.
As a follow up to the new strategy Orange UK conducted a bidding process to consolidate operations. An Orange Spokesperson told ET: “As part of a commitment to deliver consistently excellent customer service across our business, Orange UK has been reviewing our requirements with our Indian outsourcing partners. Following a competitive pitch process, existing partners Convergys and IBM Daksh will provide customer service support for Orange UK mobile and broadband customers moving forward.”
BPO executives working on Orange processes out of offices in Gurgaon offer customer service, collections and sales for many of Orange mobile and broadband customers in the UK. According to estimates, the joint transplant process will save the Convergys, Orange’s largest vendor in India, almost 70% of training time and cost.
Convergys is calling the new hiring process for Orange as ‘transplanting’. “We are inviting people who went outside Convergys or outside Orange processes from other vendors back into the family. Many of these people might be working with other BPO vendors. Due to our superior service levels Orange has chosen Convergys as a preferred BPO vendor and thus the consolidation of business and employees is taking place. We plan to complete the transplanting of employees by end-2008,” says Convergys recruitment director (Gurgaon) Ashutosh Sinha.

Economic crisis looms over KPOs

2008-10-15T11:30:00.000+05:30

Most cos have 70% exposure to US, forcing players to rationalise and diversify core businesses

SPECIALISATION can sometimes be a double-edged sword. India’s knowledge processing outsourcing (KPO) sector, pegged at a size of $1.5 billion and predominantly servicing the financial services market, may see some serious rationalisation, re-definition of core business, diversification, slowdown in client additions and M&A play in the next six to 12 months, analysts reckon.
Most KPOs have nearly 70% exposure to the US geography, which is reeling under history’s worst-ever economic crisis.
So, naturally, the heat will be on many firms that solely depend on activities like equity research and deal flow and research, says Ernst & Young’s Milan Sheth. Frost & Sullivan deputy director (ICT practice) Kaustubh Dhavse adds, “From 2002, there were many outsourcing organisations selling mortgages. That sort of business will not happen now. But, they will now look at diversifying into debt consolidation and debt management services.”
Market watchers say, many specialised boutique outfits are in the scanner of IT services firms. “Some of these firms have built strong capabilities in specific domains. That may be attractive for larger firms,” he said. Besides, valuations of these firms may be in the sub-$200-million range, that too at the higher end. According to Crisil estimates, the KPO industry size was $1.3-$1.4 billion in 2007-08 and is expected to grow five-fold to $5.3 billion by 2012-2013. It includes companies in areas such as credit and equity research, legal process and market research outsourcing firms.
Roopa Kudwa, MD & CEO, Crisil — which owns Irevna —, says: “The impact will not be on existing businesses, but newer client acquisitions will go slower. There will be a lot of reorganisation, re-alignment and that is going to slow down new client acquisitions, which we expect will pick up after a few months.” The momentum continues for the present, she adds. Irevna, which became part of Crisil in 2005, offers research services to investment banks and financial institutions globally.
Following the credit crunch and global turmoil, client firms are beginning to seek new types of research. In credit space, for instance, there is demand for deeper research in structured financial bonds. They want drill-down analysis till the lowest level rather than portfolio services. On the equity side, they are seeking to generate new alpha returns not linked to equity movements, Ms Kudwa adds. And, there is a huge opportunity outside this like high-end analytics in corporate treasury, retail and insurance.
Adventity, which has seen some churn in customers, maintains that overall business is still good. Says director and co-founder Vivek Arora: “There are a lot of distressed assets available. And there is a requirement for research and valuation services for distressed assets.”
While maintaining that the next 12 months would result in more opportunities for Indian firms, he said, Adventity had already taken the lead in diversifying into Middle East and Asia-Pacific markets. And, Irevna, which is expanding into Poland, has over a 1,000 people working out of Chennai, Mumbai, the US, the UK and Argentina.
Smaller players like Brickwork Ratings, a KPO-cum-credit rating agency promoted by former Karnataka IT secretary Vivek Kulkarni, have hedged their business by having a base of over 100 small clients. An IIM-B-incubated analytics startup, Marketelligent, is watching the global environment carefully and is focused on emerging areas like reactive and predictive analytics and is targeting a variety of domains and not just financial services.

TCS, Infy strategise anticipating recovery

2008-10-13T09:54:00.000+05:30

Infosys To Hire More; TCS To Absorb 12,500 From CGS

DESPITE the grim environment, both Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have opted for strategies that anticipate a recovery after about two quarters. While TCS will add nearly 12,500 employees of Citigroup Global Services (CGS), Infosys said it would hire about 25,000 people in FY09 and honour all the commitments made at campuses. While 11,000 employees have already joined Infosys this year, another 18,700 are expected to join before the fiscal end, officials said following the announcement of quarterly results on Friday.

“The bench (the number of employees not working on billable projects) is going to remain large for sometime.... The challenge is to keep them engaged,” Infosys director Mohandas Pai said. The company admitted that utilisation would come down but that it would be able to maintain margins. Top management officials said the company had enough money to sustain them in such difficult times.

“We don’t go back on any of our client contracts. We have recurited the best and the brightest from colleges — we will need them when the market recovers. In any case, the training will take 4-5 months,” chief operating officer S D Shibulal told ET.

To keep these employees engaged when there are not enough projects, the company will have to deploy them on internal projects that will not earn immediate revenue. The company’s utilisation has already fallen to 74% from 78% a year ago because of fewer projects. Normally, the second quarter is among the better quarters because there are more billable days and fewer increase in costs compared to the first and third quarters.

The guidance given by Infosys also seems to suggest it expects a recovery in the fourth quarter of the fiscal. Based on the figures put out the company, it expects flat sequential growth in revenues and marginally better growth in earnings in Q3 FY09, but a whopping 18% sequential growth in revenues and 14% growth in earnings in Q4 FY09.

However, an analyst ET spoke to had a different view. “If you ask me, the bottom is yet to be reached. This is only the beginning. Infosys can maintain margins even if utilisation drops because it is so big. In any case, freshers are not paid much so it won’t impact margins significantly,” he said.

TCS has also come in for criticism for acquiring Citigroup Global Services and increasing its exposure to the troubled financial services sector. TCS COO N Chandrasekaran clarified: “It’s going to take three to four months to complete the acquisition. And to integrate the teams, another six months, which is a good time frame to be ready when the markets recover.”

However, market-watchers are not so optimistic. “Not only has the company increased its exposure to financial services, it has also increased its exposure to Citigroup, which was already among its top clients. Like General Electric, Citi is known to drive a hard bargain. So they are going to extract a lot of value for the money they pay,” said an analyst, terming it as move to ‘buy revenues.’

BEING POSITIVE

• While 11,000 employees have already joined Infosys this year, another 18,700 are expected to join before the fiscal end

• To keep these employees engaged when there are not enough projects, the company will have to deploy them on internal projects that will not earn immediate revenue

• TCS will add nearly 12,500 employees of Citigroup Global Services on acquisition

• Analysts say Citi is known to drive a hard bargain, extracting a lot of value for the money they pay (With inputs from Ranjit Shinde)

TCS close to buying Citi’s BPO arm for $550 m

2008-10-06T09:42:00.000+05:30

Jessica Mehroin Irani & George Smith Alexander
MUMBAI

TATA Consultancy Services (TCS) is close to acquiring Citigroup’s captive BPO arm Citigroup Global Services (CGSL). Sources close to the development say that the deal is pegged at around $550 million and it will be announced within a fortnight. They said the deal would guarantee TCS to get business for CGSL from Citigroup for five years.
When contacted, both Citi and TCS declined to comment on the development. The spokesperson of TCS and Citi said in separate e-mails that they do not comment on market speculation.
ET had reported on August 19 that TCS was in talks with Citigroup to acquire CGSL. Citigroup has put it on the block as part of the restructuring of its back-end operations in India. IBM and Genpact are said to be the other bidders. Sources said that talks with Genpact fell through as it sought an exclusivity agreement which Citi turned down. IBM lost interest as there were certain riders which it did not like, sources said.
CGSL, which has over 6 lakh sq ft of combined offices in India, handles multiple operations for Citigroup entities globally. This includes cards, consumer finance, retail banking, capital markets & banking as well as global transaction services. It has more than 60 million customers in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. It caters to operations in more than 40 countries and Citigroup is present in over 100 countries.
CGSL has its largest operations in Mumbai, Chennai and Gurgaon and employs around 12,000 people. If TCS takes over Citi’s BPO, it would add on to their already existing 8,000 strong back-office operations team which is mainly in India.
SUCCESS CURVE

• The deal is pegged at around $550 million and it will be announced soon

• The deal would guarantee TCS to get business for CGSL from Citigroup for five years

• Citigroup has put it on the block as part of the restructuring of its back-end operations in India

• IBM and Genpact are said to be the other bidders

Wachovia asset sale likely to hit Genpact

2008-10-01T10:31:00.000+05:30

INDIA’s largest BPO provider, Genpact, is likely to take a hit from the sale of Wachovia’s assets to Citigroup. Genpact had a strong relationship with Wachovia and was chosen by the US bank to set up a dedicated centre that would function as its back-office. The agreement between the two firms had created headlines as Wachovia decided to cut costs and move jobs to the new outsourcing centre under a ‘virtual captive’ model, popular with many banks and insurance providers that did not want to set up their own captive centres.

What this meant was that Genpact would staff and run the back-office operations much like it was Wachovia’s own captive. In other words, most of the functions Wachovia wanted to outsource was likely to come to its own ‘virtual captive’ run by Genpact.
Under the seven-year agreement that Wachovia signed with Genpact, around $1 billion of business was expected to come to the BPO provider. The contract also gave Genpact an opportunity to diversify its revenues from its largest customer and onetime parent, General Electric.

The sale of the Wachovia’s assets to Citigroup now puts a question mark on the business that was expected to come to Genpact. “No firm that has had relationships with any of the troubled banks will be able to come out unscathed. If you’re asking me if Genpact will be affected, the answer is clearly, yes,” said an expert with a firm that monitors trends in outsourcing. Genpact’s shares have been sliding and are now a little over $ 10, near its 52-week low of $ 9.24.

Typically, most large multi-year, multi-million dollar contract consist of two parts: committed business and expected business. The committed business is a much smaller proportion but the understanding in these contracts is the newer business will also flow to the same provider.

“Under these circumstances, it is the expected business may be in danger,” the expert added. Industry sources said the engagement on the committed business was expected to scale up to 14,000 people. A mail sent to Genpact on the impact of Wachovia’s sale was unanswered.

BPOs under threat?

2008-09-26T10:50:00.000+05:30

Forrester Vice-President John McCarthy Thinks So

Atop-ranked US analyst has said the events that shook Wall Street last week spell the end of the golden age of offshoring for India. Days after Wall Steet’s collapse, John McCarthy, a vicepresident and principal analyst with US research firm Forrester, said the scale of the crisis had rendered all previous studies including Forrester’s own survey, released earlier this month, redundant, and that Indian IT providers should prepare for slower growth and lower profits.

“It is naive to say an economic slowdown is good because cost-cutting will lead to higher offshoring. This is no longer a recession, it is fundamentally a restructuring of financial services that is taking place,” he told ET in Boston, Massachusetts. Many analysts, including research firm, Gartner, had said there could be higher opportunities for Indian companies and for offshoring.

However, Mr McCarthy said there was an impression that the financial services sector was over-staffed. Mergers and acquisitions, and the conversion of large investment banks into commercial banks meant there would be fewer employees, fewer vendors and less extravagant IT budgets.

These developments, he said, would have a huge impact. Growth from financial services, the most aggressive buyers of technology, he predicted, would ‘go back to 25% and
stay that way’. To put this in perspective, IT bellwether Infosys Technologies had shown a 50% growth in revenues from financial services clients in FY07.

