ICICI One eyes piggybacking on Temasek

ICICI OneSource Ltd, the business process outsourcing (BPO) company, hopes to use its Temasek connection to make inroads into the Asia Pacific market. Singapore state investment agency Temasek had recently acquired a minority stake in the company.

"There are business opportunities in the Asia Pacific market. We can make use of these possibilities as a result of the investment by Temasek in us," said Ananda Mukerji, managing director and chief executive officer of ICICI OneSource.

According to Mukerji, ICICI OneSource already has a marketing team dedicated to the Asia Pacific region.

Besides, the company is also looking at a strategy led by acquisitions in certain key markets. "Capital is not an issue for us as we have strong backing from our investors," he said.

The company will look at acquisition as a strategy to strengthen its presence in various areas of the financial services sector.

ICICI OneSource, which clocked revenues to the tune of $42 million in the last financial year, expects sectors such as life and pensions and recovery as future areas of growth. Besides, the company is also open to set up service delivery centres in countries other than India.

It is of the view that to service markets in countries such as France, Germany and China, it will have to set up centres in countries which have skills in such languages.

"English is India's key competence. If we have to serve markets with different languages, we will have to develop skills in those languages. We are looking at that," he said.

The company which has about 5,000 employees across its centre in Mumbai, Bangalore and the US, also plans to open centres in other Indian cities.

"With issues relating to infrastructure becoming not such an issue, we can now look at smaller cities. Besides, companies can also look at cities which has good infrastructure and manpower," he pointed out.

ICICI OneSource, will look at cities such as Kolkata, Chennai, Mangalore, Pune and Hyderabad to set up centres.