BPO services provider Firstsource Solutions on Wednesday reported a nearly three-fold jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 33.31 crore  for the third quarter ended December 31, 2009. As per the Indian accounting standards, total income from operations rose to Rs 490.85 crore for the October-December quarter, from Rs 444.20 crore in the same period previous fiscal, Firstsource Solutions said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

“Performance in the year to date continues to be strong. In the nine months of this fiscal we have seen both growth in revenues and improvement in profitability,” Firstsource MD & CEO Ananda Mukerji said. The company’s employee strength stood at 27,308 as of December 31, 2009.

On the standalone basis, the company posted a net profit of Rs 10.18 crore for the quarter ended December 31, while it had a net loss of Rs 94 lakh in the same period last fiscal. Shares of Firstsource Solutions were trading at Rs 33.50 on BSE, up 0.90% from previous close. Source

Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Hinduja Global Solutions, Ltd. opened another facility in the Philippines on Friday, bringing its total investments to the country to $35 million. The 3,522-square-meter, 1,000-seat call center at Eastwood Cyberpark in Libis, Quezon City cost $2.5 million.

This complements an existing facility also in Libis, known as HTMT Philippines. Opened in 2004 after the Hinduja Group’s acquisition of Customer Contact Center (C-Cubed), the facility which measures 8,672 square meters and has 2,000 seats is the single largest facility of the group outside India, company officials said.

Hinduja Global Solutions serves 80 clients across the globe and employs over 14,500 across 23 “delivery centers” and offices in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mauritius, India and the Philippines. It also has “strategic working relationship arrangements” with partners in Colombia and China which altogether employ over 1,800 people that serve the South American, Chinese and Japanese markets. (more…)

India’s largest information technology services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), beat market expectations with its third quarter (October-December 2009) results. The growth drivers were North America and BFSI (banking financial services and insurance), signalling a recovery in the sector. N Chandrasekaran, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, believes growth will get better, but one should not expect a similar volume growth (especially in BFSI) in January-March 2010 (fourth quarter). In a chat with Shivani Shinde, he spoke on clients, growth prospects and the company’s hiring plans. Edited excerpts:
 
What do you attribute your good numbers to?
We did not score merely on the selling general and administrative (SG&A) front by cutting costs. Our gross margins have been improving, too, and they have now become a benchmark. This means we have delivered to customers in all our markets. Our utilisation, too, improved 81.1 per cent (excluding trainees) and including trainees, it was 77.2 per cent. On the net profit side, we did not have much hedging losses. We will incur hedging losses in Q4 due to currency fluctuations but I am hoping the situation will improve thereafter. (more…)

PIRON Consulting has acquired fifty percent stake in REAL TIME BPO and it will now be called ‘PIRON REAL TIME BPO’. This stake has been acquired to strategically place PIRON for catering to the IFRS outsourcing requirements. As corporate India prepares itself for transition to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), PIRON consultancy realized the need for preparedness for IFRS expertise demand and takes this holistic approach to meet the requirements.

“As major part of world is moving towards IFRS, hence PIRON is sensing great outsourcing opportunity in IFRS accounting and compliance related outsourcing work from these countries. PIRON would be doing all its Europe outsourcing work on IFRS through this BPO. There is a scarcity of IFRS experts in US also, so outsourcing would be the key which would in turn benefit Indian IFRS Professionals”, explained Ankur Aggarwal, CEO, PIRON Consulting. (more…)

Aegis, the BPO arm of the Essar group, is close to acquiring 10 acres of prime land from the Buddhadeb government to set up an integrated  campus in Kolkata for an undisclosed sum. Aegis is looking to double capacity at its present 3,000-strong team of ITeS professionals in the city’s Salt Lake Electronics Complex (Saltlec).

At present, Aegis operates out of a 1 lakh sq ft facility in Salt Lake Sector V. Moves are afoot to develop an integrated campus near its existing unit over the next 12-18 months. Once the campus is up and running, Aegis teams in Kolkata will primarily handle outsourcing work in the telecoms, BFSI and healthcare verticals.

