3i Infotech's mutual funds BPO in B'lore

IT products and services firm 3i Infotech plans to have its Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centre for mutual funds in Bangalore.

The company intends to hire 40 professionals from the financial industry for this purpose. The BPO will come up on Hosur Road in the city.

"The availability of talent in Bangalore for this vertical is huge, more than in any other city. We are in talks with almost all of the domestic mutual funds. We intend to offer end-to-end mutual funds management, including SEBI reporting. We will deploy our own software products for this purpose," 3i Infotech COO (South Asia) Anirudh P told Business Standard.

Last April, 3i Infotech acquired Bangalore-based software products company Datacons offering niche products for mutual funds. The BPO operations will be integrated with 3i Infotech's 'MFund' (product suite) to assist mutual fund firms improve the structure of their offerings, roll them out and back them with end-to-end services.

At present, the firm has BPO operations in Mumbai handling credit card / loan application processing, help desk and bonds for four clients, including the ICICI Bank. As many as 150 professionals are employed for the BPO operations.

"The BPO operations' contribution to the company's revenues is less as of now. We expect the contribution to increase once the mutual funds management is launched. The market for mutual funds management in India is growing," Anirudh stated.

Though the firm is also into IT managed capabilities and e-governance projects, it is betting big on domestic BPO (banking, financial services and insurance) for growth.

"South Asia accounts for 40 per cent of the firm's revenues. We intend to launch another BPO in Chennai for customer helpdesk services, which require professionals with technical background," he said.

3i Infotech, which employs close to 3,500 professionals, registered consolidated revenue of Rs 445.1 crore during the first nine months of 2006-07.