ACIS foresees 100% growth in headcount

Being in the insurance-financial services domain may not be the most attractive situation during the current downturn, but Alliance Cornhill Information Services (ACIS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of UK-based Allianz Insurance, is foreseeing a 100% growth in its headcount at its operations out of the Technopark here.

ACIS, which has grown from being an IT/ITeS operation employing about two dozen employees in 2004 has grown to being a 700-staff organisation doing high-end value-added services for the Allianz group, and has added a new facility here, hoping to reach a headcount of 1,400 in the near future.

The company opened its third facility at the Technopark today, which adds 40,000 sq ft and 250 seats in the first phase of the new facility. The ACIS centre here is a one-of-its-kind facility for the Allianz group, doing captive work for the parent company and operating units within the Allianz group.

“ACIS has been working with five other operating units within the Allianz group over the past one year, and looks poised to expand to make full use of its capacity of 1,400 seats at the Technopark”, Andrew Torrance, CEO of Allianz Insurance, UK told ET.

He said some of the new projects that ACIS had added in the recent past included a project to supply certain insurance products to customers, another that is meant for the insurance broker base, a project that involves revamp of the retail platform, one relating to legal protection insurance, and a claims operation project.

ACIS COO Rakesh Gupta said the immediate future looked bright for the company in the backdrop of the pressure on businesses to achieve cost efficiencies, adding that ACIS was offering the right value proposition to attract fresh business.

Mr Torrance said Allianz Insurance was not, at the moment, looking to set up another unit on the lines of ACIS anywhere else in the world, adding that the expansion here would be able to take care of additional work for the near term. Mr Gupta said ACIS had the option of expanding by adding more space within the Technopark or outside of it should the need arise to up its headcount beyond 1,400.

iGate to hire 1,500 people next year

IT services player iGate has announced that it will hire 1,500 people in 2010, following a rebound in IT outsourcing contracts. iGate said the plan to increase the headcount was a reflection of the improving business environment.

Said iGate CEO Phaneesh Murthy, "We believe there is already a revival in the demand side as the companies have started spending on discretionary projects. The IT budgets are also expected to increase by 2-4 per cent, in 2010." He was in Bangalore on Thursday to inaugurate its new facility, measuring 1.15 lakh sq.ft with a seating capacity of 1,050 people.

The Nasdaq-listed company has 6,400 employees. In the fourth quarter of the present calendar (Oct-Dec 2009), iGate intends to hire 300 people, including 100 for BPO services.

Murthy said, while the pricing environment largely remained stable, the company was seeing a huge increase in the number of first time outsourcers. Of the 12 new clients iGate added during the last two quarters, 11 were first time outsourcers. "This indicates that offshoring to locations like India is expected to increase in the coming days," he added. iGate had reported revenues of $49.1 million in the September quarter.

The company is present in India in four locations including Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Noida. It has a near-shore centre in Mexico as well. Its new facility is located in iGate's 13.5 acre campus.

According to the company, special efforts were made to make the new phase green by introducing LED and solar lighting, an ozone-friendly air conditioning system, organic waste converter and a wastewater recycling system.

iGate has taken on a carbon footprint estimation study to determine the Green House Gas (GHG) inventory across all its global delivery facilities in India, Australia and Mexico.

Aditya Birla BPO to expand headcount to 1,000 in 5 months

Aditya Birla Minacs, a BPO venture of the Aditya Birla Group, has drawn up huge expansion plans in Kolkata. The company, which soft-launched its operations in the city in March and employs 450 people, will expand its headcount to 1,000 over the next five months.

And not just that. Aditya Birla Minacs, which figures among India’s top 10 BPOs, is preparing a business plan which will see its headcount in Kolkata growing to nearly 5,000 people. This includes setting up a string of BPO facilities across the city as well as some 6-to-10 centres in some of the smaller towns in the state. It also plans to add more verticals in Kolkata from its present focus on telecoms.

The company’s top brass has recently made a presentation of its expansion plans in West Bengal to the state IT department. "The company is quite bullish about Kolkata and plans to set up one of their largest operations here," said the West Bengal IT secretary, Mr Siddharth.

Confirming the development, Aditya Birla Minacs CEO Deepak Patel said the company is looking at the hub-and-spoke model to expand its operations in West Bengal.

