Colt Telecom to shift 25% staff to India

Colt Telecom, a £1.3-billion European telecom services provider, as part of its 'strategic initiative' to improve operational results and drive down costs, will be shifting a quarter of its workforce to India by 2006.

With the objective of moving its core business processes to India, the company has finalised plans to set up its secondary network control centre and research and development (R&D) lab in Gurgoan in 2006.

Colt Telecom, in a balancing act to offset some of the backlash against outsourcing, has offered its European employees the option of shifting to India. "Many have shifted base. Currently about 10 per cent of employees in India are from Europe, and they are not just at the senior level," Jean-Yves Charlier, CEO, Colt Telecom Group, told Business Standard.

Charlier also noted that India would soon be the company's largest centre for operations. This will see Colt set up its secondary network control centre and its only R&D lab outside the UK, in India in 2006.

"These are not mere cost-cutting measures -- we are amazed at the skill set possessed by the professional here. Assembling such a large talent pool is just not possible in Europe," he said.

"Our work councils had visited India, and we showed them that we were not oursourcing to an underpaid workforce but shifting our operations actually because of the availability of the talent pool and quality of service in India," he added.

Colt had begun its Indian operations by setting up a business process unit in Gurgaon in September 2004. In under a year, the company has estimated that moving operations to India has helped it save close to 20 million pound. The real benefits will only be felt in 2007-08, Charlier said.

According to him, the company was not operating call centres in India. "They (call centres) will continue to be in Europe for our customers to have proximity to them. Indian operations will be technology-centric and will involve high-end software development, engineering and R&D for new products," he said.

"Currently, we have 400 employees here, which is 10 per cent of our global workforce. We plan to move 15 per cent by 2005-end, with over 600 professionals, and further increase it, such that a quarter of our employees are based outside India by 2006," he said.

Colt Telecom provides business communication services such as leased lines services for voice and data, data-centre solutions and managed network services to business and the government customers across Europe. So, the speculations that its executives are intending to enter the Indian commercial space are baseless, Charlier said.

"We are focused on Europe, as we see significant growth there. So, we have no plans to enter the Indian market in the next three years," Charlier concluded.