Perot sets up centre in Coimbatore

US-headquartered Perot Systems Corporation (PSC), an IT services and business solutions provider, has announced setting up of a service centre in Coimbatore. This will be the company's fourth location in India after Bangalore, Noida and Chennai.

The Coimbatore facility, spread over 20,000 sft, is expected to become operational by the first week of August. It will have a seating capacity for about 350 persons across three shifts.

However, it is expected to begin operations with about 20 persons, who have already been hired and are undergoing training at the company's academy in Chennai.

Addressing a press conference, Peter Altabef, president and chief executive officer, PSC, said the expansion to Coimbatore came on the heels of a combination of factors like several customer wins in the last one year, low cost of operations and lower attrition rates.

The company's Chennai facility employs a large number of people from the Coimbatore region.

Though the operations at the Coimbatore centre will be at a small scale initially, the expansion to this tier II city is expected to help the company achieve 30-40 per cent cost saving compared with its Chennai operations, in the near future.

Vardhaman Jain, managing director of Perot Systems' Business Process Solutions Operations in India, said the Coimbatore facility would initially process BPO jobs like complex, high volume and high value transactions for its customers in healthcare, life insurance and finance and accounts.

The company might add other capabilities like application solutions in the future, he added.

Perot employs 18,000 people across its centres in North America, Europe and Asia. It employs about 6,000 people in its India operations, which focuses on BPO, application solutions and infrastructure capabilities. The company's headcount is expected to grow by 20-25 per cent every year in the future.

Nine of the company's top 15 clients (by revenue) receive services delivered from India, which accounted for nine per cent of the company's global revenue, which was $2 billion in 2005.