Foreign BPOs list expansion plans

With the uncertainty over the US president long settled, foreign outsourcing and information technology enabled services (ITES) companies have begun scaling up their Indian operations.

Before the US election, there was a fear that a Democratic president might put stricter rules on outsourcing there by pulling the plug on the fledgling BPO sector.

To begin with, Effective Teleservices, the first American company based at Gandhinagar's Infocity, has announced its expansion plans and will scale up its operations by over 1,000 seats. This expansion is estimated at $3 million.

"We have already invested over $2 million in India and planning to invest another $3 million in scaling up our Indian operations," A C Smith, president, Effective Teleservices Inc told Business Standard.

The US-based Everest Group, which set up its first research and development (R&D) and consultancy office at New Delhi in December last year, expects to generate revenue of over $10 million in the first three years of its Indian operations.

The business process outsourcing (BPO) consultancy firm is well established as a tier I provider of strategic sourcing advisory services.

According to NASSCOM the US will outsource over 6 million high tech jobs to India by 2005. And as per to the Gujarat chapter of CII, as many as 26 companies are doing business process outsourcing (BPO) with the state. The state earned a revenue of Rs 25 crore in 2001 from this sector.

The BPO business has been growing at a rate of 70 per cent a year and its net worth in India is around $6 billion. The sector employs around 1 lakh people.

According to projections made by McKinsey, if BPO grows by 27 per cent by 2008, the activity will deliver a revenue of $17 billion, employing 1 million people in the process.

MphasiS, the leading information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) service provider has decided to set up its third centre in the country at Mangalore by the end of the current year to cater to the huge demand building up from its overseas clients.

The company will recruit over 1,000 professionals for the new centre at Mangalore and will and ramp up operations to touch the 25,000-employee mark in the next three years.

Similarly, Asite SolutionsLtd, a UK-based public listed software company has inaugurated its first branch office in July this year plans to set up satellite centres at various other important cities such as Bangalore, New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad amongst others. The company plans to invest over Rs 10 crore in the next two years and to employ over 500 professionals in the next three years.

"Our business operating system supports a wide range of B2B processes with a focus on procurement and project management. We automate key processes, creating an extended network that promotes more efficient interaction and better communication between businesses," said Anil Malhotra, Asite Solutions Limited.