Leading third party business process outsourcing player Daksh eServices Pvt Ltd plans to hire 900 people during the year to ramp up its total headcount to over 4,500, a top company official said on Friday.

The $30 million Daksh, which has among its customers Fortune 500 companies plans to set up a call centre in the Asia-Pacific region next year and has identified Malaysia, Phillipines and Mauritius as potential locations.

"The overseas centre is due to a demand from our clients who want a redundancy unit out of India. It would be during 2004," Daksh co-founder and sr vice president (strategic initiatives) Pavan Vaish told PTI.

Though Daksh declined to name its clients citing costumer confidentiality, leading online bookstore Amazon.com, which outsources its e-mail based services has a stake in the firm.

Vaish said the ITES firm, whose 2/3rd of business is generated through voice-based transactions and the rest by technical support, plans an initial public offer in the next 12 to 18 months.

Daksh has clients in e-commerce related, banking financial services and insurance, high technology, telecom, healthcare services and travel industry.