The publishing industry in the western countries, which once thrived because of the cost advantage, was suffering from high cost of production, including wages. With advent of digital printing, the cost of printing books had also become costlier, due to high cost of paper and machinery.
Genpact, the country's largest business process outsourcing firm, today announced the acquisition of Axis Risk Consulting, a risk consulting firm, for an undisclosed sum.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the prosecution of Som Mittal, chief of National Association of Software and Service Companies in the Pratibha Murthy murder case.
A district collector's experiment in Tamil Nadu is showing the way for more rural BPOs even in times of recession.
The current sub-prime crisis, in the medium-to-long term period, will accelerate global sourcing adoption as financial institutions are exercising the option to cut costs. The institute predicts that outsourcing from the financial services sector have the potential to increase 40-45 times the current market size over the next five years, with key drivers of growth coming from cost pressures and the timely advent of more vertical-specific offerings by offshore suppliers.
BPOs in Bangalore, which rely heavily on Internet services, say that there has been a 'slowdown' but they 'have been able to tide over the crisis' by using 'backup or alternate lines.'
To lure the business process outsourcing and IT/ITeS industry, the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh has showered various sops. The realty sector, too, has been blessed with many relaxations.
Plans another $1-billion fund, wants to expand core team in India.
With the telecom industry aiming to increase its rural subscribers base and the central bank asking banks and financial firms to cater to the rural sector, businesses will have to find ways of servicing customers, say analysts. Most of the rural BPOs have a seating capacity of below 100 per centre, as they are situated in remote areas.
Insurance companies have started offering IT, IT-enabled services, business process outsourcing and non-manufacturing companies with policies due for renewal on January 1 discounts of more than 60 per cent.
Spanco Telesystems and Solutions is poised to invest over Rs 400 crore in its Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) operations, over two years.
IT and business process outsourcing services provider Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation has expanded its share repurchase programme to $200 million.
US-based financial services major Wells Fargo, which has set up an information technology and business process outsourcing facility in Hyderabad, is looking at locating back office processes, other than call centres, in India.
In India, there are so much of added costs in the form of providing food and transportation to employees, says S Nagarajan, Co-founder, 24/7 Customer.
With the rupee going from strength to strength and attrition a continuing concern for Indian business process outsourcing companies, the new poster child of private equity investors is witnessing adjustments in valuations in the changed scenario.
US-based buyout fund Carlyle, Providence Equity Partners, Warburg Pincus and Blackstone are understood to be exploring a buyout of Temasek's holding in Mumbai-based pure-play business process outsourcing firm Firstsource. The news triggered the company's share price to rise 6.76 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) to close at Rs 43.45 on Tuesday. Warburg Pincus has a stake in WNS, a BPO company, while Blackstone has a majority stake in Intelenet.
ICICI Bank is understood to have deferred the sale of its holding in Firstsource Solutions, a Mumbai-based pure-play business process outsourcing entity. The bank along with its subsidiaries owns close to 27 per cent stake in the BPO firm.
To add 1,500-2,000 people in the next 12 months.
The demand for chartered accountants in the corporate world has shot up with stringent income tax laws, which require compulsory maintenance of accounts by specified categories of taxpayers.
This will pave the way for Kapil Puri to expand Spanco Telesystems, the business process outsourcing and telecommunication services company that he set up after partly exiting Sparsh. Puri is slated to receive around Rs 35 crore (Rs 350 million) from the sale of his stake, which will take place at around Rs 200 per share. This includes a premium as against the existing ruling price of Rs 150 per share.
Outsource Partners International, a business process outsourcing company that provides finance and accounting services to clients in the US and UK through offshore resource centres in India, plans to target Indian global firms to scale up business.
Old economy companies such as Hero, M&M (Tech Mahindra), Aditya Birla, Essar, Hindujas and Larsen & Toubro have sprung into action with large acquisitions and major deals.
Russell Smith, chairman, SDD Global Solutions, explains what makes India such a hot legal outsourcing destination.
Though it is smaller than the $11 billion BPO exports market, it is expected to reach $6 billion by 2012, according to a new Ernst and Young study. The domestic BPO market, hence, presents a huge untapped growth opportunity. Its addressable market opportunity is in the range of $16-19 billion by 2012, with significant business growth coming in from sectors like BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), telecom, media, retail and government.
The US sub-prime lending crisis forced Mumbai-based WNS Holdings to revise its net income guidance by 60 per cent, and this is worrying the $8 billion business process outsourcing sector players and analysts.
In an e-mail interview with Senior Associate Editor (features) Indrani Roy Mitra, OnTrac's director Ravi Venkatesam throws light on his company's modus operandi, people it trains and also on the future of the Indian BPO industry.
Industry insiders as well as sector experts said that companies are unlikely to miss this opportunity to rationalise bloated boom-time salaries.
Wipro BPO, the business process outsourcing arm of soaps-to-IT services player Wipro Ltd, plans to expand its operations in China and the Philippines by opening two more centres in these countries by the end of this year.
More and more Indian service providers are taking the help of the Internet to reach out to foreign clients in the US and Europe. There are 4,000 Indian service providers on Elance.com - a business-to-business work-on-demand portal that caters to small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs) across the globe. It acts as a site on which people who have work post their projects and service providers bid for them. India is one of the largest growing service providers in terms of payments.
Addressing the growing need for security of business process outsourcing employees, Bangalore-based Proficio Geo Technologies has come up with PRO-TMS
Corporate India's hiring activity saw a decline in April, with the business process outsourcing and IT enabled services industry registering the sharpest drop of 22 per cent, a report by job portal said.
Indian export-oriented information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) firms may be grappling with an appreciating rupee and clouds of doubt looming over the extension of tax sops for the sector beyond 2009. An Everest-Nasscom study points out that the domestic BPO market, with a growth rate of 50 per cent over the last five years, has grown faster than the overall Indian BPO market to reach nearly $1.6 billion (Rs 6,400 crore) by end of FY2008.
Sundaram Business Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sundaram Finance, has picked up 74 per cent equity stake in the Chennai-based business process outsourcing firm Professional Management Consultants for an undisclosed amount.
The race for Citigroup Global Services, the business process outsourcing arm of Citigroup is hotting up with the entry of the BPO firm WNS and consultancy firm Accenture.
The required skills have become higher, creating opportunities for a more specialised workforce in this sector. For long, a job with a business process outsourcing (BPO) company has been looked upon as a stepping stone to another, longer-lasting career. Such has been the attrition in the industry.
Overall, the survey shows that salary increases across industries at 14.8 per cent are roughly the same as last year (14.5 per cent).
Nasscom estimates that the KPO industry is poised for a 45 per cent per annum growth till 2010. The current hotspots in KPO are engineering and design, basic data search, integration and management and biotech & pharma.
The domestic market for business process outsourcing - which is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 50 per cent - is catching the attention of BPO companies that have traditionally catered to the international market.
At present, the bank has around 10,000 employees in India, with 7,500 in Aces, its business process outsourcing unit and product development centre, while another 500 are in the non-retail banking units, who would be retained. This is part of its strategy to focus on key markets after the sale of its retail and SME banking business. The unit had contributed around 30 per cent of RBS's revenue from its India and Asia-Pacific operations.
The Hinduja Group-promoted business process outsourcing firm HTMT Global Solutions has set aside Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) to close two acquisition deals in the US by the end of this year.