LogicaCMG to double headcount in India

LogicaCMG, the global IT services company, announced here on Thursday that it will increase its headcount in India by an additional 1,000 people by the end of 2005. This will take the number of employees to 2,200.

According to Martin Read, group chief executive, LogicaCMG, "India will be the fastest growing region in headcount globally. While in the rest of the world we will increase employee count in the high single digits, in India we hope to double the headcount for the next two years." The growth will make India the third largest operation for LogicaCMG.

Speaking at the launch of their new campus at Technopolis, near Bangalore International Airport, Read said that the company will continue to invest in infrastructural activities in India, though he refused to give exact numbers.

He also stated that the growth will coincide with a change of leadership in Bangalore. Mike Weston, CEO of the offshore services division, who had so long looked after the Bangalore operations will be replaced by Rahul Patwardhan, CEO of application management. Weston will 'move on' to higher responsibilities within the company.

Much of the growth in employee headcount will happen in the BPO/call centre as well as the systems integration and project development divisions. Read said that the latter was due to the fact that the company hoped to do more business for Indian customers out of the centre.

"Right now, around 95 per cent of the work done at the centre is for clients abroad. But in the next five years we hope we will be doing around 50 per cent of the work at the centre for Indian clients," said Read.

LogicaCMG's strongest offerings in the Indian market are their telecom and financial services solutions. Telecom contributes 75 per cent of Indian revenues where the company claims to own 70 per cent of the SMS/MMS platform space.

On the banking side, the company closed a Rs 75 crore deal for the implementation of Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in March 2004. The implementation is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Though they have had little success with their anti-money laundering solutions, Kannan Ramaswamy, managing director, South Asia remains confident of success. "We have got our first client in ING Vysya and will begin implementing the solution in March this year."

When asked of speculation over the sale of one of their banking products in the Indian market, Ramaswamy said, "We have been approached but a decision is yet to be taken on it." Read added, "We are always in the process of selling off old products that we feel have a lesser market."