Honeywell Tech to double Bangalore headcount

Like most other MNCs, Honeywell, the $24-billion diversified technology and manufacturing company, initially looked at India as a low cost software development base.

However, the company is now rapidly increasing its engagements in allied areas such as hardware, electronics and business process services at Bangalore-based Honeywell Technology Solutions (HTSL), its wholly-owned subsidiary. In line with work expansion, headcount at this facility is expected to double from 1,600 currently to 3,000 to 3,200 by mid-2005.

A sizeable portion of this increase is expected to be electronics-related work and also for the much talked of BPO segment. HTSL has already begun working on a range of captive BPO functions in the finance and human resource fields. This is viewed as an area of rapid growth for HTSL.

Krishna Mikkilleni, managing director, said HTSL is the only operations globally that interacts with multiple product divisions. Today, HTSL undertakes software product development and support, technology development and hardware engineering for the company’s aerospace and automation as well as control businesses.

HTSL also supports Honeywell businesses with digital enterprise solutions and business process solutions. Honeywell has invested over $150 million in its Indian operations. It also has a small presence in US and China.

The Chinese operation is used more to localise Honeywell’s products for that segment, with as much as 95 per cent of the global market’s requirement’s taken care of from India. “We are now looking to go up the value chain,” Mikkilleni said.

RAHUL SACHITANAND - The Economics Times

TeleTech Services India to instigate their second BPO facility in Mumbai

TeleTech Services India Pvt. Ltd – a BPO service provider from New Delhi, India is all set to incorporate their second facility center in Mumbai as the business process outsourcing BPO sector in India soars up. The company in 50% collaboration with Bharti Teletech Ltd. will start their Mumbai operations within coming four-five months.

TeleTech is also in hunt for two more locations in India to offer BPO services ranging from office administration, sales and marketing, and provision of infrastructure support services. TeleTech has a pool of more than 150 clients from various corners of the globe. TeleTech Services President and CEO Sanjay Kapoor says here, “the telecom exposure of the Bharti Group has given us an lever as far as serving our telecom clients goes while TeleTech Holdings is an established brand in the global BPO world today.”

Now Intel Capital mulls to invest in Indian BPO

Intel Capital the financial arm of $ 26.7 billion Intel Corporation is tentatively seeking to invest in the soaring Indian BPO Industry. But Intel Caps will employ priority on make investments in the companies for access deployment of Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) Hotspots and WiMax Networks, communications software and security services. With the growing presence of BPO in India – the move comes as no surprise since major corporate firms from US and Europe are flocking in to outsource their business services in India.

In a statement published in Economic Times, Intel Capital president of Intel Capital, Mr John H F Miner says, “we are seriously committed to invest in wireless communication, besides investing in technology companies in helping meet the users’ needs.” The BPO infrastructure in India is luring several corporate bigwigs and Intel Capital is another yardstick to measure the demolishing growth of BPO in India.

BPO ancillaries to mark tremendous growth

In a national service sector meeting organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Bangalore on Friday Infosys CFO, Mr. Mohandas Pai said the ancillary or the supportive services to BPO will triple within few years time. Ancillary services like transportation, food, training and facilities management will continue to growth with the growth of BPO in India. By the year 2007 – the supportive industry to BPO sector will approximately reach Rs. 9,000 crores.

Mr. Pai also warned vendors to implement quality measures, as the BPO customers will come hard while selecting purveyors. The ancillary segment to the India BPO industry expected to employ 600 thousand people within the year 2007.

HLL set Indigo for BPO operations

Leader in consumer, beauty, personal hygiene and homecare products in India – Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) has set-up a wholly owned BPO subsidiary to deliver customer services. Named ‘Indigo’ – the BPO subsidiary initiates in Bangalore with two separate divisions – one each for domestic and international markets.

The Indian wing of Unilever – HLL will be majorly focusing on business processing operations for Unilever in Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia. Indigo will solely take care of the back-office operations for these regions. There has been a continuous growth for BPO in India. The move by HLL to venture BPO operations comes in the same context.

Wipro needs 3000 BPO professionals

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and McKinsey in Mumbai organized a Forum workshop on “Competing Globally” on September 5-6, 2003. Wipro chief Azim Premji took podium on Friday and announced that the company needs to recruit around 3000 service people for its BPO operations besides 6000 engineering pros. BPO in India is posting some great performance and churned out to be more than $2 billion industry in no time. India enjoys the majority of offshore BPO as well ITES work generated by the western corporate market.

The ITES and BPO in India is expected to register an annual growth of 50% for coming 3-4 years – as per NASSCOM. For 2002-03 India BPO Industry posted a growth of 59% and the industry players are fully charged with the progress. BPO in India are accessing as well as developing new value based programs and software’s to cater the requirement of the industry.

Customer First: Holding domestic BPO front

Customer First Service a two-year-old BPO is providing outsourcing services to several domestic Indian companies. Customer First’s agents are spread across several cities in India offering multi-lingual call center services. This indicates the prospective growth of BPO in India. The companies total business constitutes 30% of international BPO business, which includes clients like Coke, Standard Chartered Bank among others.

The company had the turnover of Rs7.2 crore about $1.57 million last year and looking in prospect of $4.15 million during the current fiscal year. With the tremendous growth in the BPO in India in prospect - Customer First Service is looking forward to constructive BPO growth for the company.

WNS acquires ClaimsBPO

WNS Global Services – a leading BPO service source with operations in New York, London, Ipswich and two facilities in India acquired ClaimsBPO – another leading provider of BPO services to the US healthcare industry. “This acquisition is consistent with WNS’s strategy of building expertise in verticals where effective outsourcing can provide a tremendous bottom-line impact to the clients,” claimed Neeraj Bhargava, president North American operations and Group CFO, WNS.

ClaimsBPO has operated as a division of seven-year-old GreenSnow Inc. providing HIPAA-compliant BPO services for US healthcare clients. WNS – now – will take up all of ClaimsBPO clients, employees and the infrastructure. WNS has a good presence in the Indian BPO segment of late. With over 2500 employees in its offshore location in Mumbai and Pune in India, WNS offers excellent services via its strong infrastructure. BPO in India will certainly be boosted by the impeccable move of WNS.

UTI Venture Funds buys stake at Rev IT

UTI Venture Funds invested $2.3 million in the BPO firm Rev IT in order to tap the strong BPO market flourishing in India. Rev IT with its US subsidiary Sherpa Business Solutions is engaged in outsourcing of healthcare and publishing products since March this year. BPO in India is on a surmounting growth and showing positive signs ever since its intrusion in India.

UTI Venture of Unit Trust of India has thus gained a minority share in Rev IT’s functioning. Rev IT at the moment has strength of 450 people. The move is the clear indication of strong economic reform in the country and BPO in India have played a inseparable part in the movement.