CEI India to treble headcount

To invest close to $1 million in next 2-3 years for upgrading development facilities

CEI India Private Limited, the Chennai-based software services provider, plans to nearly treble its headcount from 85 to 250 in the next 12-18 months.

CEI India was started as a wholly-owned subsidiary of CEI America six years back and acts as the offshore development centre for its IT outsourcing activities.

CEI America is a US-based IT services provider of IT outsourcing, managed projects and IT consulting services.

The major expansion plan is to meet with the potential that it sees in its IT outsourcing sales funnel. It has committed to invest at least $1 million in the next 2-3 years for upgrading and developing state-of-the-art development facilities at its Chennai office.

"At present, IT outsourcing contributes to 20 per cent of our revenues. We see this going up to 80 per cent of our total revenues in the next three to five years. We will be hiring both freshers and individuals with three-six years of experience to service IT outsourcing projects," said D Raja, CEO, CEI America. Its total revenues in 2004 was $36 million.

CEI America is currently engaged in the process of strengthening its IT outsourcing expertise by getting the eSourcing Capability Model (eSCM) certification from Information Technology Services Qualification Center (ITsqc)- Carnegie Mellon University. It expects to get the certification by the year end.

eSCM is a quality certification for outsourcing developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute. It has also applied for CMMi level 5 to move up from its current SEI CMM Level 3 assessment.

CEI India is facing some difficulty in finding experienced manpower, especially for project manager and architect roles. "We have to hire freshers and then train and certify them before deploying them on projects.

At IIT-Madras and Anna University, we plan to take students on long internships and train them," added Raja. CEI expects these long internships will help align the universities' curriculum with industry requirements.