Asian i-Office Properties, Inc. yesterday broke ground on eBloc Tower 3, its third business process outsourcing (BPO) building at the Cebu IT Park.
This, as three technology-based companies started fitting out their offices at the newly completed eBloc Tower 2.

The third eBloc Tower, located near the second tower, is a 12-storey building with seven levels allocated for office spaces. Its construction boosts the cyberpark’s and Cebu’s capacity to host BPOs. Cebu has retained its rank as the Tholons’ ninth top BPO destination in the world.

Antonino T. Aquino, president of Asian i-Office’s parent firm Ayala Land, Inc., said the Ayala Group will continue to focus on enhancing its master-planned developments in Cebu City even as it looks for opportunities to undertake similar projects in other major cities in the Visayas and throughout the country. (more…)

The multi-billion dollar Essar Group is finalising plans to sell part of its holdings in Aegis, its back office services venture, through an initial public offering (IPO) most likely to be on an overseas stock exchange. The group could raise between $300 million and $400 million through the listing.

The Ruia family and the top management of Aegis, led by MD and Global CEO Aparup Sengupta, have met bank officials over the last few months to shortlist lead managers for the IPO, tentatively planned for the second quarter of FY13, two people with direct knowledge of the development told ET.

The IPO will be the first from an Indian BPO player since Genpact listed on the NYSE in 2007. Investors in Intelenet, another India-based back office provider, opted to sell to UK firm Serco last year rather than make a public offer.

The Essar Group could divest between 25% and 30% of the company, the people quoted earlier said. “It is also looking at selling part of its stake to a financial investor before the public offering, in which case about 15% would be to the investor and 15% through a public offering,” one of the two persons quoted earlier said. “At this point, the group has no plans to relinquish majority stake,” he added. (more…)

At least 30,000 more call center agents will be hired to work in several business process outsourcing (BPO) companies inside this Freeport, the Metro Clark Information and Communications Technology Council (MCICTC) here reported Tuesday.

George Sorio of the CyberCity Teleservices based here said that P33 million worth of training scholarship vouchers will be awarded in Luzon to answer the need for more agents as various companies are expected to expand in the Metro Clark area.

Metro Clark is composed of areas in Clark and nearby towns and cities in Pampanga and Tarlac. It is one of only three centers of excellence in the country, alongside Metro Manila and Metro Cebu. (more…)

The Haryana government wants the BPO companies in Gurgaon to conduct campus interviews in state-owned colleges to motivate students to acquire skills that would help them get jobs in industries dealing with IT-enabled services (ITeS).

Sources in the state education department said that the industry leaders can choose the college in the region from where they want to kick off this initiative. It has been some time since the state government has been discussing the possibility of designing the college syllabus in such a manner that it makes the state’s youngsters more employable.

While Gurgaon has emerged as the major BPO hub in north India, the manpower requirement is met from either Delhi or its adjoining cities. Confirming that the state government is thinking of incorporating subjects in college curriculum to meet the industry requirement, higher education secretary S S Prasad said that a high-level task force is looking into the suggestions made by the industry. Prasad was in Gurgaon to attend a workshop on Monday with the Nasscom representatives and top industry leaders.

This was also attended by deans and senior faculty of about 25 colleges besides representatives from companies such as Cognizant, Fidelity, IBM, Genpact and WNS. The education secretary said that the task force under the chairmanship of the chief secretary is meeting on January 20 to give concrete shape to the proposals made by the BPO industry. “The curriculum should be relevant to the industry. There is a need to fill the gap that exists between the industry and our education system,” Prasad added. (more…)

Unaffected by the economic slowdown, employment in India has witnessed a growth of over 3.15 lakh between July and September last year, topping the 23 lakh job creation over the last three years. The rise in employment was recorded particularly in eight sectors - textiles and apparels, leather, metals, automobiles, gems and jewellery, transport,IT, BPO, handloom and powerloom, according to a government survey released today.

The growth in this quarter has been maximum in the IT and BPO sector, which generated an additional employment of 2.04 lakh followed by an increase of 0.42 lakh in textiles including apparels, 0.38 lakh in metals, 0.22 lakh in automobiles, 0.09 lakh in handloom and powerloom, 0.07 lakh in gems jewellery. The information for the twelfth quick employment survey covering the period from July to September, 2011 has been collected from 2,215 units and establishments by covering 21 centres spread across 11 states and UTs.

