Opus to hire 1,500 people in India in 3 years

Payments technology firm Opus Consulting will hire about 1,500 people in India to strengthen its headcount to over 2,500 in three years as it increases its focus on digital payments, analytics and compliance.

The company will also hire about 200 people in the US.

Opus, which recently moved its headquarters to Chicago, US from Pune, at present, has about 800 employees.

Of these, about 650 people are working in India across its centres in Chennai and Pune and the remaining are in the US.

"We are moving towards making transactions more secure, cashless and easier for customers around the globe and there is a huge opportunity for payments service providers.

"We see India playing a major role in our operations and we are ramping up our teams to stay ahead. By 2018, we will have 2,500 people from the current 800," Opus Consulting Solutions President and CEO Anand Ramakrishnan told PTI.

The headcount in the US will grow from 150 to 350 in the said time period, while the remaining will be added in India (about 2,150 people), he said.

Following the sale of its subsidiary, ElectraCard Services to MasterCard last year, the company has rebranded itself as Opus Consulting Solutions from Opus Software Solutions.

It also had moved its headquarters from Pune to Chicago.

"The move to Chicago is a part of our growth strategy, aimed at accelerated growth in North America, which is our largest market. But that doesn't mean that India loses significance, its role gets enhanced," he said.

Opus gets over 90 per cent of its revenues from the US and the remaining comes from India and the UK.

Ramakrishnan, however, declined to comment on revenue details.

With a new management team in place, Opus is also focusing on five new service lines - platform transformation, digital, payment analytics, compliance and testing.

"We are planning to bring higher quality work to India as we are looking at becoming a turn key solutions provider in the payments market," he said.

The global market for mobile payments, itself, is forecasted to grow about threefold by 2017 to about USD 721 billion worth of transactions, with more than 450 million users, according to research firm Gartner.

"As more and more transactions go digital, there is also a huge scope for solutions like analytics and Big Data. We will look at leveraging these to help customers," he said.