"We plan to have the hub facility in Kolkata which will support a number of smaller BPO centres in smaller towns. The small town facilities will support regional language BPO activities. While we will add some 550-odd people by March 2010, eventually our Kolkata operations will accommodate up to 4,000-5,000 people," Mr Patel told ET.

Aditya Birla Minacs’ Kolkata facility undertakes voice-based BPO activities for the group’s telecom venture, Idea Cellular. "Within the telecom vertical, we will also foray into non-voice areas like finance and accounting in Kolkata. This includes more such projects from Idea Cellular. We may also undertake BPO projects for other group companies out of Kolkata," said Mr Patel.

The company is also bullish about allocating projects from some of its others clients into Kolkata. "We will soon expand the scope of our Kolkata operations into newer verticals like banking, insurance and financial services (BFSI), health, public sector and manufacturing," Mr Patel said.

Incidentally, Aditya Birla Minacs believes in leasing out space for its facilities. It has just taken some additional space on lease in the city’s tech hub at Salt Lake Sector V. "We are currently in the process of identifying more locations where we can set up our facilities. We are particularly attracted by the huge talent pool available in the state," said Mr Patel.

While Aditya Birla Nuvo holds 88.28% in Aditya Birla Minacs, the balance 11.72% is owned by Canadian private investment firm ReichmannHauer Capital Partners. The company employs some 6,000 people out of Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Aurangabad, Baroda and Kolkata. Another 6,000-odd people are employed in overseas facilities spread over the US, Canada, Europe and Philippines.

iGate to hire 300 by Dec

Nasdaq listed Software company iGate will hire 300 people by December as the company sees rebound in contract and demand picking up gradually by that time.

"We will hire 200 people for our software services and 100 for BPO by December to expand our existing operations. We believe there is already revival of demand for IT and BPO services and to meet that demand we are hiring," iGate CEO Phaneesh Murthy said.

The company had frozen recruitment earlier this year when recession was at its peak. Murthy said hiring reflect the slow tapering up of the recession. Last week, iGate posted a minor increase in its net income for quarter ending September 2009 at $8.9 million.

The company had a net income of $8.5 million in the Q3 of last year. Revenue from continuing operations, however, declined to $49.1 million during the quarter from $55.4 million made in the corresponding quarter of FY 2008, the company said.

The company added six new customers in the quarter. Its employee base in Q3 fell slightly to 6,380 employees as of September 30, 2009 compared to 6,407 in the same period last year.

IT job mart buzzing again, software pros in demand

Headhunters looking out for 30,000 lateral entries in top firms
IT majors are back to hiring experienced hands after an eight-month hiatus beginning January. Counting for the early signals from headhunters in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai, tech shops may be looking out for up to 30,000 lateral entries, if not more, before this calendar runs out. Recruitment agencies say they have started getting mandates for hiring in small batches.

At least two recruitment firms that FC spoke to confirmed that IT companies had mandated lateral hiring of between 20,000 and 30,000 employees in the past one month alone, though they were unwilling to hazard a guess on how the numbers might stack up by the end of 2009. They said there were still uncertainties about hiring intentions of their clients.

In the boom years of 2006, 2007 and 2008, the IT/ITeS industry created up to 400,000 new jobs every year of which about 150,000 were lateral entries. And while the global recession set in September 2008, hiring continued right through December. It was only in January-August this year that hiring trickled down to just a few hundred.

Headhunters confide that most large Indian and foreign firms, including the likes of IBM and Accenture, are back to hiring. Infosys and TCS have about more lateral hirings from the October-December quarter. So are some of the mid-sized body shops Sotware engineers with 4-8 years experience are mostly in demand.

Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO of The Head Hunters India said even tier-II IT companies were scouting for experienced personnel. “Depending on the size of the companies, the number of vacancies is generally between 50-100.”

Infosys board member T V Mohandas Pai told Financial Chronicle that his company had increased the forecast of additional headcount for financial year 2010 to 20,000 from 18,000 because it wanted to recruit more experienced people. This was needed to balance out the company’s staff pyramid, 70 per cent of which rests on freshers.

A HR industry tracker, who did not want to be named, said Infosys and TCS were also looking for business and vertical heads with over 12 years experience.

Sudhakar Balakrishnan, CEO of Adecco India, said, “There is some buoyancy now in the lateral hiring market for IT companies. Companies, though keeping the final numbers under wraps, are definitely looking to hire laterally. With revenues going up and the environment stabilising, they feel that a lot of requirements would be coming up.’’

