Tech Mahindra is banking on subsidiary Mahindra Satyam’s strengths for its BPO business to take off. “At Tech Mahindra, a lot of investments are going in BPO services, especially in the reconciliation and settlement processes. Since these are connected to a firm’s ERP and BI applications, Satyam’s ERP capabilities are going to be very useful,” Atul Kanwar, president, European Union, Africa, Middle East, APAC and India markets for Mahindra Satyam said.

“We have seen significant traction recently as far as number of customer wins for Mahindra Satyam from the existing customer base of Tech Mahindra is concerned. But I cannot give you the exact number for confidentiality reasons,” Kanwar added

Tech Mahindra, which has around 400 clients, has lately been faced with revenue side worries in the last few quarters, with the share of business from British Telecom (BT), which contributes nearly 39% of its revenues, declining. (more…)

Wipro BPO, the BPO arm of global IT giant Wipro, and CT Group of Institutions have joined hands to host a Mega Job Festival for the youth 
of the region to explore a career opportunity in the fast growing BPO Industry.

The “Job Fest” will be held on August 22 and August 23 at the CT Group of Institutions.

Announcing the launch of the Job Fest, Vikas Dua (Head - Campus Initiatives) of Wipro BPO said, “It is our privilege to join hands with CT Group of Institutions, one of India’s most reputed education institutions, and offer career opportunities to the youth. We are always on the outlook to partner with quality institutes to meet our rapid growth of talent. Wipro BPO provides the talent pool an opportunity to create a career in the fast growing BPO industry - where students can choose locations from across the country where we have centres”.

Also, on the occasion, Charanjit Singh Channi, Chairman of CT Group of Institutions said “The association with Wipro BPO re-iterates our commitment to career-oriented education. We are pleased to become a platform for enabling youth to take up rewarding careers with such a leading organization.”

Asked whether there was any adverse impact of the economic recession on BPO sector, Dua said that there was not much adverse impact on the BPO industry and rather the industry spread its wings. Source

IT major Cognizant today announced operational expansion of its Phoenix delivery center and that it has added BPO services to an existing portfolio of application development, application maintenance, testing, and related services.
 
Cognizant’s Phoenix BPO center will initially provide claim processing services for one of the largest healthcare plans in the US, it said in a statement.  The company also said it expects to hire over 100 full-time professionals in the next 12 months, drawing talent from the local market and academic community.  As a result, Cognizant’s overall presence at Phoenix will grow to about 400 full-time employees, it added.    

“With this expansion, we are able to offer clients US- based delivery capability across all our major service offerings,” Cognizant President and Chief Executive Officer Francisco D’Souza said.    

Phoenix is one of Cognizant’s six delivery centers in the US. Besides Phoenix, the company delivers BPO services from local, regional and global centers in the US, Eastern Europe, India, and China. Source

IT firm Tech Mahindra on Thursday said that it has opened a new centre in Chandigarh with an initial capacity of 1,000 seats.  The set up will focus on providing end-to-end customer service delivery to global telecom service providers, Tech Mahindra said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange. Spread across 15 acres, the centre would have about 1,000 seats in the initial ramp up, with 500 seats at start and another 500 by the end of September 2009.

The centre will cater to both international and domestic clients, the filing added. “Chandigarh is a preferred destination for its BPO and IT culture, state-of-art infrastructure, local support from the government, availability of skilled manpower and low rate of attrition,” Tech Mahindra President (Corporate Affairs) Sujit Baksi said.

The firm already has a centre in Chandigarh and the new centre would be equipped with world class infrastructure. The firm also has BPO centres in Kolkata, Noida, Pune and Chennai and two overseas centres in Belfast and New Castle.  “This centre allows us to spread our operations in Northern India in a big way and we are keen to tap the local talent pool in this region to make this centre a major hub,” Baksi added.  Source

To give rural BPOs a major boost, the Government of Karnataka plans to set up 100 rural BPO centres and create 1 lakh jobs in the next five years. Ashok Kumar C Manoli, state IT/BT secretary, said, The BPO centres will be an ideal vehicle to carry technology and financial empowerment to thousands of rural youth across the state. The idea is to create a rural BPO cluster, which later can be integrated with similar projects across the country.

The first such centre has already come up at Baburayana Koppal in Srirangapatna, near Mysore. Three more BPO centres are planned at Salgame, Shiggaon, Gundalupet in the state in the next couple of months.

