Accenture shifting to bigger facility

Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company that has a technology delivery centre in Hyderabad, will be moving to a new facility by June this year.

The new facility will be bigger than the existing one and the company, therefore, is likely to increase its headcount in Hyderabad by a significant number.

Addressing a press conference, Chet Kamat, partner, Accenture, and head of the company's delivery centres in India, said, "We started our operations in Hyderabad in 2003 and have been working from an incubation facility. We will be shifting to a permanent facility at Mindspace IT Park by June this year."

"This apart, we will also be indulging in entry-level hiring from engineering colleges across the country. So we will be visiting campuses in this regard soon," he added.

Accenture, so far, has been recruiting only experienced professionals for its IT services and the company has strategically decided to now start employing entry-level people from engineering background.

Although Kamat refused to divulge the numbers that they would be looking at, he added that "entry-level employees will now form a bigger portion of the pyramid."

The company, according to figures registered in November 2004, employs around 11,000 people on the whole in India and 600 people in Hyderabad.

Globally, it has a workforce of 1,06,000 people in 48 countries.

Responding to a query on whether the Hyderabad centre would handle business process outsourcing (BPO) services at a later stage, Kamat said that at present their centres in Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai are able to meet the clients' demand, but if their demand increases they may think about it. The company serves more than 150 clients through its Indian operations.

According to Kamat, accenture has also been providing services to six of the top Indian companies including Dabur and Indorama.

"We will be looking at increasing our domestic client-base in the near future," he added. On a global basis, Accenture ended August 2004 with revenues of $ 13.67 billion.