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Indian Firms Set Up Shop in Europe, Mexico
Reuters
September 2, 2004
The next back-office job that goes to an Indian outsourcing company
may not be moving as far as you think.
In a bid to tap new markets and satisfy customers keen to outsource
to more than one location, India's back-office service providers are
setting up shop in other countries.
Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies has a back-office subsidiary,
Progeon, that has opened a center in the Czech Republic, while Mphasis
BFL's arm, MSource, has a contact center in Mexico.
WNS Global Services, India's largest independent back-office services
company, is opening a center in neighboring Sri Lanka.
"It is more from a customer perspective," said Raju Bhatnagar, president
of ICICI OneSource, an outsourcing company that is majority-owned
by India's ICICI Bank and one of its subsidiaries.
"If the vendor, however reliable, has a single delivery center, it
forces the customer to look for a second vendor outside India, rather
than put all his eggs in one basket," said Bhatnagar, whose company
announced the purchase of a Chicago-based business on Wednesday. "If
I can bridge that gap, I can keep business from going to another vendor."
Sujay Chohan, research director of consultancy Gartner India, said
geographical diversity is also important for backing up data for disaster
recovery purposes and for offering different language skills.
"Today, Indian companies are guilty of servicing mainly English-speaking
countries," Chohan said. "If you are going to support customers in
Europe, you have to have something in Central Europe. It does not
have the same cost levels (as India), but it has comfort levels, language
skills."
A push for non-English speaking clients is what led Infosys to the
Czech Republic and Mphasis to Mexico. The expansion overseas is also
part of a wider global push by Indian companies, some of which are
making foreign acquisitions.
Revenue from India's outsourcing industry has grown to $3.6 billion,
mushrooming in and around key cities such as Bangalore, Bombay and
New Delhi. It employs 245,000 people, six times as many as five years
ago.
While India has 80 percent of the offshore outsourcing business today,
Gartner estimates the country will see its market share halved by
2007.
"There are today 28 countries that have emerged on the screen in the
past year," Chohan said.
"Who is going to take business away from India?" he said, pointing
to countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, South Africa and Vietnam.
"It is these countries chipping away. It does not matter that some
of these are high-cost...If cost was the only driver for BPO (business
process outsourcing), then India would have been doing $10 billion
today."
The Philippines, which already has a strong industry offering back-office
services, is high on the list of overseas locations for Indian companies.
Daksh eServices, recently acquired by IBM, and Hinduja TMT have operations
there.
The need to find skilled workers is another attraction of overseas
locations. Nearly half the workers in some Indian outsourcing companies
change their jobs or leave the industry every year. Quality suffers
as companies focus more on recruitment than on training.
Talented youngsters often leave the industry in frustration. Companies
who hired aspiring, English-speaking 20-something workers have found
these staff are hard to keep.
With such challenges at home, Indian companies would do well to look
for talent in other countries, Gartner's Chohan said.
That is exactly what WNS did by going offshore.
"Sri Lanka is a boutique business process outsourcing destination
that offers highly qualified English-speaking staff with specific
expertise in professional services such as finance and accounting
and commercial law," said Neeraj Bhargava, group chief executive officer
of WNS.
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