When contacted, Aegis MD & global CEO Aparup Sengupta told ET: “We’ve recently given a letter of intent to the West Bengal IT department seeking 10 acres near our existing Salt Lake facility. The plan is to double our capacity and headcount in Kolkata from the present 3,000 to at least 6,000 ITeS professionals in the next 12-18 months.”

Mr Sengupta, however, declined to reveal the price. “Price negotiations are on with the West Bengal government. We propose to implement this expansion model in places like Bhopal and Jamshedpur,” he said. Source

Infosys BPO Ltd., the business process outsourcing unit of India’s Infosys Technologies Ltd. (500209.BY), expects to maintain the revenue target taht it had given earlier for the year to March 31, its chief executive said Tuesday.

In June, Infosys BPO had targeted a consolidated revenue of $340 million for this financial year, compared to the $316 million revenue it posted in the year to March 31, 2009. Business process outsourcing companies in India are slowly recovering from the impact of the global economic slowdown, which led their customers to scrap, or delay, projects and look for lower outsourcing rates.

Infosys BPO gets more than 50% of its revenue from the U.S.

“We are seeing a sequential growth of about 4%-5%, obviously we want to take that to 8%-9% from the second quarter of the next fiscal year (starting April 1). Based on conversations we are having with clients we are just hoping that it will happen,” Chief Executive D. Swaminathan told Dow Jones Newswires. Source

Sparsh BPO Services, a domestic BPO subsidiary of Intelenet Global Services, has launched a delivery centre in Dehradun, Uttarakhand. The new centre will service India’s telecommunications services operator to provide customer support services in the circles of UP (east and west) and Uttaranchal.

The centre already has an existing headcount of 1,200 agents. Susir Kumar, MD and CEO, Intelenet Global Services, said, “In addition to expanding our footprint in North India, this centre will also strengthen our delivery capability in the telecom vertical.”
 
Radhika Balasubramanian, COO, Sparsh, added, “Dehradun offers good connectivity with the major cities in North and also provides a young talent pool qualified with several north Indian languages including English, Hindi, Punjabi, Dogri, Himachal, etc. Our foray in the city will provide us access to a skilled workforce while providing employment opportunities to potential domestic candidates.”

Sparsh currently has over 40 client relationships with leading multinationals across telecom, banking, insurance, consumer durables, retail, media, aviation and public sectors. It has a presence in West and South. Facilities had been set in Thane and Bangalore in 2009, Puducherry in 2008. Source

IT giant IBM plans to hire about 5,000 people in India this year to scale up its BPO operations in the country.

IBM hopes to cash in on the growth of the country’s services sector, which ranges from software-related services to looking after the HR aspects of some core manufacturing companies, reports quoted a senior IBM executive as saying.

Newspaper and agency reports quote Selby Mascarenhas, senior advisory consultant with IBM Poland, as saying that the company would focus more in the service sector by opening more BPO centres in India.

IBM is scaling up its Indian operations at a time when several overseas IT firms are scaling down their operations to tide over the effects of the global recession. Source

Swaminathan Dandapani is set to become the next chief executive of Infosys BPO, the back office unit of India’s second-biggest software exporter, a senior company official confirmed on Monday.

Mr Dandapani, currently a senior vice-president and head of global services delivery at Infosys BPO, will take over from Amitabh Chaudhry who quit the company in November last year and will serve the company till January 15.

Infosys BPO will also have a new chief operating officer (COO), at least two persons familiar with these appointments confirmed to ET on Tuesday. Ritesh M Idnani, a member of Infosys BPO executive council, will take over as COO and help the back office unit meet its operational goals. One of the persons told ET that the company has already issued an internal communication regarding these appointments last week. (more…)

The unrest caused by the Telangana issue may result in huge revenue losses for Andhra Pradesh’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms as their customers are turning to other cities. The situation in the state may force some foreign companies to look for alternative cities in India. In this scenario Medical Transcription BPO is going through a very bad time, Indian Association of Medical Records (IAMR), a body that represents the MT BPO industry, said.

“The service to our customers has come down by 8-10 hours from 20 hours a day. This will greatly impact the revenues,” IAMR spokesperson Gopalakrishna said.

BPO revenues depend on various factors like number of hours, persons and calls attended. According to IAMR President T Rama Krishan, the biggest problem is to assure foreign companies, which are apprehensive of the developments in the state. Source