While declining to give definite growth numbers, T Muralidharan, CMD of Hyderabad-based TMI Group said, the mandates received by his agency for filling up vacancies at top software firms in the past month was equal to what he had got in the preceding five months.

E Balaji, CEO of Chennai-based Ma Foi Management Consultants, said while the signs were good, firms were basically opening up positions that they had frozen earlier. “We have to wait and see how this scenario will pan out in the future,” he added. His opinion was shared by Gautam Sinha, CEO of TVA Allegis, a specialty IT/ITeS

hiring firm. He said, “The situation has improved but we are still 3-6 months away from lateral hiring going up to the pre-economic crisis numbers. The pipeline is good but big hirings will depend on the market condition in the US in coming months.”

He also explained that right now the companies were looking for professionals with 4-8 years experience. The big numbers would come when firms start looking out for professionals with 2-4 years experience, he said.

Indian cos hiring activity picks up 4.1 % in Sept

India Inc's hiring activity picked up 4.1 per cent in September with IT, BPO and real estate sectors turning bullish after a long time, a report by job portal naurkri.Com has said.

The naukri.Com's monthly 'JobSpeak index' increased to 729 in September from 701 in August this year.

"The secular trend is positive across sectors. Had it not been for an early festival season we may have seen further improvement in the index.

"The good news is that the IT and BPO sectors which are big employers especially at entry and junior levels seem to be in positive territory after a long time," Info Edge (owner of naukri.Com) COO and Director Hitesh Oberoi said.

Moreover, on the three-month moving average, the index inched up to 719 in September from 715 in August.

Last month, companies' hiring activity saw a positive trend with 14 out of 41 sectors covered showing a double digit rise in hiring activities.

The IT-enabled services (ITeS) and BPO, real estate and retail sectors saw a significant push in September as compared to August, the report stated.

The ITeS/BPO sector, saw an increase of 18.3 per cent in hiring activity in September, while real estate and retail saw a rise of 36.8 per cent and 12.2 per cent, respectively.

Mid-tier IT cos look to hire up to 30k

The hire-no-more hysteria seems to be heading for a soft burial, with mid-tier and niche technology companies returning to the employment orbit as they plan to take in 25,000 to 30,000 experienced hands in the next three to nine months.

The renewed demand has been spurred by a spurt in outsourcing, better order positions and companies expanding their India operations and moving up the value chain. Those on the lookout for trained hands are companies like GlobalLogic India, Aricent, MindTree, CPA Global, Sapient, Symphony Services, Citrix, Adobe, Persistent Solutions, nVidia, Amazon , Agilent and Vertex.

Following is the companies list
CPA Global
To hire: 1,400

Vertex
To hire:1,000

UHG
To hire:1,000

Sapient
To hire: 800

Aricent
To hire: 700

MindTree
To hire: 600

GlobalLogic
To hire: 400

Symphony
To hire: 300

Google to resume hiring, acquisitions

Google Inc, the world’s most popular Internet search engine, plans to resume hiring and acquisitions after the recovering economy helped third-quarter sales beat analysts’ estimates.

Excluding revenue passed on to partner sites, sales jumped 8.4 percent to $4.38 billion from a year earlier, the company said. That compared with an average estimate of $4.25 billion in a Bloomberg survey of analysts.

Large customers stepped up spending on Google ads last quarter, a rebound from the first half of the year, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said. With the economy improving, the company can go back to investing, he said. Google had trimmed jobs and shut down underperforming businesses this year to rein in spending.

“We weathered what is an incredible recession,” Pichette said in an interview. “If you have all this behind you, the only outcome you should have as management is: ‘OK, let’s build now.’”

Net income rose 27 percent to $1.64 billion, or $5.13 a share, from $1.29 billion, or $4.06, a year earlier, the Mountain View, California-based company said. Leaving out some costs such as stock-based compensation, profit was $5.89 a share. Analysts had estimated $5.43.

Accelerating growth?
“These are very strong results -- above even the highest expectations out there,” said Andy Miedler, an analyst with Edward Jones in St Louis. He rates the stock a buy and doesn’t own it. “As the economy continues to improve, we expect accelerating growth.”