What makes Indian IT vendors more vulnerable is their significant exposure to financial services clients — almost double that of their global peers as a percentage of revenue, according to Mr McCarthy. “There is no denying it will particularly impact Indian companies. In a way, they are paying the price for having under-invested in marketing all these years.... Margins will continue to drift down to 15%, and there will be real pressure on the topline,” he said. Also, the big difference between the last slowdown and the current one, is that offshore presence of global vendors like IBM and Accenture has swelled from around 2,000-3,000 employees to 60,000-70,000.

Intelenet appoints TCS’s Gayatri Balaji as COO for South India BPO business

2008-09-22T16:44:00.000+05:30

Intelenet Global Services Pvt Ltd. announced the appointment of Gayatri Balaji as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for the company’s domestic BPO business in the southern part of the country.

In her new role, Gayatri will be responsible for managing operations and all the support functions of the company’s centres in the southern belt.

Gayatri has rich experience in sales and delivery functions of the industry with past stints in organizations such as Standard Chartered Bank, Citibank and Tata Consultancy Services.

Crash of titans sparks fears of pink slip flood

2008-09-20T09:50:00.000+05:30

MUMBAI-based Kalpesh Malhotra (name changed) was on top of world when he joined the marquee I-bank Lehman Brothers early this year. He was among the select few, picked after a rigorous recruitment session, from one of India’s premier B-schools at a salary of Rs 18 lakh a year. But in a matter of months, the dreams of a great future, global business travel and meetings with top honchos have turned into a nightmare. After America’s fourth largest I-bank filed for bankruptcy there was chaos, panic and despair at its plush Powaii office.
Kalpesh is not alone. He now shares his uncertain future with about 2,500 employees of Lehman’s India unit and about 23 lakh people who work in the Indian IT and BPO industry. Almost 60% of the IT-BPO companies get their bread and butter from American financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual, Citi Group, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.
As these financial behemoths crash at Wall Street, lay-offs are being seen in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. Leading global HR consulting firm Manpower has drastically downgraded hiring outlook for India. According to Manpower, hiring outlook (% of companies planning to hire) dipped from 56% to 33% for quarter ending March 2009 for finance and insurance sectors. For IT-ITeS, the outlook has declined from 58% to 47%.
Companies are going to be badly hit, specially in the banking financial services &iInsurance (BFSI), IT and BPO, say experts. 5,000 jobs on the firing line
According to a estimates, MNCs in India in the BFSI and captive BPOs space may axe at least 5,000-8,000 people in the coming months.
Meanwhile at Lehman’s India unit, the fate of the 2,500 employees is as yet uncertain. At a meeting in Hong Kong this week, the company decided that the employees will get their September salary, but there was no word on their future. IT analysts forecast a grim quarter one and two of 2009 for IT hirings. To compound employees woes, HP on Monday announced it will cut 24,600 jobs globally, some of which will be in India.
Says Vikram Bhardwaj, CEO of Redileon, an executive HR firm: “All hirings, especially of top management across sectors is going to be badly hit in the ripple effect. From short to mid term, the scenario can only worsen, unless positive signals emerge from the US economy. Every new requirement for a hiring is being scrutinised heavily by the finance departments in IT companies.”
Though recruiting firms are downgrading outlook, top IT companies are still putting on a brave face ‘officially’. They are yet to downgrade their hiring guidance for FY09. But in reality, many companies (especially BPOs) have frozen new hirings and are only doing replacements. Companies like Satyam Computer Systems, Wipro Technologies, Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) say that their earlier guidance remains constant, at least for now.
While Infosys is committed to hire about 25,000 employees in 2008-09, TCS said that it will hire about 35,000 employees. On the other hand, Satyam has plans to hire about 15,000 employees in FY09. It has upped its employee utilisation rate, which stands at about 75% for both onshore and offshore work.
“Whatever we announced earlier holds good as of now,” says TV Mohandas Pai, HR Head Infosys. TCS agrees. “We had announced plans to hire 30,000-35,000 people in FY09. We are on track with our hiring plans for the year. We have given a salary hike of 10% to our India-based employees and 3-4% to our international employees in FY09,” added a TCS spokesperson. This is despite the fact that TCS laid off about 500 people in February this year while IBM dismissed about 700 freshers.
But the doomsayers still hold their ground. Says Avinash Vashishtha CEO of Tholons, an offshore advisory firm: “The crisis will continue to loom till the second quarter of the next calendar year because the consolidation of banks and restructuring will take at least about nine months. Hiring plans of all top IT majors are going to be rationalised till then.” In fact, many of the large IT companies are gearing for a lean period that may linger on to the quarter one or two of FY10 as well. “If the crisis lingers till March, we will moderate the salary hikes for next year. This year nothing can be done as it has already been announced,” said a CFO of a top tier IT company.
Meanwhile, it’s also a time for headhunters to get active. For instance, at EMA Partners International, a headhunting firm, on Wednesday itself, four to five companies asked if they could hire some Lehman Brothers’ employees.
Though life will get tougher for those who have not seen the world outside Lehman Brothers. Counselling is what they need at this moment. There will be standard salary increments of 5-6% across sectors instead of 14-15%. In fact, some say, “People will be happy if they get their salaries”.

BPOs to see major dent in their revenues

2008-09-16T09:48:00.000+05:30

TCS Likely To Suffer The Most

THE catastrophic events overtaking global financial majors will dent the revenues of Indian outsourcing majors, both in terms of the expected business and contracts they have already undertaken. Number one software services vendor, Tata Consultancy Services, is likely to be worse off than its peers because of its significant exposure to Merrill Lynch which, analysts said, ranks among its top five financial services clients. Merrill is also a significant client for Satyam Computer Services. Analysts estimate nearly 2,500 employees at TCS and Satyam work for Merrill.

The bankrupt Lehman Brothers has relationships with a number of top vendors but is not a major outsourcing compared to some of its peers. “Lehman has been the worst outsourcing company among the investment banks. Compared to it, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have been outsourcing a lot more aggressively. In 2003, its total outsourcing to vendors in India was only around $100 million,” said an analyst, adding that Wipro and TCS were among its vendors here.

“Lehman Brothers does not account for a significant portion of our revenue and we are in dialogue with them during this difficult period of uncertainty. Wipro is monitoring the US economic situation closely, but we have nothing more specific to communicate,” a statement from the company said. Wipro has around 400 employees working on software services and infrastructure management projects for Lehman. HCL Technologies is also a vendor to Lehman but Premkumar S, who heads HCL financial services business, said its exposure was less than a single integer in percentage terms.

Among the top five IT firms in India, HCL Technologies could possibly be the least hit by the crisis overtaking the global financial giants because of its lower exposure to financial services clients compared to its peers. Traditionally, the company has been strong in engineering services. Apart from Bear Stearns, which was bailed out by JP Morgan, Citigroup is its other major financial services client of note. Analysts were unsure of who the other Indian IT and BPO vendors of Lehman were. They said Satyam and Infosys may also be among its vendors but none of them are were likely to have above $50 million in annual revenues from the bankrupt firm

Indian BPO exports booms

2008-09-13T10:26:00.000+05:30

Indias third party business process outsourcing (BPO) services exports in 200708 grew 21.4 per cent to Rs.264.23 billion, up from Rs.217.60 billion in the previous fiscal, according to a new study. In dollar terms, the growth was even more impressive at 36.6 per cent to USD6.6 billion, up from USD4.8 billion last fiscal, said the study. It ranked Genpact as the No. 1 export revenue earner with revenues of Rs.26.59 billion, up by 19.8 per cent from Rs.22.20 billion that the company earned last fiscal.Aditya Birla Minacs, the second ranking revenue earning company last fiscal, maintained its rank this year as well. Its revenues grew 3.1 per cent to Rs.15.63 billion up from Rs.15.16 billion last fiscal.Apart from these two top rankers, the other companies that managed to maintain their ranks this year were Wipro BPO and HCL BPO. Wipro BPO maintained its 7th rank by growing 22.7 per cent to Rs.11.47 billion up from Rs.9.35 billion last fiscal.Similarly, HCL BPO maintained its 10th rank by growing 18.1 per cent to Rs.8.8 billion up from Rs.7.45 billion last fiscal. TCS BPO improved its ranking from 4th last fiscal to 3rd this fiscal by growing 38.6 per cent to Rs.13.64 billion, up from Rs.9.84 billion.In terms of rankings, the most dramatic improvement has been achieved by Intelenet Global which has moved up six places to come into the top 20 at rank 15. Last fiscal at rank 21 it was not in the list at all. Intelenet Global has grown a whopping 128.1 per cent the highest among the top 20 to Rs.6.57 billion up from Rs.2.88 billion last fiscal.The other companies to have improved their rankings this year were Infosys BPO which moved up four places to rank eight from rank 12 last fiscal. Its revenues grew 49.3 per cent to Rs.10.02 billion up from Rs.6.71 billion last fiscal.Firstsource Solutions moved up three places to rank six from rank nine last fiscal by growing 45.7 per cent to Rs.11.64 billion against Rs.7.99 billion last year. WNS Global Services and Mphasis were the other two companies to have improved their rankings. Both moved up one place to 5th and 19th respectively.Two companies Aptara and Evene4e moved out of the top 20 rankings. They were ranked 18th and 19th last year. Their places have been taken by Accenture India an absolutely new entrant and Intelenet Global.Among the sliders, Cambridge Solutions slid the most to rank nine from rank five last fiscal. In fact, it was the only company that showed negative growth of 10.3 per cent with revenues coming down to Rs.8.97 billion from Rs.10 billion last fiscal.Covergys India fell three ranks from eight to rank 11. Its revenues, however, just managed to show positive growth of 2.5 per cent to Rs.8.78 billion from Rs.8.57 billion last fiscal. VCustomer too slid three ranks to 18 from 15 last fiscal. Its revenues grew 9.5 per cent to Rs.4.85 billion from Rs.4.43 billion last year.24 7 Customer also slid three ranks to 20 from 17 despite growing 17.3 per cent to Rs.4.06 billion from Rs.3.46 billion last year. IBM Daksh, Aegis BPO, EXL Service and HTMT Global all slid by one rank this year compared to last year.The top 20 companies accounted for 74.2 per cent of the total industry revenue down from 77.4 per cent in the last fiscal

