Infy closes BPO in Bangkok

Moves work to India, China.

The business process outsourcing (BPO) arm of India’s second-largest information technology services company, Infosys, has shut its centre in Bangkok, which it had acquired from Philips. The centre was primarily handling the back-office works of Philips globally. As a result, the company has moved about 40 of the 175-odd staff at the centre to China.

Confirming the development, Infosys BPO’s CEO and MD Swami Swaminathan said, “We could not scale this centre from a service offering standpoint, as most of our international clients are very comfortable sending work either to India or China. Therefore, we have moved the business to China and India. Even at the time of buying the centre from Philips, we knew it was not a scalable centre.”

Infosys had taken over the back-office operations of Philips Global located in India (Chennai), Poland (Lodz) and Thailand (Bangkok) in July 2007, with an assured revenue of about $250 million over seven years. These three centres were together employing about 1,400 employees then.

This is the first instance since the acquisition of Philips Global’s BPO operations that Infosys has started a rationalisation exercise.

The company had started shifting a majority of outsourcing contracts that came with the acquisition to its centres in Pune and Chennai, to deliver works at a “better cost and with better efficiency”.

“This is a part of our game-plan. It was not expected that we would continue to use these centres to work for Philips. The idea was to move work around and wherever the capability existed to deliver at a better cost and more efficiency,” added Swaminathan.

Meanwhile, Philips continues to be one of Infosys BPO’s leading clients. Recently, Philips recognised Infosys BPO as one of its top three global vendors bringing in innovation. Over recent years, Infosys BPO’s Philips account has grown significantly.

However, the company does not have any plan to scale down any of its other international centres. Last year, the company established BPO centres in Brazil and Mexico. The company also has centres in China, Manila and Poland.