Google’s plan to boost spending may have tempered investors’ enthusiasm, said Ben Schachter, an analyst at San Francisco-based Broadpoint AmTech Inc.

“The stock would be further up if not for the bit about them investing heavily,” he said.

“We’re going to invest,” Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said on a conference call with analysts. “That, I think, ultimately is good for the long term of Google.”

The company’s acquisitions will be mostly smaller companies that might help with search technology or advertising, Schmidt said. While Google is open to big purchases, those deals will be rare, he said.

Fifty companies
“They are probably the most acquisitive company in technology right now,” Gene Munster, an analyst at
Piper Jaffray & Co in Minneapolis, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “There are probably 50 companies out there they could acquire that will make their ads more relevant.”

Google’s paid clicks -- the number of times its ads were clicked on by consumers -- climbed about 14 percent last quarter. The average amount that Google charges for each click declined from a year earlier, falling 6 percent, a sign that advertisers are paying lower rates. Those rates may recover again as the recession eases, said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Janco Partners Inc in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

Google took a harder line on expenses earlier this year, eliminating waste and shutting down some of its free employee cafes. It also closed businesses, such as a radio-programming division. In March, the company cut about 200 sales and marketingpositions, or 1 percent of its workforce.

Capital expenditures fell to $186.3 million last quarter from $451.5 million a year earlier. Google has maintained its dominance in the Internet search market this year, warding off an attack from Microsoft Corp’s Bing, which debuted in June.

Google had 64.9 percent of the US market last month, compared with 65 percent in May, according to ComScore Inc in Reston, Virginia. Microsoft’s share grew to 9.4 percent from 8 percent over that period -- mostly at the expense of Yahoo Inc, which fell to 18.8 percent from 20.1 percent.

Indian IT firms back in action, begin hiring: Rediff

After having canned hiring for the whole of the last financial year, Indian IT companies are back in action, as majors like Infosys and Wipro have begun approaching engineering and management institutes, besides head hunting companies to add to their rolls.

According to Rediff, IT companies hire an average of 50 students each from engineering campuses and 20 students from management institutes. Headhunters confirm that many of the IT companies have given them mandates for hiring over the next couple of quarters. "We have seen an uptick in the hiring patterns among the IT firms. We ourselves have received good mandates from firms like Infosys and others.

"As of now, we have 13-14 mandates. The uptick started from August and has gone strong in September. The demand is increasing as these firms are also diversifying in newer geographies and within India, for which they will need people," said Venkat Subramaniam, Sourcing Partner of TMI Network.

In the case of Infosys, the company said that these 2,000 would be lateral (experienced people). This would help it to react faster once clients were ready to increase their IT spend.

"Close to 200 people will be added in the sales and marketing segment by the end of this fiscal," said Subhash Dhar, Senior VP, communications, media and entertainment, global sales, alliances and marketing.

Firms like Accenture have also approached headhunters for large scale recruitment. A senior HR consultant, who did not wish to be named, said India's largest IT firm Tata Consultancy Services, too, plans to meet some of the leading HR firms after it announces the second quarter results.

The premier Indian Institutes of Management and Indian Institutes of Technology that Business Standard reporters spoke to confirmed that prominent IT firms have approached them for placements.

"The scene is good. Some IT firms have approached us and pre-placement offers are still flowing in, though they have not confirmed the numbers of hiring so far," said Professor Prafulla Agnihotri, Chairman, career development and placement, IIM Calcutta. He, however refused to divulge any names.

The reasons are varied. Sanjeev Bikchandani, Managing Director and CEO of InfoEdge (promoter of Naukri.com), points out that, "replacement hiring is definitely happening in the IT sector. So, it's mainly lateral hiring. Demand led hiring is still a quarter or two away. However, it is early days to put any number to this hiring."

An HR consultant added, on the condition of anonymity, that companies will start hiring now as they are reaching the end of the year. This is when clients will also finalize budgets, besides the fact that Indian IT groups are also gearing up their global centres.

"We have seen that on an average, every month firms are hiring 30-40 people in the senior and mid-management level," he says.

The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey for the services industry, which includes IT, projects a 20-25 per cent increase in hiring. Cherian Kuruvila, Director - operations, Manpower India explains, "Infosys' statement reflects the sentiment. Companies are expected to build a talent pool for upcoming projects as green shoots are visible."