BPO firms change tack, see better revenues

2008-09-11T10:07:00.001+05:30

Bangalore Sept 10 Indian BPO firms are beginning to see revenues from new pricing models such as outcome-based and transaction-based models as they offer more of non-voice, platform-based services diversifying from the traditional voice-based offerings.
In a transaction-based pricing model, which is similar to pay-per-use model, the client pays the vendor for the number of transactions performed.
In some cases, pricing also depends on the value of the transaction. In the outcome-based model, pricing is linked to the outcome or output delivered to the clients. New models
Revenues are on the rise from such newer pricing models over the last year or two for these BPO vendors as they move away from selling services based on the input-based pricing or FTE (full time equivalent) model, wherein services are charged per person on hourly basis.
Such a shift is also helping these vendors improve their profitability, besides driving their non-linear growth. Investment ramp-up
“BPOs are moving away quickly from FTE-based revenue model to offering platform-based services,” said Mr Avinash Vashistha, CEO of Tholons Inc, an outsourcing advisory firm. Vendors such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Technologies Ltd and Wipro Ltd are investing in building and owning platforms, which helps them to offer services on newer pricing models.
WiproBPO earns about 40 per cent of its revenues from the transaction based pricing model.
“There has been an increase in transaction based revenues in the recent past,” said Mr Ashutosh Vaidya, head of WiproBPO.Infosys gains
Similarly, the BPO operations of Infosys Technologies Ltd earned about a seventh of its revenues from the transaction pricing model.
Infosys BPO has seen its transaction- based revenues rise significantly in the past two years, up from less than half-a-per cent in fiscal 2006 to about 14 per cent in fiscal 2008.
“Revenues from transaction-based pricing model will certainly increase over a period of time because of our focus on platform-based approach and willingness to sign deals on that model,” Mr Amitabh Chaudhry, Chief Executive Officer and Managing director, InfosysBPO, had recently told analysts in Chennai.
Mr Mathew Vallance, Global Head of Business Development at the Mumbai headquartered Firstsource Solutions Ltd, said such new pricing models, besides improving the profit margins, helps vendors to differentiate in the market place through better efficiency and productivity gains.
“It also helps us to demonstrate that we can innovate,” Mr Vallance said.Immediate impact unlikely
However, Mr Vashistha felt that shifting to such newer pricing models was unlikely to have an immediate impact on margins of these companies as they would have invested heavily in building platforms.
Firstsource earns about 60 per cent of its revenues from output or outcome based pricing, wherein earnings are directly linked to the outcome generated for the client.
For example, in collections business, where outcome-based pricing is well established, revenues for the service provider is paid as percentage of the debt recovered.
Mr Vallance said Firstsource collection business is entirely outcome-based, while the company adopts output and outcome pricing for various part of its healthcare business

HCL to counter Infosys' bid for UK's Axo

2008-09-10T12:58:00.000+05:30

Mumbai: The Bangalore-based HCL Technologies is learnt to be offering 15 percent over and above Infosys' bid for the UK-based SAP consultant Axon.HCL Technologies will counter Infosys' offer of 600 pence per share announced late last month, people involved in the discussions said. According to them, an offer in the range of 690 pence per share would be made by HCL in the next fortnight, inside the deadline for making a counter-bid.
A spokesperson for HCL told The Economic Times, "We have a policy of not commenting on speculation and hence I will not be able to answer the questions."After HCL's offer, Infosys will get a second chance to scale up its own bid. In case Axon's shareholders opt for HCL, Infosys will stand to be paid one percent of the deal amount as inducement. After announcing its bid, Infosys had claimed that it had the backing of the Axon board, large shareholders and some key employees.However, it was not immediately known as to how HCL, which witnessed a decline in its net profits last quarter due to global slowdown, plans to raise over $850 million it plans to shell out for the acquisition. Sources said that HCL has appointed a couple of investment bankers and consultants based in India and the UK to look into such critical aspects. A source said: "The company has to make a counter bid to Axon within 21 days. The bid would be made soon and HCL would raise the bid by around 15 percent above Infosys' offer." After a bid is made by HCL, Axon's shareholders could vote in favor of either of the bids. Shareholders however have a prerogative to vote in favor of Infosys despite their bid being lower than HCL's, an analyst explained.

Wipro BPO gears up to launch new centre in Vizag within 6 months

2008-09-08T13:18:00.001+05:30

Wipro BPO is aiming to launch its new upcoming centre in Vizag within 6 months. The centre is expected to have 1200 seats in the initial phase.

The centre to be set up with an investment of Rs 200 crore will ultimately have 6000 seats. For human resources the company is in talks with local institutions to attract talent.

Similar new centres are also coming up in Kochi and Greater Noida.

These centres will provide career opportunities in service, technical support and related areas.

BPO firm Etech to add 5,000 jobs in India

2008-09-06T13:05:00.000+05:30

Ahmedabad: Business Process Outsourcing company Etech Inc is looking to add 5,000 jobs at its Gandhinagar facility within the next 12-18 months. The Texas-based company has purchased tower IV at Infocity to accommodate the global as well as newly initiated domestic business.
The company plans to situate its domestic business at Gandhinagar and is looking to tie up with clients from travel, telecom and retail media sectors, said Yatin Shah, Business Development.

“For the business, we will be investing $50,000 a month in building infrastructure technology and $200,000 in employees,” said Jim Iyoob, Vice-President, Global Development. The company reports a turnover of close to $1 million a month out of Gujarat and plans to do $5-10 million post-job addition, he added.
The company will shift part of its voice processing back to the US due to accent issues and transfer its web chat business to India, said Iyoob.

“We do not want to shift jobs out of America. We will add something there too if we add jobs here. Today, Web chat is catching up as customers like it over phone calls. So we will shift a part of that business to India, and shift back some voice talent,” Iyoob said.

Currently, the company has 2,000 employees in India between its two centres at Gandhinagar and Vadodara. Etech has four centres in Texas, US and two in India but is open to expanding at other locations within India as well as in Africa, he said. The turnover of the company was $40 million last fiscal and the company hopes to reach $100 million in the next three years.

Return to the roots: BPOs now working to get Tamil, Bhojpuri accents right

2008-09-06T10:19:00.000+05:30

Hire Anthropologists, Linguists To Equip Employees With Better Knowledge Of Popular Culture And To Develop Authentic Accents

Harsimran Singh NEW DELHI

SINCE the business started, BPO agents have been put through American, Italian, French or British voice and accent training. Now it’s Indian languages like Bhojpuri, Marathi or Tamil which the BPO agents are trying to master. With a boom in the economy, the $1.6-billion domestic BPO market is all set to offer better customer service in regional languages. BPOs are spreading to small towns like Surat, Bidar, Pondicherry, Ranchi, Raipur, Patna, Kochi or Hassan.
Also, BPOs servicing customers from metro cities like Delhi or Mumbai are tapping into cultural associations and congregations around festivals to hire regional language talent.
Domestic BPO Aegis has started a program called ‘Shiksha’ under which it teaches agents how to speak better Gujarati, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil or Kannada to serve customers. This includes stress on the syllables and correct pronunciation of words, given the diversity of Indian languages. As opposed to the international call centre where a person can be rejected because of thick accent, domestic BPOs happily welcome these employees. For instance, the 16,000 employeestrong Aegis trains all its people in regional accents.
“We hire university anthropologists and linguists to train our employees who work for the domestic sector. The anthropologists train people in the history, popular culture and festivals of the state. The linguists and trainers, train agents to speak the popular language of a particular state in a correct and courteous way. We train staff in 14 languages currently. It’s important especially as we expand to smaller towns and cities,” says Aegis BPO Global CEO and MD Aparup Sengupta.
Some BPOs have gone the extra mile, literally, to tap regional talents. “We use the opportunity of Sunday congregations of Churches in North Delhi to hire Malayalam talent. Bengali and Assamese speaking candidates can easily be found in places like CR Park in Delhi.
While for Telegu and Tamil talent we use temples and cultural associations in Delhi’s RK Puram as a recruitment channel. Employee referral is also a good recruitment means,” says Omnia BPO business head HS Chadha.
India has 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects which makes it difficult for BPOs to customize solutions completely. But with all sectors like telecom, banking, insurance, auto, healthcare on a rise, BPOs are taking no chance to grab a pie of the domestic outsourcing business which is growing at a CAGR of almost 50% for the past five years.
The 12,500-people strong Infosvision generally hires employees familiar with at least two languages — one regional language plus a capability in Hindi or English. “People with a heavy mother tongue influence are preferred. We operate in almost 16 cities in non-metros such as Kochi and Bhubhaneshwar, where regional language skills are required,” says Infosvision marketing VP Gitanjali Dhup Singh.
Migrant student population from states to metros along with congregations around festivals like Navratri or Durga Puja are a good source of talent for the BPOs operating in the metros. International call centres are facing the pressure with squeezed margins due to a slowdown in the US and a volatile dollar. Domestic BPOs are flourishing as they require lesser capital and garner the same margins at about 18%, as in exports. With the domestic market booming in the last two years, demand for regional language skills will grow for BPOs expanding to small towns.

Infosys Inaugurates its Second BPO Campus in Jaipur

2008-08-30T14:32:00.000+05:30

Jaipur, India - August 29, 2008: Infosys BPO Ltd (Infosys BPO), the Business Process Outsourcing subsidiary of Infosys Technologies Ltd (Infosys), today announced the inauguration of its second BPO campus at Mahindra World City, the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Jaipur, Rajasthan. The Honorable Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Smt. Vasundhara Raje was the Chief Guest. She was accompanied by Dr. Digambar Singh, Minister of Industries, Government of Rajasthan. Infosys’ CEO and MD, Kris Gopalakrishnan and Member of The Board, Mohandas Pai, along with CEO and MD of Infosys BPO, Amitabh Chaudhry, were also present.
Speaking on the occasion, Kris Gopalakrishnan, said, “Jaipur is becoming an exciting destination for the IT-ITES industry. The Honorable Chief Minister, Smt. Vasundhara Raje has proactively put in place progressive policies and has invested in infrastructure to ensure rapid growth. Our investment in the second campus firmly establishes Jaipur as a significant center for Infosys. We are extremely happy to be in Jaipur and acknowledge the support and encouragement of the state government.”
The new campus at the SEZ at Mahindra World City, Jaipur, will be spread over 42 acres with a total investment of Rs. 531 crore to be made in phases. In phase 1 of its construction, the company has made an investment of Rs. 171 crore, creating a built-up area of 3,69,100 sq. ft and a seating capacity of 3,200.
The Jaipur Campus has been built on the best global environment standards to ensure efficient consumption of energy per square foot and the least carbon footprint. The campus is designed as a green building to meet the gold/platinum rating standard of LEEDS. As a part of Infosys’ drive to become carbon neutral, this campus will have 49% of the total area as the green belt. Green sourcing practices, integrated water management, and adoption of environment-friendly refrigerant are among the many initiatives that Infosys has undertaken to help control global warming and ozone depletion.
The first Infosys BPO campus at Sitapur has been operational since August 2006. This center has seen an investment of Rs. 22.77 crore, a built-up area of 78,000 sq. ft and has a seating capacity of 890.
At the inauguration, Amitabh Chaudhry said, “We are pleased with the quality of work that is delivered from our Jaipur operations. The new campus in the SEZ at Mahindra World City reiterates our belief in the talent in the city and this region.”
Infosys BPO works with universities in Rajasthan through ‘Project Genesis’, a program to enhance skill-sets in students and make them industry-ready. Since October 2005, Infosys BPO has worked with 229 lecturers in 110 colleges and imparted training to 3,250 students in industry-relevant skills including language, presentation, and analytical skills.
Infosys’ Campus Connect Program has partnered with 32 engineering colleges in Rajasthan. This program is aimed at enhancing the employability of the talent pool. As a part of this program, Infosys has trained 120 faculty members and 1914 students in Rajasthan.
The Special Training Program (STP) enables MCA and engineering graduates, from socially disadvantaged sections, to compete on an equal footing in the job market. This program has successfully partnered with Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT), Jaipur, and is training the first batch of 31 students in Computer Science and Software Engineering.

