US-based IT solutions provider to financial services industry Fiserv on Wednesday announced its entry into India with plans to open a software and services delivery centre.

"We are opening an IT and business process outsourcing facility in Noida (Uttar Pradesh) that will cater to the parent company and its 16,000 customers and the Indian market," Fiserv Global Services Group president Arun Maheshwari said.

The company is leasing a 100,000 sq ft facility in Noida that can seat 1,000 people to begin operations.

Outsourcing and India: Complete Coverage

"The facility is getting ready and will be available in the next three months. We are currently working out of a smaller facility," he said.

Maheshwari said Fiserv has already started recruitment and by the time the new facility was ready it would have 250 people. The company will invest $10 million in the facility.

He said the company would be focussing equally on BPO and IT and in 2007 it plans to be in other cities of India too.

The company also sees India market as a big opportunity. "Feserv India would be an independent profit centre," Maheshwari said.

Fiserv, which has acquired 130 companies in the last 20 years, is also looking at acquisitions in India.

"We want to replicate the strategy of acquisitions in India too. We are talking to bankers and acquisitions can be in IT or BPO side," he said.

Maheshwari said Fiserv could acquire company having anywhere between 300 to 3,000 people.

The company already outsources some of its work to Indian vendors. "We can get some of that and we will convince the senior management to send more work to the Indian unit," he said.

Nasdaq listed Fiserv reported $3.4 billion in revenues in 2004.

Maheshwari, who led Computer Sciences Corporation's growth in India, said Fiserv would take less time to replicate that growth.

"The business environment in India has changed and we have greater commitment from the parent company," he said.