The other reason for the increase in hiring, according to Ashok Reddy, Managing Director, TeamLease Services, is due to the voluntary movement that was almost nil last year due to market circumstances. "Now with the market bouncing back, people have started moving. The fear of attrition will force companies to have a pool of people to replace outgoing employees. Before August we used to have on an average 100 openings, which in the August-September period has gone up to 400," he added.

The momentum of this trend will also imply an increase in salary hikes. "The IT sector is showing improved sentiments with increases expected to leap by a few percentage points next year, after a long-lasting lull of near 0 per cent increase this year," said Gangapriya Chakraverti, India leader of Mercer's information product solutions business.

However, there are a few who are still being cautious. Rakesh Malik, Practice Leader for globalisation and business transformation practice at Hewitt Associates, reasons: "It's too early to say that broadbase hiring will be back in IT. It could be that some particular skills were lacking in Infosys' employee pool, for which the company is hiring 2,000 people.

"The deal flow in the industry is not back to normalcy yet, expecting hiring of this scale would be too early." He avers he hasn't seen much increase in hiring in the IT space. It's just that the people who had been put on bench or virtual bench are being brought back.

TCS to up China manpower four times

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd plans to more than quadruple its work force in China over the next five years, says a WSJ report. Quoting a senior company official, the news report says that the country's top software exporter plans to increase its China staff to 5,000 by 2014 from 1,100 currently.

The official said that Chinese companies are now more open to outsourcing and many of them will be looking for support in information technology outsourcing services as they globalise.

TCS reportedly entered the Chinese market in 2002. The company holds approximately 66% stake in a joint venture company named TCS China,
which it formed with three Chinese companies in 2006. Software giant Microsoft joined the JV in 2008 with a share of 8.7%.

TCS's clients in China include several of the country's big names in the financial world, like Bank of China, Ping An Insurance (Group), Huaxia Bank and China Foreign Exchange Trade System, a unit of People's Bank of China. TCS's multinational clients in the country included Motorola Inc and Johnson Controls.

TCS has four global delivery centers in China, including Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin. The company's sales office is located at Shenzhen.

Infosys adds a total of 5,000 employees

Notwithstanding the economic slump, software services firm Infosys Technologies has increased its headcount and has made a total addition of over 5,000 employees in the last 12-month period.

The total employee strength of the group stood at 1,05,453 till the quarter ended September 30, where as in the corresponding period a year ago the figure stood at 1,00,306, Infosys said in a statement.

During the quarter, there was a gross addition of 6,069 employees for Infosys and its subsidiaries and a net addition of 1,548 employees, even as the hiring trend across the board was on a downslide.

In a bid to wriggle out of the economic crisis, Infosys made certain changes and adopted new methods of company management.

"In response to the economic crisis, we had stepped up our investment in training. This has made us more competitive in fulfilling clients' needs today," member of Infosys board and Head - HRD and Education and Research T V Mohandas Pai said.

In line with the economic slump, the attrition rate of Infosys has decreased considerably and stands at 10.9 per cent, registering a significant decline from the year ago period when the attrition rate stood at 12.8 per cent.

IT to generate 5.8 million new jobs by 2013: IDC

Information technology will be an employment machine, generating 5.8 million new jobs in the coming four years, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) research released on Sunday.

IDC predicts that the IT industry will be an engine powering economies out of economic doldrums, creating more that 75,000 new businesses in the next four years and adding jobs at a rate of 3 percent annually.

"Countries that foster innovation and invest in infrastructure, education and skills development for their citizens will have a major competitive advantage in the global marketplace," said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

"In this fundamental economic reset, innovative technologies will play a vital role in driving productivity gains and enabling the creation of new local businesses and highly skilled jobs that fuel economic recovery and support sustainable economic growth."

US software colossus Microsoft sponsored the IDC research into the impact of IT in 52 countries that represent 98 percent of the global IT spending.

"IT spending growth is a good sign as we come out of the recession," Microsoft Corporate Affairs communications manager Scott Selby told AFP.

Employment growth in IT related jobs will be three times that of overall job growth in what Selby said is a "good driver of economic growth."

While the world has been in the gripes of a recession, it has also been in the midst of a "technology renaissance" flush with advances in software, devices, and Internet-based services, according to IDC.

IDC expects IT spending in the countries studied to grow at slightly more than three percent annually, three times as fast as the gross domestic products between now and the year 2013.