Countrywide BPO unit to merge with BankAm arm

2008-08-22T17:12:00.001+05:30

The ripples of the subprime fiasco are being felt in many ways. The business process outsourcing (BPO) arm of Countrywide Financial in India, CFC India Services, is merging with Bank of America’s (BankAm) non-banking subsidiary, Continuum Solutions, as part of BankAm’s $2.5-billion global takeover of the loss-making Countrywide.
While there will be no job cuts in India after the merger, all Countrywide staff will have to switch over to the BankAm salary structure, said a source familiar with the development. Some of the top management of Countrywide led by expatriate director Tom Jones may have to go. While BA Continuum MD Avtar Monga is expected to head the KPO segment of the merged entity, Countrywide’s head of operations in India, Gautam Bahai may be given the charge of mortgages, the source said.
When contacted, a BankAm spokesperson from Singapore refused to comment on the matter.
As in the US, BankAm will drop the Countrywide name in India. CFC India Services, with its 3,500 seats in Mumbai and Hyderabad, till now was operating as a subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corporation and was providing processing and infotech-related services to Countrywide in the mortgage and related financial services industry. With its merger with BA Continuum Solutions, the BPO unit will now service BankAm’s clients.
On the other hand, in the past three years, Continuum Solutions has set up 3,000-seater outsourcing unit in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Gurgoan under BankAm’s global delivery centre of expertise. The Indian non-banking subsidiary functioned as BankAm’s dedicated banking back office, and is providing back office support to consumers, wholesale and capital market groups.
While Continuum’s Hyderabad and Gurgaon offices offer consumer and wholesale banking services along with infotech services, Mumbai’s knowledge service centre is dedicated to offering global corporate investment banking services. In January, BankAm took over Countrywide Financial for $4.1 billion in a stock deal, but cut the deal size in July to $2.5 billion due to mounting losses of Countrywide, a Fortune 500 company till the subprime crisis made a big hole in its balancesheet.

Infosys BPO restructures procurement business

2008-08-21T09:46:00.001+05:30

Infosys BPO restructures procurement business
BANGALORE: Infosys BPO, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, today announced that the company has reorganized its procurement business to provide end-to-end solutions across the entire ‘Source-to-Pay’ cycle to address the changes in the global sourcing and procurement industry and differentiate itself vis-à-vis competition.
The reorganization, which came into effect on August 1, will help the company enhance its portfolio of offerings and will emphasize Infosys’s transformational capabilities, said a press release. The restructuring will also help broaden its service offerings and customer base.
Traditional BPO services for procurement have been based on cost arbitrage which focuses on a ‘procure to pay’ cycle model, according to the release.
As client organizations move up the maturity model of their procurement functions, they have seen a need to go beyond the outsourcing of ‘tactical sourcing’ to outsourcing of a more critical ’strategic sourcing’.
This includes greater visibility to spend management and providing of category specific sourcing expertise, increasing both efficiency as well as effectiveness of the outsourced procurement process.
The services under the new practice comprise e-procurement, Supplier Management, Contract Management, Strategic Sourcing and Spend Management.
Commenting on the advantages of restructuring, Ravi Panchanadan, head, S&P, Infosys BPO said, “With the dynamic changes occurring in the procurement market, there is a need to realign to create a model that can meet the new challenges of our strategic direction, increased customer expectations and higher levels of competition.”
Infosys BPO has also launched a Sourcing and Procurement Academy that would train the employees on the latest global practices and requirements to service clients under the new offerings.

Citigroup close to Indian outsourcing unit sale

2008-08-20T15:00:00.003+05:30

Citigroup, the US bank that has posted billion dollar writedowns since the credit crunch struck last summer, is reportedly close to selling its Indian outsourcing unit to a division of local conglomerate Tata.

Citigroup close to Indian outsourcing unit sale

2008-08-20T15:00:00.001+05:30

Firstsource arm bags BT deal

2008-08-14T10:36:00.001+05:30

Mumbai, Aug. 13 A subsidiary of pure play BPO firm Firstsource Solutions has bagged a six-year engagement – which could go up to $30 million with British Telecom Global Services (BTGS).
Pipal Research, Firstsource’s US-based subsidiary, will provide knowledge process outsourcing services related to business research to BTGS; it would cover market, segment, country and customer research, proposition support and other numerical-analysis work, according to a company’s statement here.
“This partnership will give BTGS a tremendous competitive advantage and will allow BTGS Marketing to devise new products and services for the global markets faster than ever before,” Mr John Leigh, Head of Insight, Strategy and Planning, BTGS.
Outsourcing of business research is a high growth service and is estimated to represent $16 billion by 2010.
Pipal Research currently provides KPO and marketing process outsourcing services to more than 30 companies sectors such as financial services, technology, telecom, and investment banking.

Accenture BPO to expand headcount

2008-08-12T19:17:00.000+05:30

New Delhi: Global consulting and technology services major Accenture is planning to expand the company s business process outsourcing (BPO) footprint in India by increasing the headcount to 50,000 in the next five years and opening of more centres in various cities. "We would be increasing our headcount from 37,000 to 50,000 in the next five years and set up more centres. Most of our business would be focused on the third party solutions and a little bit on the captive sector," Accenture BPO Lead Executive P G Raghuraman told PTI. The company is also seeking to tap the BPO industry by securing new acquisitions in the domestic market. "In the last quarter, we made 10 acquisitions globally and there is lot of scope for replicating it in the country," He, however, refrained from mentioning the names of firms Accenture BPO is eyeing presently. "If we go for acquisitions, it would be for increasing our capability and delivery network and not for merely increasing our scales," Raghuraman added. He said the company is planning to tap the emerging growth opportunities in the domestic business sector. The company has presently 37,000 employees in the country and 13 centres located in six cities and plans to add another 13,000 odd employees as part of the firm s global delivery network expansion. "In the future, we are looking at all emerging sectors including telecom, retails, FMCG for providing support with our BPO network. In addition, we are also seeking to tap the opportunities in sales support, finance and accounting and supply chain management," Raghuraman said.

HTMT Global plans more centres

2008-08-08T09:47:00.000+05:30

HTMT Global Solutions, the Rs 670 crore business process outsourcing (BPO) company, would invest close to Rs 55 crore this fiscal for capital expenditure including setting up new BPO centres and increasing manpower.
Speaking on the sidelines of CII ICT seminar, Partha Sarkar, CEO of HTMT, said, “We are evaluating setting up new BPO centres in places like Orissa, Coimbatore, Nagpur and Nashik. We are also planning to expand into new geographies like Europe and China in the next one year.”
Currently the company has overseas operations predominantly in Asia, US and Canada. In India, it has 11 centres, employing close to 10,000 people.
“We will hire 3,000 more by the end of this fiscal,” Sarkar informed. HTMT is also investing Rs 25 crore in setting up a 1000-seater facility in Durgapur, expected to be operational by next fiscal. The company has already secured 1 acre for the new facility.
Currently it runs a 650-seater BPO in Durgapur on leased premises. “We are looking at more tier II cities and towns like Siliguri, for new centres to carry out our non-voice services,” Sarkar informed. HTMT is also looking at acquisitions in the ITeS space.
The company currently has a cash surplus of Rs 450 crore which it will use for future acquisitions and domestic expansion.

Genpact to recruit 7000 in Kolkata

2008-08-08T09:42:00.001+05:30

India’s largest business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Genpact has entered into a contract with Unitech to build a 7,000-people office in Kolkata and is looking at positioning Kolkata as its main centre for handling most of its voice and non-voice projects, due to availability of cheap and skilled labour.

Speaking on the sideline of CII ICT seminar, Shantanu Ghosh, senior VP and business leader of Genpact, said, “We have over 16 centres now in India employing over 25,000 people. But for our future projects, we are looking at handling maximum voice and non-voice projects at the Kolkata centre.”
Currently, it has 750 people at its Kolkata centre.
“Currently our domestic business is negligible but we are aiming at a significant growth as we take on more Indian clients who we would cater to from our India centres itself. So far we were managing global outsourced projects from other locations. But now we plan to get into India to India business. All the growing sectors will be potential clients for us for who we would manage the back office,” Sarkar said.
The company, which posted a global turnover of $823 million, plans to grow revenues by 28 per cent.Genpact is also looking at opening 2-3 centres every year.

‘HR leaders should be up to managing diverse workforces’

2008-08-08T09:34:00.000+05:30

Today, HR is not only grappling with issues of attrition and retention, but also of maintaining a talent pipeline, driving high performance throughout the organisation and experimenting with new compensation practices. Hewitt’s 2007 Top Companies for Leaders research shows that ‘buying’ leaders in the open market will become increasingly risky and difficult. “Building” leaders will be the only way to succeed, says Ajay Soni, Business Leader, Talent and Organisation Consulting, Hewitt Associates, in an interview with The New Manager. Over the years, HR has become strategic to business. Could you throw some light on how HR can change the economics of the business?
Hewitt’s research on Next Generation HR has placed bold bets on areas where HR can deliver most value to business:
Human capital R&D: Next Generation HR will demonstrate a causal relationship between workforce practices and business performance. This will be done through advanced data-mining and the predictive modelling of human capital processes to identify new business insights. In other words, HR would continue its focus on human capital measurement but would shift from ‘post facto’ measures to more ‘predictive’ measures allowing management to make better strategic decisions.
Talent engine: Hewitt’s experience has shown that leading companies recognise that talent management requires a disciplined and rigorous approach in the same way that organisations manage their supply chain for products and services. To drive a continuous supply of talent, HR would not only have to look at new talent acquisition, but also at articulating future critical competencies required by the business, creating mechanisms for the assessment of internal talent on these competencies, development of internal talent, creating workforce planning frameworks and determining market pay levels.
High performance: Next generation HR will be accountable for driving performance at the organisational, team, and individual levels. We believe what’s different about today’s focus on high performance is a growing recognition that many of the traditional approaches — rewards, performance management, and development — have not succeeded in driving improved productivity for many organisations.
Rather than focusing on individual motivators, HR functions will in future begin to look at driving performance as an end-to-end process that begins with goal-setting and alignment, ensures accountability for achieving results, includes thorough and consistent feedback, and ends with differentiated and targeted rewards and developmental opportunities.
Considering that HR has a pivotal role to play now, what are its responsibilities in times of a downturn/recession?
In times of downturn, leading companies begin to focus on leveraging higher performance from their workforces. This is done by better goal alignment and higher levels of stretch in targets and more rigorous performance coaching. We have seen that at such times, leading companies start paying even more attention to retaining and developing their top talent. Hewitt feels that HR technology investments, shared services, and outsourcing accelerate at such times as does a focus on the more cost-effective processes. HR professionals should also help their organisations become more nimble in adapting to change. What they do today will position their organisations to look smart as business conditions improve, or, if they do nothing, they may be playing catch-up with their more agile competitors.
Could you comment on the HR talent in the country? Do we have people with the necessary skills for a developing economy?
The HR function has gained in salience over the past two decades. It’s been a long haul from a mere support function to an indispensable asset for most companies. Given the pace at which business is changing, there is a need for HR to enhance its capabilities. There is a shortage of HR professionals today; the function is witnessing one of the highest attrition rates in the country.
In a survey for which Hewitt interviewed more than 50 CEOs and business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region, it was found that business acumen was a basic requirement expected of an HR professional. In a globalised economy, HR leaders should be prepared to manage a global workforce. Today’s talent can be sourced from across the world. HR leaders need to be proficient at developing and promoting talent from anywhere and creating the infrastructure to build a high-performing global workforce. For HR, this will mean managing new types of relationships and adapting to a diverse population in terms of needs, business requirements, and cultural expectations.
What about compensation patterns in the country?
Organisations in India are using compensation as a strategic lever to attract, retain and motivate talent. An increasing number of organisations are plagued by attrition and retention issues. Currently, organisations are trying to retain talent by keeping a closer eye on market movements. A big part of this involves frequent reviews of employee salaries. A growing number of organisations are now benchmarking salaries against best-in-class companies, leaving behind the traditional approach of benchmarking against best-in-industry organisations.
Is variable pay an accepted concept here?
Variable pay in India is an extremely well-accepted concept in India. The Hewitt Salary Increase Survey 2008 showed that 95 per cent of the participating organisations had variable pay / pay-for-performance as a component of their compensation structure. In fact, our research shows that salary increases are also performance-linked, with the highest performer, on an average, getting an increase that is 50 to 75 per cent higher than that of a performer who is rated, ‘Meets Expectations’.
Are there any innovative practices emerging in the industry?
Some of the best employers are creating organisation structures that enhance ownership and autonomy, making young managers responsible for a high level of decision-making. Leading organisations have a sharp focus on leadership development. This includes developing the top team and a leadership pipeline for the future.
They have high-potential / accelerated development programmes that offer superior development opportunities, cross-functional roles, action learning projects, accelerated vertical movement in addition to higher fixed pay and variable pay. Long-term incentives are emerging as an important retention and motivational tool for the senior and top management levels.
We find that every year, the best employer comes from the industry that is booming during the period. Does this mean that good employers only come from profitable sectors?
The Best Employers show an alignment between their people processes and business goals. The very nature of this alignment leads to engaged employees and a high level of business goal achievement.
Hewitt has seen that the Best Employers beat the rest on total shareholder returns significantly, irrespective of whether the industry is on an upswing or a downturn. The winners of the Hewitt Best Employer Study-2007 were from diverse industries: manufacturing, services, banking, IT, pharma, FMCG and retail.
Some best practices that make a company ‘best employer’ today?
This is the sixth year of the Hewitt Best Employers study in India. These studies have shown that there are clear differences between the human capital management practices followed at The Best vis-a-vis The Rest.
The best organisations have a clear focus on ensuring high-performance cultures and workplaces, supported by strong performance management and a high degree of linkage to career opportunities. For the best employers, performance assessment is an effective tool and senior leaders are not hesitant to use it. It serves the purpose of supporting the business strategy.
The board and leaders of the best are significantly more engaged in and take ownership of talent and leadership issues. They focus on performance and competency assessment as a means to segment future potential and top talent.
Best employers build processes and practices that allow experiential learning opportunities for talent and high-potentials. They also ensure a pay-for-performance culture in their organisations and use variable compensation to motivate employees.
The ‘Best Employers’ understand the employee value preposition/ employer brand. Employees join the organisation for this promise and the organisation strives to give its employees the promised experience through its structure, processes and systems. A laser sharp focus on effective implementation of HR programmes, to be able to deliver on the employer brand.

