Aegis to open second UK centre

The new facility of the BPO firm is expected to provide jobs to 350 people

Aegis, the business process outsourcing (BPO) services arm of the Essar group, is expanding in the United Kingdom (UK) to cater to the growing client base in the country.

The company, which has a 500-seat facility in Manchester, is looking at opening one more centre in the country that could provide jobs to 350 people.

Apart from its centre in Manchester, Aegis has been supporting its US clients from South Africa, where the company employs about 1,700 people in Johannesburg and Durban.

“We launched our centre in Manchester a couple of years ago. At present, the centre is filled up with 520 people. The company is  now looking at a second centre in the UK,” Sandip Sen, chief executive officer of Aegis, told Business Standard.

“During the last one year we have been able to attract new clients in financial services and we are also seeing demand in verticals like retail, travel and telecom,” he added. The company is considering opening centres in Scotland or Northern Ireland or a satellite centre to its facility in Manchester. Aegis’ UK clients include one of the country’s largest banks and one of its largest credit rating agencies.

“The UK is important because we are leveraging our onshore capability in the country and offshore capability in South Africa. Apart from a near similar time zone and English speaking population culturally aligned with the UK, South Africa is cost competitive, now even less expensive than the Philippines,” added Sen.

Aegis plans to expand its offshore operations in South Africa by setting up one more centre in Durban which will have a capacity to support about 500 people. The company  in South Africa caters to global markets though it is starting to see business demand from African countries.

After selling its US, Philippines and Costa Rica business to the Paris-based Teleperformance for $610 million last year, Aegis is focused on markets outside these countries. “After the Teleperformance deal, we said let us focus on high growth and high margin areas. The Asia Pacific was one among them while the Middle East was the other,” said Sen.

Saudi Arabia accounts for a quarter of Aegis’ revenue of around $500 million. Asia, including countries such as India, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, accounts for half of Aegis’ overall revenue.  Rs  Rs  Aegis is also looking at establishing Malaysia as its regional language hub. The company acquired a foothold in Malaysia last year with the acquisition of a local BPO company, Symphony. Since then its headcount in the country has grown from 600 to 2,300.

“We believe Malaysia is a good market because it can be an alternative to the Philippines. The advantage of Malaysia is that it has a lot of people who can speak Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese. The company is using   Malaysia as an Asian regional hub,” added Sen.

At present, the BPO firm employs 40,000 people in as many as 43 locations in nine countries.