Intelenet CEO Bhupender Singh to lead Teleperformance India operations

He will also take up a global role of leading Teleperformance's non-CRM operations

Intelenet’s Group CEO Bhupender Singh will lead both Intelenet as well as Teleperformance’s India operations following the latter’s acquisition of the Blackstone-owned business process outsourcing (BPO) services company last week. In addition to these roles, Singh would also lead the global non-CRM operations for the French back office services company, he said here on Monday.

The Paris headquartered company last week had announced its decision to acquire Intelenet from private equity major Blackstone for around $1 billion. The transaction is expected to close by September 30 subject to regulatory approvals. 

Singh said, while Intelenet was keen on plans to go ahead with an IPO over the past couple of years, the board recognized value in Teleperformance’s interest in the company. “We (Intelenet) faced a number of challenges like slow growth and consequently profits also suffered. We also saw a lot of contracts being renewed only for short to medium term due to the challenges our (then) parent Serco was going through at that time,” said Singh talking about the series of events that led to the company’s acquisition by Teleperformance.

Blackstone first invested in Intelenet in 2007 and in 2011, sold the latter to UK's Serco Group for $383 million. In 2015, Blackstone bought back Intelenet from Serco for 250 million pounds (Rs 25.6 billion).

Intelenet is a global provider of omnichannel customer experience management, back-office, human resources and financial & administration services. The company has more than 110 blue chip clients worldwide, mostly in the English-speaking market, India and the Middle East.

Intelenet primarily serves the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance sector (BFSI), as well as the travel, transport & accommodation, e-commerce, e-services, and healthcare sectors.

Since 2015 the company adopted a three-pronged growth strategy which included getting the margins on track through organic growth, getting long term client contracts as well as invest more in the futuristic technology platforms like analytics, said Singh.

Intelenet has 55,000 employees, working in over 40 delivery centers across India, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, Poland and Guatemala.  For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2018, the company posted revenue of $449 million, up 10 per cent year on year, and EBITDA of $83 million, representing 18.5 per cent of revenue vs. 17.4 per cent the previous year. 

On the human resource front, Singh did not give details about the number of duplicate roles, however, he did say that people will need to be flexible about the kind of roles they get within the new company. “Teleperformance has been keen on building their scale in India both for international as the India specific business. The company has almost 2,500 people dedicated to India business and our (Intelenet's) dedicated India business will of course continue to contribute,” he added.