‘Attrition at Satyam among lowest in industry’

2008-08-08T09:32:00.000+05:30

Hyderabad, Aug 7 IT services provider Satyam Computer has managed to bring down its attrition rate to 11.5 per cent during 2007-2008, which is amongst the industry’s lowest, according to Mr B. Ramalinga Raju, Chairman of Satyam Computer.
The growth witnessed during the last fiscal had been the result of several strategic initiatives and continuous investments despite the fairly hostile macro economic environment of the rupee appreciating and talent cost going up, Mr Raju conveyed to the company shareholders in the annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
To curtail margin pressures, the focus has been on increasing billing rates and offshore revenue contributions, diversifying regional revenue mix. These initiatives worked and the North American revenue was down at 60.35 per cent versus 64.53 per cent the previous fiscal.
The company also changed its corporate tagline ‘Business Transformation Together’.Two subsidiaries
During the year, the company created two subsidiaries in Egypt and Brazil to address regional markets and to help serve the region. It had also bagged the mandate to serve as a strategic partner for FIFA World Cup and to provide IT services during 2010 and 2014 world cup tournaments.
The company has 617 active clients; of them more than 180 are on the US Fortune 500 list.
Acquisitions have helped the company enter new areas of services complimenting the company business. These include Citisoft, Knowledge Dynamics, Nitor Global, Bridge Strategy and SV Consultants.
India is considered to be one of the most favoured destinations for offshore IT service delivery and trends point towards large, multi-year deals. The company sees domestic market is coming of its own and is witness to a high degree of mergers and acquisitions, involving some key players in the market.
Referring to tangible and intangible assets, the company maintained its brand value is now estimated at Rs 9,873 crore.

Aegis of India to buy local BPO for $250m

2008-08-06T10:31:00.000+05:30

Aegis BPO, a unit of one of India’s largest conglomerates, Essar Group, will acquire Philippine-based PeopleSupport Inc. for $250 million.
Rainerio Borja, president of PeopleSupport Philippines Corp., told reporters yesterday in a press conference PeopleSupport’s operations would be merged with Aegis BPO after the acquisition.
“We continue to be very bullish on the Philippines. This merger enhances our plans and I think it can only speed up our growth,” said Borja.
The combined entity will have revenues close to $500 million this year, with Aegis contributing $320 million. The purchase will also integrate Aegis’ 25 facilities, 20,000 employees and 14,000 seats with PeopleSupport’s seven facilities (six in the Philippines, and one in Costa Rica), 8,400 workers and 7,000 seats.
The merger will be done through Aegis’ wholly-owned subsidiary, Essar Services (Mauritius). The merged entity would then be renamed Aegis People Support Inc.
Borja said PeopleSupport would still pursue domestic and international expansion plans, increasing its facility in Baguio City by 500 to 750 seats in the fourth quarter.
The company is also looking at expansion opportunities in Costa Rica and other Spanish-speaking countries.
The company plans to get as much as non-voice business as it could to optimize the seat utilization at daytime, which currently stands at only 30 percent.
“To optimize seat utilization at daytime, you either go to non-voice or you go to other geographical locations, which we can do both with the merger with Aegis BPO,” said Borja.
He said while the downturn in the economy of the United States was a factor in the company’s decision to sell out to Aegis, it had enough muscle to ride out the crisis.

ACS wins $120m BPO renewal deal from Apollo

2008-08-01T15:38:00.001+05:30

Aug 01, 2008 (Datamonitor via COMTEX) -- - Affiliated Computer Services has won a three-year $120m BPO contract renewal from Apollo Group, the parent company of private US universities the University of Phoenix (UPX) and Western International University (WIU).

ACS has been providing services to Apollo since May 2002. It already handles student financial aid processing for UPX and WIU. It also operates a dedicated call center for handling financial aid questions from students. It serves both WIU and UPX online campuses, as well as UPX's 79 local campuses and 117 learning centers nationwide from a centralized location in Tempe, Arizona.
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For full details on Affiliated Computer Svc (ACS). Affiliated Computer Svc (ACS) has Short Term PowerRatings of 5. Details on Affiliated Computer Svc (ACS) Short Term PowerRatings is available at This Link.

Genpact to support Hyatt team

2008-08-01T09:42:00.001+05:30

New Delhi: BPO major Genpact has announced that it has signed a five-year contract to provide finance and accounting services to Hyatt Shared Service Center, LLC. The decision to re-engineer and globalise these services is part of Hyatt’s global competitive improvement initiative. Terms of the contract, and the size of the order, were not disclosed. Genpact, which provides finance and accounting services to over three dozen global enterprises, would support Hyatt’s finance team in the area of accounts payable, credit and collections

WNS partners with Accertify

2008-07-31T09:45:00.001+05:30

Indian BPO services provider WNS Global Services has entered into a partnership with Accertify, a US-based technology company focused on developing fraud prevention tools, to deliver fraud prevention solutions to the online travel industry. The companies will offer process management expertise in the travel domain with state-of-the-art online fraud detection technology. The partnership will employ Accertify’s Intercepta system (a solution for combating card-not-present fraud) as well as the process expertise of WNS to deliver automated and robust credit card fraud defense capabilities at the point of sale. Steve Reynolds, MD – North America, WNS Global Services, cited that the partnership will expand the company’s offerings along with indicating its commitment to provide efficient customer care services for the travel industry. Of the USD 250-billion revenue generated by the online travel industry in 2007, companies lose approximately USD 600 million annually due to online frauds. About 33 percent of the airline industry is impacted by credit card fraud, accounting for about 60 percent of external fraud-related losses

Patni opens its first Green Knowledge centre in Noida

2008-07-30T09:40:00.001+05:30

In line with its prior green initiatives, Patni Computer Systems, a provider of Global IT and BPO services today opened its first Green IT-BPO knowledge centre- Patni Knowledge Centre, in Noida.

Established on Green Architecture, the centre is a product of investments valued Rs. 175 crores, and stretches over 5 acres of land and offers seating capacity for over 3500 people.

The centre, designed and built according to the guidelines of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) India Green Building Rating System for New Construction, boasts of climate responsive architecture. Other features of the establishment include- 50 percent green area, 100 percent recycling of sewage, with an interior materials consisting of low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and it makes maximum use of eco-friendly recyclable material.

While inaugurating the Knowledge Centre, Mr. Narendra K. Patni, Chairman and CEO, Patni said, “We recognize our responsibility to protect the environment. The launch of our first Green centre is a significant step in demonstrating the company’s commitment to environment conservation”.

The centre is currently undergoing the certification process and is jointly inspected by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) and US Green Building Council (USGBC).

Lehman BPO shows door to 180

2008-07-29T10:01:00.001+05:30

NEW DELHI: Lehman Brothers’ captive back-office unit in Mumbai is set to hand pink slips to over one-fourth of its employees. Lehman Brothers Financial Services (India), which employs around 700 people at its captive unit at Powai has asked about 180 employees to leave. “In the second quarter, Lehman Brothers, globally, announced a $2.8-billion net loss due to bad debt. Some processing related to this bad debt was being done at Mumbai, which has been affected. Moreover, it’s expected that Lehman will announce a further write-off of about 2.5-billion in Q3 and declare some assets for sale. All this will have an impact on the Mumbai unit,” said an IT-BPO industry expert. When contacted, Lehman Brothers India senior vice-president and HR head Awdhesh Krishna said, “This is not true. No one has been sacked at the back-office unit.” The captive unit provides technology support and financial process outsourcing services to the parent company. Earlier this year, Lehman Brothers lost senior executives like investment banking senior VP Charandeep Singh and mortgage capital senior VP Sameer Chadha to rivals. Mr Chadha quit to join Barclays where he is heading operations of its upcoming back-office unit in India. Captives are losing their sheen, with rising operational costs and higher-than-industry attrition rates. Embroiled in the global financial crisis, several financial services firms have decided to sell their captives. Citigroup’s captive has been on the block since last year.

Recently, Fidelity Management and Research Company India said it will shut down its Gurgaon offshoring unit by September-end in a bid to consolidate its operations. The Gurgaon facility employs 350 people and provides back-office IT support to the US-based Fidelity Management and Research Corporation. Insurance major Aviva recently sold its captive BPO unit to Mumbai-based WNS Global Services for $228 million. “The trend among financial services companies streamlining operations at their captives will gain ground as these companies are beginning to accept outsourcing all the work to third-party service providers. It would be IT jobs at these captives, which are largely restricted to support work that would be the first ones to go,” said outsourcing advisory firm Tholons CEO Avinash Vashistha. Banks, traditionally known to be wary of outsourcing to third-party outsourcing vendors due to data confidentiality, have taken to outsourcing as pressures mount to cut costs. A number of banks in relatively new outsourcing markets like Australia, for instance, have recently stepped up outsourcing efforts. National Australia Bank recently announced that it will outsource 500 jobs to vendors in India. New Zealand’s largest bank ANZ National and Australian bank Westpac, too, have announced plans to increase outsourcing to India

WNS gets into travel space

2008-07-29T09:47:00.001+05:30

BPO firm WNS (Holdings) Limited has partnered with the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) - a provider of financial settlement solutions and data analytical services for the travel industry - to extend its reach into the airline and travel sectors.
This alliance with ARC will allow WNS to provide a more comprehensive suite of airline-specific finance and accounting services to its clients. The companies will be able to combine their data analytics and jointly identify new opportunities to forge relationships within the travel industry.
“The travel industry is facing challenging times with record fuel costs, a difficult business environment and increased pressure on their operating models,” said Mr Steve Reynolds, Managing Director, North America, WNS Global Services