In what is good news for software powerhouse Microsoft, spending on software is predicted to grow faster than overall IT spending, rising 4.8 percent annually.

"Software is a driving force behind this IT growth," Selby said. "IT allows us to do more with less."

New technologies are also ushering in a new "cloud computing" paradigm in which applications are provided online as services instead of as software bought and installed on home or office machines, according to IDC.

Money saved by using software as needed "in the cloud" instead of buying, maintaining, and updating applications will likely be devoted to bringing new products or services to market faster and cheaper, according to Selby.

IDC estimates that cloud services could add 800 billion dollars in net new business revenues between the end of 2009 and the end of 2013.

"Over the past 20 years, we've seen transformative power in how investments in IT innovations foster economic growth," said Robert D. Atkinson, founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C.

"Continued innovation and investment in information technology will help jump-start recovery from the current recession and will significantly contribute to the growth of employment and new businesses."

Emerging markets will reap the greatest economic gains from IT, according to Selby.

"Emerging markets are really going to take advantage of IT for years to come," Selby said.

"One reason is they will be able to leapfrog and enjoy benefits of innovations like cloud computing much more quickly."

Microsoft played up the prime role its software is playing in IT systems worldwide.

Tech Mahindra opens BPO unit in Chandigarh

Tech Mahindra, the country's fifth largest software exporter, said it has opened a BPO facility in Chandigarh. The facility focuses on BPO operations at present, and will provide other IT services and end-to-end customer support to both international and domestic clients later, Tech Mahindra said in a statement.

The campus will have 500 seats initially and another 900 seats are planned to be added by the end of November this year, it added.

"Chandigarh is known for its exceptional BPO and IT culture, infrastructure, local support from the government, availability of skilled manpower and low rate of attrition," Tech Mahindra Vice Chairman Vineet Nayyar said.

The company has facilities across Noida, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune and Mumbai.

"This fully operational facility is a new addition to Tech Mahindra's operations in the northern region and we look forward to servicing our esteemed clients across the globe from this new campus," he added.

Xerox, ACS buy set to bring in more jobs to India

Xerox Corporation’s move to acquire Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion comes just a week after Dell’s buyout of Perot Systems for $3.9-billion.

The Xerox deal is expected to create “significant number" of additional jobs in India as cost optimisation is going to be great focus for the copier giant. In fact, Xerox expects to achieve annualised cost synergies in the range of $300- $400 million in the first three years by using ACS’ back-office expertise to handle the latter’s internal functions.

Aman Mustafa, country manager (India), ACS Global Operations Support, told TOI: “There will be a greater flow in the back-office work related to document management space. The coming together of Xerox and ACS will throw up significantly higher job opportunities in the country.’’

ACS is a 74,000-people strong company with global revenues of $6.5 billion. It employs 5,500 people in India across Bangalore, Kochi, Chennai and Noida. ACS will now on be called a Xerox company. Based in Sohna, near Gurgaon, Xerox currently has 500 people in the country, mostly in the marketing, sales and support functions.

In a letter addressed to employees, analysts and advisors across the globe, ACS president & CEO Lynn Blodgett said, “You may know Xerox because of its industryleading printing technologies, but you may not know that its services expertise is just as strong, generating $3.5 billion in annuity revenues. Together with Xerox, ACS will be able to grow and scale in incredible ways.’’

The combined entity would create a $22-billion global enterprise for document technology and business process management. It will establish a solutions provider that surpasses every competitor and sets a new standard for document technology and BPO management.

Blodgett said, “We anticipate that this transaction will close in the first quarter of 2010. As we approach that date, I will keep you updated on the integration process.’’

Commenting on the deal, BPO exponent Raman Roy said, “We are yet to know how big an offshore play it is. However, India is already the largest handler of outsourced digitised data/images, a few trillion every hour. Xerox is a leader in document solutions. The deal may be an indication of consolidation in this space.’’

BPO companies begin hiring again

After more than two quarters of no hiring, walk-in interviews for BPOs are back in the picture. Impacted by the global credit crunch, BPO firms had cut down the employees on the bench and frozen the hiring. Now, with the market witnessing positive signs of revival, walk-in interviews are back on the job sites and newspaper advertisements.

“Actions are back on track again and walk-in-interviews are happening as earlier. The downturn had impacted this segment, but it was not a major one,” Perry Madan, executive director, Elixir Web Solutions, told Financial Chronicle over the phone.