 The exercise is aimed at promoting jobs for rural youth with minimum computer knowledge and belonging to small towns of 1 lakh population. To start with each of these centres will have 100 seats. The government has set aside Rs 40 crore to develop infrastructure in these towns, said Manoli. We have recently floated tenders for the second phase inviting applications from entrepreneurs who are interested in rural BPO business. We have already received 124 responses, against 118 applications in the first round, he said. (more…)

A security guard of a call centre died after the cab in which he was accompanying the firm’s executives lost control and plunged down a 
flyover in Moti Bagh area of south Delhi in wee hours of Saturday. The cab was on way from Gurgaon to Ghaziabad to drop executives.

It belongs to a private owner who had given it on rent to the call centre in Gurgaon. The deceased, identified as Satish Kumar (25), was sitting in the front and was killed on the spot after the Tavera (UP17/6378) overturned, said a senior police officer.

The employees present in the cab told the police that the driver was overspeeding and did not slow down even after repeated warnings, police said. According to the employees, the car after taking a turn at the Motibagh flyover was heading towards Shantipath from where they were supposed to go to Ghaziabad. (more…)

The business process outsourcing (BPO) centres are not the forte of urban India alone. Dawing the point home, the state government on Friday 
set up India’s first rural BPO centre at Baburayana Koppal off Mysore-Bangalore expressway near Srirangapatna.
Through the BPO sector, the government aims to create 1 lakh jobs in next five years in rural Karnataka and arrest the migration to urban areas.

The rural BPO centre is a result of the state government’s policy to explore opportunities for IT penetration in rural areas. The IT sector is extending jobs to over 5 lakh. Of this, some 2 lakh jobs are in BPO/ITES sector. The rural BPOs to be set up at areas having below 1 lakh population will get the benefits like subsidy to the tune of Rs 20 lakh for the unit employing 100. An expert committee is put in place to locate the areas and award subsidy to the entrepreneurs who come forward to set up BPO centre in rural areas. (more…)

Infosys BPO, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, today announced that it has secured a five-year contract with T-Mobile UK. Infosys BPO has been engaged by T-Mobile UK to support several core processes for their finance directorate – covering customer finance, commercial finance and accounting (F&A) and procurement operations.
 
This strategic partnership is significant as Infosys BPO is taking responsibility for specific transactional activities, allowing T-Mobile to concentrate on financial issues that are strategically important or which deliver competitive advantage.
 
Over the past year, Infosys BPO has been focusing on acquiring domain expertise across industries to enable it to address industry-specific pain points faced by clients, using a combination of process and technology levers to improve efficiencies.
 
“Our strong F&A capabilities combined with our understanding of the telecom industry helped us win this account,” said Gopal Devanahalli, vice president and head (Communications, Media and Entertainment), Infosys BPO.
 
Tim Spence, head of Customer Finance, T-Mobile UK , said: “We were keen to partner with a company that possessed a good understanding of our requirements and business needs.” Source

Its population of more than 10 million people spread across 17 cities and municipalities, excellent power and telecommunications infrastructure, and abundance of colleges and universities have made Metro Manila the largest business process outsourcing city in the world. Metro Cebu, on the other hand, is now touted as the world’s largest emerging BPO city, ahead of the likes of Shanghai and Beijing in China, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Krakow in Poland and Kolkata in India, according to research firm Tholons.

But the country’s BPO universe stretches beyond these two urban centers. Ten “cities” have actually proven themselves worthy of being placed on the list of areas most suitable for BPO operations in the country.

According to the Next Wave Cities 2009 report of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines, Commission on Information and Communications Technology and the Department of Trade and Industry, the Top 10 includes Metro Laguna, Metro Cavite, Iloilo City, Davao City, Bacolod City, Metro Pampanga, Bulacan East and West, Cagayan de Oro City and Lipa City. (more…)

BPO firm StarTek is planning to invest an additional $9 million to expand its operations in the country. StarTek managing director Ed Mallari said they are upbeat on the Philippines and the future of the industry. The US-based outsourcing firm has invested $10 million for its facility in Makati and is planning to bring in an additional $9 million in new capital as it looks for another office space in the country. During the inauguration of its Makati office in January, the first office outside the United States and Canada, StarTek president and CEO Larry Jones said that they are pleased with their choice to locate in the Philippines and are now looking at their next investment site.

According to him, they would like to remain in Makati but are open to locating in Cebu as well. “In the second half we will start looking at other facilities (but) we are not convinced that the province is better than Makati,” Jones said. He said the number two location would be Cebu City. Jones refused to provide details on their next investment but said they are looking at opening a site with a capacity of 1,000 seats.

The Philippine office is the largest facility of StarTek because its offices in the United States have a capacity of 500 seats only. The office in Makati is their 20th location. (more…)