EXL Services eyes $50-200 m acquisition

2008-07-21T17:51:00.000+05:30

BPO services provider EXL Service Holdings, after its failed bid for Aviva Global Services, is now said to have closed in on a $50-200 million acquisition.
Recently, EXL lost out in its bid to acquire Aviva Global Services, which was sold after a tough bidding process to its competitor WNS Global Services for $228 million.
EXL eyes $210 million revenue ExlService BPO to expand in India, overseas More India business stories
Rohit Kapoor, chief executive, EXL, said the buyout will help the company to reach out to insurance clients in the UK.
"We have some companies that are in the pipeline and we are pretty close to the acquisition and an agreement would be signed soon," Kapoor said.
He further added that companies that are in its crosshairs are from insurance, banking and financial services sectors. Kapoor said these firms are attractive for the company as they complement their business verticals.
"From our point of view, any acquisition within the $50-200 million range is attractive," Kapoor said.
EXL has $100 million cash on its balance-sheet and would raise some additional amount through debt and equity to fund its acquisitions.
"The $100 million is entirely for acquisition," Kapoor said.
Aviva, before the WNS buyout, had an agreement with EXL that restrained the BPO firm from acquiring any of the top five competitors of Aviva in the general insurance and life insurance sector.
"With the limitation gone, we can now look at other insurance companies," he said.
The New York-based firm is also looking at acquiring firms in India to grab the domestic outsourcing revenue pie

TCS to focus on HR operations solutions

2008-07-18T12:05:00.001+05:30

MUMBAI: IT services major, TCS, is scaling up its platform-based BPOs and one of its prime focus is human resources operation (HRO) solutions. “HRO solutions is gaining a lot of traction and we are in talks with a few clients. We have received letters of intent from these clients and are currently negotiating with them,” said TCS COO and executive director N Chandrasekaran. These deals would be announced in Q2 of the current fiscal. During the company’s analyst call on Wednesday, he had said that there were three clients in the loop.
The contributions of the BPO sector to the total revenues of TCS is 6.1% in this quarter, compared with 6.3% in the previous quarter. Analysts are bullish on platform-based BPOs and believe it’s a segment to watch out for. “This is a modest beginning for them (TCS). Not many companies have platform-based BPOs for HRO and since TCS is commercialising it in the beginning, revenues will come in at high profitability,” said Edelweiss IT analyst Viju George. For a platform-based BPO, which focuses on a particular vertical or process, the pricing methodology is different and non-linear. Vendor revenues are not dependent on manpower billing, but on the volume of transactions done. Customers are billed for the transactions that go through on their side. The company will be conducting a pilot project in health care domain with one of their customers this month. Revenue contributions by the life sciences and health care verticals saw a marginal increase of 0.2% quarter on quarter. However, there was 0.8% drop in the year-on-year growth. Mr Chandrasekaran said the retail, manufacturing and utilities sector were doing exceedingly well and would continue to grow in the forthcoming quarters. “Manufacturing has grown 20% in Q1 and we have announced a number of large deals. It contributed 10.7% of overall revenues and improved from Q4 by 110 basis points. Retail contributed 8.6% to the total revenues,” he said. Despite the global slowdown, the company is confident of growth in manufacturing and have deals in the pipeline from those already announced in Q1. TCS had previously announced plans to be a $10-billion company by 2010, not necessarily through inorganic growth. “Acquisitions will not be driven by wanting to meet a particular revenue target. What matters is after acquiring the company we need to be able to multiply the revenues,” said Mr Chandrasekaran

Convergys Acquires Intervoice For $335 Million

2008-07-17T17:27:00.000+05:30

Convergys has acquired Intervoice, a company deals in the software-based interactive voice response, contact centre, and mobile messaging technology and applications markets, for $335 million. By integrating Intervoice’s complementary speech automation, Web self-care, and mobile applications, Convergys will be able to offer an array of automated and live agent services.
“This acquisition is part of our plan to be the market leader in Relationship Management solutions,” said Dave Dougherty, president and chief executive officer, Convergys. “We believe acquiring Intervoice allows us to compete more effectively as a single-source provider and enables us to grow our revenues and our earnings.”
Convergys expects the acquisition to be accretive beginning in 2009 on a non-GAAP basis, excluding amortisation and one time costs.
Convergys expects the transaction to close in the third quarter of 2008.Following the close of the transaction, Intervoice results will be included in the results of Convergys’ customer management segment.

Slowdown effect: 24/7 Customer relocates 450 staff to other centres

2008-07-16T19:19:00.001+05:30

New Delhi, July 15
Close to 450 employees of 24/7 Customer may feel the heat of slowdown and client churn in the BPO industry. With one of its clients announcing a phased ramp-down of offshore call centre partnerships in India, 24/7 Customer has asked the affected employees based in Gurgaon to re-locate to the other facilities of the company, or look at alternate job opportunities.
“Recently, one of our clients announced a phased ramp down of their offshore call centre partnerships in India due to change in their business strategy. We are one of the affected vendors.
“We have taken specific steps to support all employees servicing this client and have provided these employees with the option of pursuing their careers in other centres of 24/7. As an alternative option, we are also assisting them to find other employment opportunities outside 24/7 through collaboration with other companies,” Mr Pradeep Narayanan, President New Services & Global Chief Infrastructure/Risk Officer, 24/7 Customer, said in an e-mail response to Business Line.
He said that so far nearly 70 per cent of the affected employees had taken up these options.
The scaling down by the client is also learnt to have impacted three other BPO companies which were servicing the same customer. Projected growth
India’s overall software and services revenue is projected to grow between 21 and 24 per cent during 2008-09 to touch $62-64 billion.
The growth rate projections for FY09 are, however, lower than 28 per cent growth achieved by the industry in FY08, on account of a possible slowdown in decision-making on new projects and also due the fact that the industry now operates on a much larger base.
“There is definitely a slowdown in the growth rate of the industry. Many companies are internalising, are getting risk averse and do not wish to expand, thus impacting operations here. The business sentiments have taken a hit in all sectors, and we are not insulated from the West,” Mr Sam Chopra, President, Business Process Industry Association of India (BPIAI), said.
In addition, while many companies were earlier comfortable maintaining a certain percentage employees on bench for instant ramp-up, now with slowdown headwinds affecting key markets, that may no longer be the case, say industry observers

HCL acquires British BPO firm

2008-07-16T19:16:00.000+05:30

New Delhi, July 16 (IANS) India’s leading Software services firm HCL Technologies announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Liberata Financial Services (LFS), a UK-based business process outsourcing (BPO) firm, for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition of LFS, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Liberata Ltd, which provides end-to-end administrative and customer services for the life and pensions Industry, is expected to help HCL penetrate the British life and pensions industry.
The acquisition includes four delivery centres in Britain at Romford, Preston, Croydon and Welwyn garden city, along with 800 professionals.
“This acquisition will equip HCL with a ready capability across the value chain by providing access to an existing revenue base actuarial, analytics and policy management, catapulting HCL to become a leading service provider in the UK market for the life and pensions industry,” said Ranjit Narasimhan, president and chief economic officer of HCL BPO.
Liberata head Robert Gogel said the company had made significant investments in people, platform and service line development. “This sale will enable Liberata to focus on its core BPO business in the public sector,” he said.

WNS acquires Aviva BPO for $230 million

2008-07-11T16:26:00.001+05:30

Warburg Pincus-controlled WNS Holdings on Wednesday acquired Aviva Global Services, the UK-based insurance giant’s captive BPO in India and Sri Lanka, for $230 million. WNS has beaten Aviva’s other vendors EXL and 24/7 Customer to clinch the deal. The deal will also see WNS securing Aviva’s committed $1 billion outsourced work over an eight-year period. ET, in its edition dated June 2, had first reported on the impending transaction. WNS is expected to inform the US Securities Exchange Commission on Thursday. WNS will fund the buyout through a $200 million line of credit from ICICI Bank, while Warburg, which owns 51% stake, will pump in around $30 million as equity contribution. This is one of the largest buyouts of a foreign captive BPO in India.

The buyout will bring over 6,500 employees of Aviva Global Services spread across Bangalore, Pune, Noida, Chennai and Colombo under the WNS fold. WNS will be subcontracting part of the $1-billion deal with the other two vendors — EXL and 24/7 Customer. WNS, with a revenue of $459 million, has been aggressively looking at inorganic options to shore up its topline.

24/7 Customer transfers 750
Meanwhile, 24/7 Customer has announced the transfer of 750 employees from its Aviva 24/7 centre in Chennai to Aviva Global Services as part of its “Build Operate Transfer” (BOT) contract. This is the second BOT contract that 24/7 Customer is executing for Aviva. The first transfer was at the Bangalore facility, where 1,600 employees were transferred in January 2007. The Chennai centre has 750 employees servicing the Life and Motor insurance businesses of Aviva providing customer service, sales and finance and accounting operations. Aviva had put its captive BPO operations in India and Sri Lanka on the block quite some time back. The bidding is also believed to have attracted the interest of global giants like Capgemini, though this could not be confirmed independently.

UK BPO in $250-m play for Cambridge

2008-07-01T10:55:00.001+05:30

Xchanging, London-headquartered pure play BPO giant, is mounting a bid to acquire Cambridge Solutions in a deal valued close to $250 million. However, the promoter-shareholders at one of India’s leading BPO companies are not united on a sellout at the price offered. The FTSE listed $1-billion Xchanging has offered Rs 82 per share to Cambridge promoters pegging the company’s valuation at Rs 913 crore (around $230-250 million), bankers close to the Indian company said. While a set of promoters including the NRI Chanderia family, former Pepsico chairman Chris Sinclair and Cambridge vice-chairman Satyan Patel — who together hold 30% in the company — are learnt to be backing the offer, the company’s largest individual shareholder Ramesh Vangal and ex-McKinsey CEO Rajat Gupta reportedly feel that the bid undervalues the company. Sources said Mr Vangal may be exploring the possibility of structuring a counter offer in the next few weeks, and has not taken a decision on Xchanging’s offer. The Vangal-Gupta combine hold a little over 18% in the Bangalore-based company. While Mr Vangal offered no comment, Mr Patel could not be reached at the time of going to the press. An email query to Cambridge did not elicit response. Cambridge draws bulk of its revenue from BPO and small platform IT services. The company’s BPO operations has a major exposure in the US insurance sector, with roughly 1,600-odd employees in that country. Xchanging’s offer comes at a deep discount to last year’s Carlyle offer that valued the stock at over Rs 130, but presents a significant premium to the prevailing share price. On Monday, the Cambridge share closed marginally higher at Rs 57.05 on BSE. The stock has climbed up from a low of Rs 34.60 in March, but is still way off the Rs 135 level it touched in August 2007. According to banking sources, the Vangal faction feels that Xchanging’s offer price discounts the company’s ‘intrinsic’ value. It questions the logic of selling out at the price offered when Carlyle’s higher offer was rejected over valuation differences. Carlyle, which attempted a buyout deal along with Mr Vangal, gave up after prolonged discussions failed to strike a consensus with all the promoters on price. But, according to a source, the scenario has changed dramatically after the global slowdown, especially with the financial sector in the US bearing the brunt, impacting the business outlook of companies like Cambridge. “This is probably a reason why some promoters are seen pressing the exit button now. And with the rupee losing ground against dollar in recent weeks, there’s bound to be a limited upswing in valuation for the moment at least,” he said. The company’s total headcount is estimated at about 4,600 people. Cambridge reported Rs 1,267 crore topline in FY08 with Rs 8.79 crore loss.

