Intelenet to foray into consulting

Intelenet, the joint venture between housing finance major Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) and Barclays Bank plc of the UK, plans to extend its services to the IT and consulting areas in collaboration with a US firm.

The company plans to invest around $15-20 million, Intelenet's CEO Sisir Kumar said.

"While we were under the TCS umbrella, the Tata group company provided the IT and consulting services and we offered BPO. This brought a lot of value-added service to the table. This is also why we would like to move back into this space," Kumar explained.

Till recently, Intelenet was a joint venture between HDFC and TCS. Ahead of its initial public offer, TCS got out of the venture and Barclays stepped in.

Without divulging details about the proposed partnership with the US-based company, Kumar said the alliance will focus on joint solutions. This involves no equity participation. He pointed out that, through this partnership, Intelenet will be able to offer BPO solutions to its partner's IT services clients.

"The foreign company in turn will be able to offer IT and consulting services to our BPO clients," he added.

Intelenet will develop a technology platform or a solution for the process outsourced to enhance the efficiency of the process.

Kumar said that with a solution like this, the cost savings for the customer would go up and it would reduce the man hours. "With this not only will both our companies be able to provide the required value-added services but also ensure a customers stickiness," he pointed out.

Commenting on the future plans of the company, he indicated that the Intelenet remains committed to its plans of tapping the domestic market in 2007-2008.

Intelenet expects revenues of Rs 250 crore for fiscal year 2005 and aims to achieve Rs 350-375 crore in 2005-2006. It currently has four facilities in India "" three in Mumbai and one in Chennai.