The current survey was to assess the impact of economic slowdown on employment in India. The net addition of 23.58 lakh estimated employment has been registered in these sectors during the period of October, 2008 (first survey) to September, 2011 (twelfth survey)in the series of “Quarterly Quick Employment Survey in Affected Sectors” conducted by the Labour Bureau of the Ministry of Labour and Employment. The overall employment in these sectors has increased by 3.15 lakh during the current quarter. “The upward trend in employment has been continuously maintained since July 2009. During the quarter July to September 2011, employment has increased in respect of all sectors except Leather and Transport where there was a marginal fall,” a release issued by the ministry said. Source

The ICT/BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry posted revenues of US$ 310 million in 2010/2011 becoming Sri Lanka’s 6th largest export earner.

Exports from this sector rose by 47% from US$ 210 million in 2009/2010 and are set to reach $1 billion by 2015 if this momentum is continued in the coming years, said Export Development Board, (EDB) Chairman Janaka Ratnayake at a press conference in Colombo this week.

He expressed the belief that the industry will grow by a compound rate of 25% in the next three years.

With the war ending, this industry is poised to be among the top export earners during the next five years, Mr. Ratnayake said, adding that it has the potential of creating more 50,000 direct jobs from the present 15,000. The value addition of service experts from the IT/BPO industry is a near 100 %. The industry is based on knowledge workers and creates high paying jobs for educated youth. Each job in IT/BPO industry creates 3-4 other indirect jobs in the economy, he told Business Times, on the sidelines of the briefing. (more…)

The business process outsourcing (BPO) unit at the Cherlapalli Central Prison, the first of its kind in the country, has been reopened recently as the Postal Department, Tata Consultancy Services and the Electronic Corporation of India Ltd came forward to give work orders.

The BPO training centre, which had been closed for the last five months, was reopened last week. “We had to close it as the companies that offered projects could not deliver on the promise at the scheduled time,” KC Srinivas Rao, prison superintendent, told City Express.

However, he said, the companies had last week informed them that they would give work orders in a month. “They asked us to be ready. We have started training the third batch of 25 members,” he added. (more…)

Most of the BPO majors in the city have rubbished the proposed the new bill tabled in the US House of Representatives to discourage offshoring as nothing but election rhetoric which will gather steam over the next year.While they are optimistic that this bill will not become law, they say that even if it does, the cost advantage will help India retain its position as the offshore leader.

Raman Roy, who pioneered the BPO industry in India, says that such incidents are bound to take place in the run-up to the presidential election in the US. “We are likely to see more such things in the days to come and they are rhetoric which we saw even during the Obama presidential campaign. This is a three-week-old bill and has been a non-starter so far. The other thing is why they should be selective and only target BPOs. They should also include IT companies in this bill,” he said.Some others say they are taking steps to remain in business even if the bill sees light of the day. “We have been evaluating opening of a delivery centre in the United States to cater to the onshore outsourcing requirements of clients. Notwithstanding the above, we believe that legislation such as the one recently introduced, could ultimately impact the competitiveness of American businesses,” said Keshav Murugesh, group CEO, WNS. Source

Infosys BPO, the business processing outsourcing arm of Infosys, the country’s second-largest exporter of information technology services, is setting up a new centre in Dalian, China, with a 500-person capacity, Swaminathan D, the managing director and CEO of Infosys BPO told Business Standard.

Infosys established its first BPO centre in China in 2006. Located in Hangzhou, it employs 1,000 people. “We plan to offer back office support from Dalian as an additional location in China. We believe it is easy to get enough talents in Dalian who are good at managing the Japanese and Korean processes, other than Chinese and English,” said Swaminathan.

He says a reason Infosys is seeing a lot more BPO opportunities in China is that a large number of global clients are having operations in the country. “Thus, we look at locations which provide strategic and competitive advantage to our clients as a part of our location strategy. Besides, it enables us to extend or expand our talent pool,” he added. (more…)

Job opportunities in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector topped the list of vacancies posted by private sector employers in the online job matching system, Phil-JobNet, said Labor Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baladoz in a statement Monday.

Reports from the Bureau of Local Employment (BLE) showed that BPO job vacancies reached 39,281 as of end-September 2011.

Baldoz said this number affirmed the Philippines’s status as the BPO hub of the world.

However, that same report also revealed that the number of applicants for the BPO industry on Phil-JobNet do not match the high number of vacancies, with only 1,030 jobseekers applying for BPO positions from January to September.

“BPO companies continue to expand their business operations in the Philippines. On the demand side, from the year 2010 to the past three quarters of 2011, call center service workers hold the number one position in the vacancy list,” said BLE director Ma. Criselda Sy. (more…)