UK BPO offers to buy Cambridge for $250m

2008-07-01T09:39:00.000+05:30

Global business may be facing a slowdown, but India’s M&A counter is buzzing with activity. BPO or hospitality, the India Story still rocks

Javed Sayed & Boby Kurian NEW DELHI/BANGALORE

XCHANGING, a London-based pure play BPO giant, is mounting a bid to acquire Cambridge Solutions in a deal valued close to $250 million. However, the promoter shareholders at one of India’s leading BPO companies are not united on a sell-out at the offered price. The $1-billion Xchanging, listed on FTSE, has offered Rs 82 per share to Cambridge promoters pegging the company’s valuation at Rs 913 crore (around $230-250 million), banking sources close to the Indian company said.
While a block of promoters including NRI Chanderia family, former Pepsico chairman Chris Sinclair and Cambridge vice-chairman Satyan Patel, who together hold 30% in the company, are learnt to be backing the offer, the company’s largest individual shareholder Ramesh Vangal along with ex-McKinsey CEO Rajat Gupta reportedly feel that the bid undervalues the company. Sources said Vangal may be exploring the possibility of structuring a counter offer in the next few weeks, and has not taken a decision on Xchanging’s offer. The Vangal-Gupta combine holds a little over 18% stake in the Bangalorebased company. When contacted, Vangal offered no comment. Patel could not be reached at the time of going to the press, while an email query to Cambridge did not elicit response.
Cambridge draws the bulk of its revenue from BPO and small platform IT services play. The company’s BPO operations has a major exposure in the US insurance sector, with roughly 1,600 odd employees in that country.
Xchanging’s offer comes at a deep discount to last year’s Carlyle offer valuing the stock at over Rs 130, but presents a significant premium on the prevailing share price. Cambridge stock closed marginally higher at Rs 57.05 on BSE on Monday.
Four Seasons Bangalore to
get $80 m
GOLDMAN Sachs is believed to be investing around $80 million in a JV with Dubai developer ETA to launch Four Seasons hotel in Bangalore, report Boby Kurian & Lijee Philip from Bangalore & Mumbai. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal-owned Four Seasons has unveiled aggressive expansion plans in India, even as fears of a slowdown in the hospitality sector are being raised. Vangal team feels ‘intrinsic’ value missed
THE stock has climbed up from a low of Rs 34.60 in March but is still way off the Rs 135 level in August last year. According to banking sources, the Vangal faction feels that Xchanging’s offer price discounts the company’s ‘intrinsic’ value.
It questions the logic of selling out at the offered price when Carlyle’s higher offer was rejected over valuation differences.
Carlyle, which attempted a buyout deal along with Vangal, gave up after prolonged discussions failed to strike a consensus with all the promoters on price.
But, according to a source, the scenario has changed dramatically after the global slowdown, especially with the financial sector in the US bearing the brunt, impacting the business outlook of companies like Cambridge.
“This is probably a reason why some promoters are seen pressing the exit button now,” he said.

Satyam BPO ranked second globally

2008-07-01T09:36:00.000+05:30

IT services provider Satyam Computer on Monday announced that Satyam BPO, its business process outsourcing arm, has been ranked second among the world’s leading BPO vendors in Brown-Wilson Group’s Black Book of Outsourcing.
Satyam BPO was also ranked fourth on the knowledge process outsourcing vendors list. More than 4,000 organisations were evaluated in compiling the lists.
For the third consecutive year, Satyam has been ranked among the top 10 in Brown-Wilson Group’s Black Book of Outsourcing. In 2007 and 2006, Satyam BPO, formerly Nipuna, had been ranked in several categories including KPO, energy and utilities.Growth areas win
The Chief Executive Officer of Satyam BPO, Mr Venkatesh Roddam, in a statement said “The categories in which we have been ranked this year (BPO and KPO) are the key growth areas that we have been focusing on. Recognition from the Brown-Wilson Group reflects our capabilities to offer transformation services through superior delivery.”

IBM leads race for Citi BPOs

2008-06-27T09:49:00.000+05:30

Citigroup Global Services & Citos On Block As Part Of Restructuring

Jessica Mehroin Irani & N Shivapriya
MUMBAI

FINANCIAL services major Citigroup, which is under pressure from mounting credit-related losses in US, is believed to be re-structuring its India back-office operations valued at over $1 billion in a bid to cut down costs and also monetise some of these assets.
The bank is learnt to have embarked on a larger exercise involving the sale and outsourcing of most of its back office assets under the new management led by Vikram Pandit. Sources said that the group’s captive BPO, Citigroup Global Services, as well as its technology and infrastructure outsourcing arm, Citos, are on the block and the bank could be close to finalising the deal with multinational technology vendor IBM Global Services, which is the lead contender for the assets. European consulting and IT services major, Capgemini, and a large Indian IT services firm, reported to be Tata Consultancy Services, are the other two contenders. The deal, if concluded, is expected to be close to $800 million. Citigroup Global Services is believed to have been put on sale last year but no transaction materialised.
Both IBM and Citigroup refused to comment on the development. “IBM doesn’t comment on speculations. There has been no such announcement by IBM,” a company spokesperson said. A Citigroup spokesperson responded to an e-mail from ET saying: “At Citi, we do not comment on market speculation/rumours. Hence, we will not comment on the following query.” The contours of the deal structure are still unclear but could include a significant outsourcing contract to the successful bidder. Citigroup is learnt to have revived talk of the BPO sale sometime back and was exploring different deal structures.
VITAL STATS
$600m
ESTIMATED BPO VALUATION
$200m
VALUATION OF CORE & TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT ARM
14000
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES
$3b
TARGETTED SAVINGS IN 3 YEARS Citos sale a surprise
BUT what comes as a surprise is the sale of Citos, which primarily involved remote infrastructure management for Citigroup and some amount of application development. Citos employs about 2,500 people and services Citi’s operations in 30 countries from its four facilities located in Chennai and Mumbai. “Citos was in the market sometime. But talks were suspended and the asset went off the market just before the new management changes were made,” said a source, confirming that three players were in the contention.
The BPO facility Citigroup Global Services employs over 11,000 people, primarily in Mumbai. The successful bidder will take over all the people assets and any hardware assets such as data centres maintained by Citos. It will also involve a commitment of minimum business for a period of about 3-5 years. In such acquisitions, the final pricing is based on the value of the assets being taken over and the business commitment that is given to the bidder. The committed business and the pricing at which the successful bidder will execute the outsourced projects is what most of the negotiations centre around.
At a recent analyst meet, Citigroup’s chief administrative officer Don Callahan told investors that the bank could get over $3 billion dollars of savings over three years from bringing in efficiencies in organisation and technology.
“Kevin Kissinger and his team of operating and technology took me through two solid days of business reviews. They said here is the benefit we get from centralisation. When we added it all up it was $3-billion of targeted savings over three years,” an excerpt from the analyst call transcript said.

Infosys ends down on fear of losing UBS

2008-06-26T10:59:00.001+05:30

Bangalore, June 25 Shares of Infosys Technologies Ltd fell 2.48 per cent on Wednesday on talks that HSBC might acquire UBS, one among Infosys’ top-10 clients.
Although there has been no confirmation from either HSBC or UBS, the media has reported that HSBC might make an $80 billion bid for the Swiss bank. Shares of the tech major dropped by Rs 44.40 to Rs 1,748.60 from Rs 1,793 on Wednesday on the Bombay Stock Exchange.IT Vendor
An analyst with a Mumbai-based brokerage Motilal Oswal said there is a possibility that UBS’ contract with Infosys might be terminated, once the deal is through. The analyst said HSBC would have its own IT vendor, and there is the possibility that UBS’ account might go to the vendor handling HSBC’s account.
However, UBS’ account with Infosys might probably be a big one valued between $100 million and $150 million, and it is not very easy to switch these accounts, he added.
He also said the evaluation gap between Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys was about 25 per cent, which meant Infosys was trading at a premium, while TCS traded at a discount. Investors might have wanted to reduce the risk on Infosys and put it in TCS. This could be another reason, he added.
Mr Harish HV, Partner Grant Thornton, said after an acquisition, the IT vendor usually does change. At the end of the day, they would have a common system, he added.
He said they might change immediately, or they may do it later. But there is also the possibility that Infosys might get larger deals from the common entity. However, Infosys would get a lower price for the larger deals, he added.Downgraded
In its recent research report, India Infoline has maintained its sell recommendation on Infosys Technologies. “The excess stock performance has been fuelled by company’s better positioning (due to lower forex cover) to take advantage of the depreciating rupee.
"We expect the company to upgrade FY-09 guidance, but based solely on the higher Re/$ assumption. The business fundamentals remain challenging,” said the report.
Indiabulls downgraded the stock rating to hold. “Key concerns to our rating include a recession in the US economy, a further slowdown in the BFSI segment, currency fluctuations, stronger competition from global players in the offshore arena, and a greater-than-anticipated wage inflation,” said in its recent report

HTMT Global to buy BPO co in Europe

2008-06-26T10:58:00.001+05:30

Chennai, June 25 “If you have cash, you are king,” may be a general adage for businesses. But when Mr Partha De Sarkar says it with a triumphant smile, it rings truer now, in the context of a global slowdown. Mr Sarkar, CEO of HTMT Global Solutions, part of the Hinduja Group and an outsourcing solutions provider, is keen to make an acquisition in the current environment when the average company’s prospects seem to be flagging and valuations are at an ebb.
In the city to launch HTMT’s second centre, Mr Sarkar told a press gathering that HTMT would acquire a BPO (business process outsourcing) company in Europe by the end of this fiscal.
It has earmarked around $110 million for the acquisition, which will mark its foray into the continent.
“We have short-listed four companies. We prefer to acquire a company in the UK, because of language affinities. We are interested in a company with revenues of about $50 million,” he said. “With a drop in valuations of companies, this is the right time to make an acquisition,” he said.
Till a few months ago, valuations used to be 9-10 times the operating profit (EBIDTA – earnings before interest, depreciation, tax and amortisation), but it is now 7-8 times. Mergers and acquisitions, in general, have dropped and there is a credit crunch with banks not too keen to fund such activity, he said.
As at March 2008, the company had about Rs 440 crore as cash reserves. For the year ended in that month, it reported revenues of Rs 673 crore.
Mr Sarkar ruled out acquiring BPO operations owned by customers such as big banks or telecom companies, due to over-valuation.
He said, “A captive BPO with revenues of around $150 million is sometimes valued at around $1 billion. Owners of captive units seem to be ambitious,” he said.New geography
According to Mr Sarkar, the acquisition in the UK will help the company foray into a new geography; while new customer markets and new delivery locations are other reasons HTMT is looking to acquire. The acquisition would be similar to acquisitions that HTMT made in the US and the Philippines, he said.
For the year ended March 2008, around 85 per cent of the Rs 673 crore revenues for HTMT came from the US and 15 per cent from Asia – with India contributing about Rs 91 crore.
HTMT provides BPO and contact centre services to global clients, including Fortune 500 companies. Other than the Bharti Group, Mr Sarkar did not want to disclose client names.Lease vs Buy
The company prefers to own its centres especially in metro cities or places where it wants to have a large set-up. Mr Sarkar said, “When you lease space, we have to invest some more and make it suitable for us. Every three or five years, owners raise rents, knowing that we cannot easily move out without seeing return on our investments. Hence, owning space in select centres is important.”
To this end, HTMT has raised about Rs 65 crore of debt recently. Mr Anand Vora, Chief Financial Officer of HTMT, said, “We have bought land in Vashi, Mumbai and in Durgapur, West Bengal to build a centre and campus, respectively.Chennai expansion
HTMT also inaugurated its second delivery centre at Nandambakkam in Chennai. Spread over 48,000 sq ft, the company-owned centre has a capacity of 1,200 seats, and will cater to both domestic and international businesses. Mr Sarkar did not disclose investment in the centre.
In Chennai, the company has 2,200 employees, and in the next two years will add 1,200 in the new facility, he said.
In India, the company has 11 delivery centres in Bangalore, Chennai, Durgapur, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Mysore. In addition, it has 10 global centres across Canada, Mauritius, the Philippines and US

CPA Global eyes 25-30 per cent market share in Indian LPO market

2008-06-23T09:39:00.000+05:30

MUMBAI: Eyeing a bigger share of India's legal process outsourcing space, CPA Global, a leading player in this segment, is set to scale up its Indian operations and has targeted a 25-30 per cent share in the domestic market in the next few years. "We are very clearly focused on achieving a leadership position that will ensure us getting a 25-30 per cent (in India)" CPA Global's Country Head, Bhaskar Bagchi, said. CPA made its Indian foray in 2007 with an initial investment of USD 50 million (Rs 200 crore) and has operations in LPO, patents, trademarks and intellectual property (IP) management. The company presently employs 350 professionals in the country against a global headcount of 1,100 and hopes to take the number to 10,000 by 2015, Bagchi said, adding "Indian legal services industry is poised to grow to USD 640 million by 2010 with an annual growth of $146 million". "The domestic LPO industry is in a nascent stage and I do expect that the growth would continue in the coming years," Bagchi said. Besides, an unprecedented rise in India-focused merger and acquisition activities and private equity and venture capital deals have necessitated the need for more flexible resources, Bagchi said. IP services, which accounts for over 45 per cent of the LPO market, is expected to lead the growth in the sector over the next three to five years, he said. CPA has its presence in US, Europe and Asia Pacific regions and is presently operating from Noida in India. The company has plans to expand its presence to other regions in the domestic market by setting up new offices across the country, Bagchi said.

