Spanco BPO and the Omnia BPO Services of Spice Televentures have merged to form a 50 : 50 joint venture for domestic BPO. The new BPO will rank along the top five domestic BPOs in the country in terms of size, along with the likes of Essar group’s Aegis, Intelenet’s Sparsh and Infovision, a privately held firm.

Spanco and Omnia already have an existing joint venture, Bharat BPO, which won the contract to provide call centre services to the Railways. This will now become a subsidiary of the new joint venture announced by the two firms on Tuesday.

The JV currently employs 10,000 people and expects to close the fiscal with 15,000 people and revenues of Rs 150 crore. The JV will invest about Rs 250 crore in the next 15-16 months towards adding 8,000 new seats, mostly in Tier-II and III cities, said Omnia BPO chief executive Pravin Kumar, who’s been designated as CEO of the venture.

“Unless we attained scale, we realised we will not be able to compete effectively. We had the option of investing in infrastructure and expanding our scale, but this would’ve taken time. So we decided that this was the best way to get to a leading position,” Spanco Telesystems and Solutions chairman Kapil Puri said. Mr Puri will be vice chairman of the JV, which is likely to christened as Spanco Spice BPO.

While Omnia has clients such as Spice Telecom and Idea Cellular, Spanco has clients such as Citigroup and other multinational banks in India. The two companies will now pursue opportunities jointly and cease to function individually.

Omnia BPO has a run rate around Rs 9 crore a month and its chairman, Dilip Modi, will also be chairman of the JV. Bharat BPO, which has recently started operations, is expected to have a run rate of Rs 6 crore a month and Spanco BPO Rs 3 crore a month. “Apart from the requirement for scale, we realised we had complementary skills. (more…)

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is all set for acquiring Citigroup’s captive BPO arm Citigroup Global Services (CGSL). Our sources reveal that the deal was pegged at around $550 million and it would be announced within a fortnight.

They said the deal would guarantee TCS to get business for CGSL from Citigroup for five years. When contacted, both Citi and TCS declined to comment on the development. The spokesperson of TCS and Citi said in separate emails that they do not comment on market speculation.

ET had reported on August 19 that TCS was in talks with Citigroup to acquire CGSL. Citigroup has put it on the block as part of the restructuring of its back-end operations in India.

IBM and Genpact are said to be the other bidders. Sources said talks with Genpact fell through, as it sought an exclusivity agreement which Citi turned down. IBM lost interest as there were certain riders which it did not like, sources said.

CGSL, which has over six lakh square feet of combined offices in India, handles multiple operations for Citigroup entities globally. This includes cards, consumer finance, retail banking, capital markets & banking as well as global transaction services. (more…)

An Ex-BPO employee was stabbed 21 times minutes after he left his Mulund residence on Wednesday evening. Rajesh Lakhwani (31) clung on to life for almost an hour till passersby took him to Mulund General Hospital where he died.

The police said the killer was known to Lakhwani and previous enmity or a financial dispute could be a possible motive. The officials have picked up a close friend of Lakhawanis for questioning after learning that the two had had a dispute.

Lakhwani stayed with his mother, Kavita (65), and brother Kamlesh (29), at a rented flat in New Lotus Society in Mulund Colony. He used to work at a BPO in Malad but quit the job three years ago to take up event management.

Lakhwani had left their apartment around 6.45 in the evening without telling anyone where he was going to. An hour later, passersby found him lying on the ground, bleeding profusely, at Dongarwadi Pipeline, a 10-minute walk from his building. He died within 20 minutes of being hospitalised , the police said.

“The killer did not leave any clues behind. The spot was absolutely deserted and there were apparently no witnesses to the murder. We are questioning Lakhwani’s acquaintances ,” said investigating officer Bajrang Salunke said.

“Two boys from the neighbourhood came running to our place and told me that Rajesh was lying injured at the Pipeline area,” his mother, Kavita, told reporters.

The police are also trying to get hold of Lakhwani’s cellphone and check the records. “Lakhwani had apparently left behind his mobile at home before going out on Wednesday. However, the family cannot find it anywhere. We are making inquiries with the members and recording their statements,” Salunke said.  The Mulund police have registered a case of murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code against an unidentified person. Source

Capita Group, the UK’s biggest business process outsourcing (BPO) company, has acquired part of Prudential’s offshore operation (PPMS) in Mumbai. The deal involves transfer of about 1,400 PPMS staff to Capita, taking the number of it staff in India to 3,000, around 10 per cent of the group’s total workforce. The acquisition forms a key part of Capita’s £722-million contract to provide outsourced services to Prudential UK.

Headquartered in Mumbai, Capita has offices in Vikhroli and Thane and is now expanding its operations to Pune, making it a multi-city operator. Its new centre in Magarpatta (Pune) will house staff working on the Marsh contract. Marsh is the world’s largest insurance broker and risk advisor.

“We are continuing to strongly expand our life and pension businesses in the UK and our Indian operations will play a key role in supporting this growth. With the increased scale and enhanced expertise of the newly-merged business, Capita in India will represent a leading offshoring base to support our plans across both life and pension and a broader range of our service offerings. We expect to grow our operations and workforce in India in line with the continued growth of our business,” said Paul Pindar, chief executive officer of the Capita Group.

Prudential will retain a captive offshore service centre in Mumbai, which will continue to deliver a number of important activities for its UK business. Prudential intends to grow this as a shared services operation for the Prudential Group as a whole. Sanjay Razdan, managing director of Capita India, said, “The new Pune office provides us with operational resilience, room for growth and access to a high quality local talent pool.” Source