Big 6 Switch to bigger deals, corner 2.4% of global work

2008-06-13T09:36:00.001+05:30

BANGALORE: The top six India-based offshore service providers, collectively referred to as the ‘SWITCH’ companies (Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and HCL Technologies), accounted for 2.4% of the total worldwide IT services market in 2007 as compared to 1.9% in 2006, according to a report by Gartner. Collectively and individually, this group of companies have achieved growth rates that have outpaced the rest of the market, Gartner said while adding: “All indications are that the Western European market is the next target growth area for offshore services.” Arup Roy, senior research analyst, Gartner, said: “With such strong growth rates that exceed the overall market, the India-based IT services providers are increasing in their competitiveness and taking market share away from the rest of the market. Increasingly, they are competing in larger outsourcing deals, with deal values routinely exceeding $100 million and spanning multiple years.” The growth rates experienced by these IT firms has also seen them expanding expanding into a broader base of services. “Consequently, they (SWITCH companies) are now regularly invited to bid for larger and more-complex outsourcing contracts, requiring multiple services. There is a gradual shift in increasing their revenue share from discrete project-based outsourcing services to annuity-based multi-year outsourcing contracts, thereby ensuring ongoing revenue streams. The approach has involved expanding the portfolio of service offerings, tapping new regions and focusing more on high-value services,” Mr Roy said. In 2007, the India-based group of SWITCH companies accounted for 3.6% of the US IT services market, compared with 2.8% in 2006 and grew its Western European revenue 51% in 2007, almost four times the total market. In 2007 the group accounted for 1.9% of the Western European IT services market, compared with 1.5% in 2006.

KPO firm Integreon plans three more buys for $100 million

2008-06-12T10:41:00.000+05:30

Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) firm Integreon Managed Solutions, which recently acquired litigation support and electronic data discovery provider Datum Legal, plans to buy one more company by the end of this year and two others in the next 2-3 years spending a total of $100 million.“The range is going to be bigger as we are growing. We will acquire another company by the end of this year,” Vice President (Knowledge Business Administration and Professional Document Services) Lokendra Tomar said. Integreon is evaluating possible buys in India, Europe and the US.Datum, the Los Angeles-based company’s fifth acquisition, was bought for $20-$25 million, according to industry analysts and based on Integreon’s publicly stated intentions in the past.It plans to hire 6,000 people in three years, majority of them in India. The company currently has 2,000 staff, 1,500 of them at its centres in Mumbai and Delhi. More than 500 of its employees are lawyers.The Mumbai centre is being expanded with an office in the Goregaon suburb, due to open next month. A delivery centre will come up in Europe in 12-18 months to cater to non-English-speaking markets on the continent, Mr Tomar said.

Reliance BPO expanding at fast pace

2008-06-11T11:06:00.001+05:30

Bangalore, June 10 Reliance BPO, the business process outsourcing business unit of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), is opening a new centre every week. It opened one centre in Hyderabad on Monday and will open one each in Kolkota and Chandigarh in the next two weeks.
The company is taking the franchisee route and gives the new centres to small domestic-centric BPO operators, Mr Rajnish Virmani, President and Chief Operating Officer, Reliance BPO, told Business Line on the sidelines of the Nasscom 2008 BPO summit here.
“We are opening a centre every Monday to meet the group’s growth,” he said. Each of the new centres will have a capacity to house over 1,000 employees, he said.
At present, the BPO unit is captive for the Reliance ADAG, but it is capable of handling international business. “We are keeping an eye on the international business,” he said at the seminar.
At present, around 80 per cent of the company’s operations are voice-based, he said.

‘Social order change, negative media cause of BPO disconnect’

2008-06-11T11:01:00.000+05:30

Bangalore, June 10 For an industry that has seen $11 billion revenue, provided 7 lakh people direct employment and three to four times more indirect employment, there seems to be disconnect surrounding it. This could be largely due to a social order change and negative stories in the media, said Mr Shanmugam Nagarajan, Founder and Chief People Officer, 24x7 Customer, in his keynote address on ‘Thinking Global, Acting Local’ at the Nasscom BPO Strategy Summit here on Tuesday.
Acting locally, the industry should tie up with educational institutions to offer ‘Business Process Education’ as a subject or course in order to inculcate a career bent of mind among youngsters, he said. It should also take steps to showcase its positives through the media. “It should be an individual and collective response” to the negative stories surrounding the industry, he added.
BPO companies should also engage themselves in corporate social responsibility activities, and conduct annual events city-wise to generate better awareness about the industry in the minds of the public. On ‘Thinking Global’, Mr Pramod Bhasin, Vice-Chairman of Nasscom, and President and Chief Executive Officer, Genpact, said that customers look for pockets or hubs for expertise globally in whatever domain they choose. Finding new locations is an exciting and new challenge that the industry is faced with. “But establishing new global opportunities means acquiring new skills, better infrastructure, unique HR practices, better regulations and enforcements,” he said.

Jerry Rao, Angels Back Ad Veteran Pranesh Mishra’s Marketing Startup

2008-06-09T14:36:00.001+05:30

Former Mphasis CEO Jerry Rao and eight other angel investors have invested Rs 6.5 crore (or about $1.5 million) in a marketing startup founded by Pranesh Misra, one of the senior-most executives of advertising agency Lintas India. Mishra, who spent close to 30 years at Lintas, has set up a marketing consulting, data analytics and insight mining company called Brandscape Worldwide, reports The Economic Times.Mishra joins a host of senior corporate executives who have left their jobs to pursue entrepreneurial roles. Prakash Bajpai, head of broadband at Reliance Communications, has also reportedly left the company to start a broadband venture, which is funded by Goldman Sachs and Oaktree Capital Management. George Zacharia had quit Yahoo to found a managed IT services company with the backing of Sequoia Capital India. Rao, who is also a member of Indian Angel Network, has been making angel investments. He has invested in Bangalore-based JuriMatrix, a legal process outsourcing outfit. Rao is also an advisor in India of New Enterprise Associates, a US based venture capital firm. The names of other angels in Brandscape are not known.According to ET, Misra is the majority shareholder in the new venture, while Rao and other angels will have a significant stake. The company, to be based in Mumbai, will consider VC funding at a later stage. Mishra thinks there is an opportunity for a company like his since most of the companies do not have the wherewithal or the expertise to extract the relevant marketing insights from a lot of marketing data they already have. Brandscape plans to go global too with offices in the US, the UK, Singapore and Japan.Mishra, who belongs to IIM Ahmedabad 1977 batch, was earlier President and COO of Lowe India. He was once tipped to succeed Prem Mehta as the chairman of Lowe India. As an aside, Lowe was acquired by IPG in 2007, and is now headed by R Balakrishnan (better known as Balki).Rao, who is also a member of Indian Angel Network, has been making angel investments. He has invested in Bangalore-based JuriMatrix, a legal process outsourcing outfit. Rao has also joined as an advisor in India of New Enterprise Associates, a US based venture capital firm.

Neelam Dhawan to be MD of HP India

2008-06-07T10:56:00.001+05:30

New Delhi, June 6 Microsoft India said Friday that its Managing Director, Ms Neelam Dhawan, would be leaving the company after a three-and-a-half-year stint, to take over as Managing Director of Hewlett-Packard India.
In a statement, Mr Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman of Microsoft India, said, “I am sorry to announce that Ms Neelam Dhawan will be leaving Microsoft to join HP India as its Managing Director. While I hope that this will only strengthen our relationship with one of our most important partners, we are losing a strong leader who has, over the past three years, helped position Microsoft strongly in the Indian market.”
Ms Dhawan joined Microsoft India in March 2005, and was responsible for the business strategy of the company. Commenting on the move, she said, “Being a part of the leadership team at Microsoft India has been one of the most rewarding roles of my professional life. My new role at HP gives me the opportunity to further strengthen the partnership between the two companies.”

IKYA - The Power of Being One... Official Blog for the ITES Vertical

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AT&T opens first data centre in Bangalore

Quatrro BPO plans $300 m expansion drive

Quatrro BPO plans $300 m expansion drive

Offshoring to dent tech cos’ profits

IT cos with BPO arms to steal show

Wipro rules out salary change in case of BPO shift

Telus arm to set up captive in India despite slowdown

Likely To Hire A Few Hundred; Location Not Finalised

N Shivapriya & Rashmi PratapMUMBAI

Banking outsourcing deals to look up by ’09

ndian Suppliers Smarting Under Recessionary Pressures Have Reduced Hiring Compared To Last Year

Employee referrals dominate IT/ITeS hiring

Outsourcing sector strong on hiring

GM fighting hard to stave off bankruptcy

Reuters NEW YORK

Global financial crisis closes in on General Motors

AFP NEW YORK

IT cos, BPOs loath to say Obama zindabad

Wipro likely to buy Citi’s tech arm for $150 million

Orange to consolidate India BPO operations

Economic crisis looms over KPOs

TCS, Infy strategise anticipating recovery

Infosys To Hire More; TCS To Absorb 12,500 From CGS

TCS close to buying Citi’s BPO arm for $550 m

Jessica Mehroin Irani & George Smith AlexanderMUMBAI

Wachovia asset sale likely to hit Genpact

BPOs under threat?

Forrester Vice-President John McCarthy Thinks So

Intelenet appoints TCS’s Gayatri Balaji as COO for South India BPO business

Crash of titans sparks fears of pink slip flood

BPOs to see major dent in their revenues

TCS Likely To Suffer The Most

Indian BPO exports booms

BPO firms change tack, see better revenues

HCL to counter Infosys' bid for UK's Axo

Wipro BPO gears up to launch new centre in Vizag within 6 months

BPO firm Etech to add 5,000 jobs in India

Return to the roots: BPOs now working to get Tamil, Bhojpuri accents right

Hire Anthropologists, Linguists To Equip Employees With Better Knowledge Of Popular Culture And To Develop Authentic Accents

Harsimran Singh NEW DELHI

N Shivapriya & Rashmi Pratap
MUMBAI

Jessica Mehroin Irani & George Smith Alexander
MUMBAI

Jessica Mehroin Irani & N Shivapriya
MUMBAI