He said there has been a growth of around 15 per cent in the walk-in-interviews, which witnessed a negative growth during the downturn.

“Walk in interviews have started, but have not picked up as it was earlier before the downturn happened, as new projects are not coming from the US and Europe. Companies are now also looking at experienced people unlike earlier when even fresh pass-outs from colleges and schools were hired and given training,” Global Hunt director Sunil Goel said. He added that earlier it was a different game when people were just hired and given training for the processes. Karthik Shekhar, general secretary of union of ITeS professionals said that the there has been some hiring in BPO firms but the number of vacancies is relatively small compared to the mass hiring earlier. “Now we find hiring only for few experienced positions and the number of applicants is also huge. In certain cases, for 10-15 openings, there are more than 1,000 applicants,” Shekhar said.

However, there are few companies that have not been affected much and the walk-in-interviews are happening the same way as earlier. “During the downturn, the attrition rate reduced a bit as people stayed longer due to fear of losing jobs in newer companies. But, walk in interviews remained by and large similar, as we were not desperate for hiring more people,” Serco CEO Aditya Gupta said.

HCL to hire 2,000 software engineers to serve new customers

India’s fourth-largest software exporter HCL Technologies plans to hire 2,000 software engineers in the next three-four months to leverage new client base and existing operations across verticals, said a top company executive.

While 30% of the new hires would be freshers, the remaining 70% will comprise experienced professionals. This will take the company’s total workforce to more than 57,000 globally.

The software major struck various IT outsourcing services deal in the past few months, which has led to an increase in demand for workforce. Till last year, the company was high on campus hiring and took 15,000 freshers and professionals on rolls.

However, the firm intends to go slow on campus hiring this year owing to overall slowdown in demand for IT services world-wide.

“We are following just-in-time model of hiring. Unlike earlier when we used to give hiring guidance 18 months in advance, it will be a quarter or two in advance, as we are yet to have a clear visibility on where the industry is heading. Focus will be on lateral hiring for core IT processes across sectors,” said HCL Technologies global head (human resources) Dilip Kumar Srivastava.

He said the company has no plans to alter the compensation package of the freshers and that variable component of the salary will solely be performance based. Early this year, the company had put a freeze on employee salaries and resorted to bonus cutbacks, citing tight demand and declining volumes in the US and Europe as the rationale.

HCL has added a couple of new clients in the past few months. The firm bagged two IT outsourcing services contracts worth $110 million from Texas-based energy companies, Energy Future Holdings and Oncor.

To support the growing business, the company will also scale up headcount in Texas over the next few months.
The company currently serves clients in sectors, such as aerospace, defence, financial services, government, retail, lifesciences and telecom.

Wipro expands UK centre

Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited, announced the expansion of its facility in Reading and opening of a new office in London.

The center at Reading was inaugurated by The Right Worshipful the Mayor of Reading. This center is an extension of the existing development center facility. This facility will be used for building centers of excellence, delivering customer projects and training purposes.

Speaking on this occasion the Mayor of Reading, Councilor Fred Pugh, said, “It is very encouraging that an international company is ready to invest in Reading in these difficult times. Wipro is a major employer in Reading and a major player in the business community the Council is pledged to support.”

Continuing its business expansion in the UK, Wipro is also inaugurating its new office premises in London. This office would be the headquarters for Wipro’s UK operations. The facility will serve as a sales office with state-of the art infrastructure.

Laxman Badiga, Chief Information Officer, Wipro Technologies said, “Taking on the ownership of the facility at Reading is the first of its kind for Wipro overseas and hence makes this occasion special. The Reading center started with just one floor and had a little over 30 employees when we began. The expansion in Reading and opening of the new office in London has only reinforced our commitment to the region.”

Ayan Mukerji, Head of Europe Operations, Wipro Technologies said, “Today, Wipro has grown to become a leading IT Services company in the UK. Both the centers at Reading and London will be a key hub for recruiting, training of local staff and also gives an opportunity to offer an onsite development center premises to more customers.”

Revenues from Wipro’s European operations account for approx 26% of the IT major’s overall IT Services revenue. UK is one of the key markets for Wipro with a large customer base. The establishment of the new offices will now facilitate Wipro’s growth strategy in the UK and the overall growth in the European region.

TCS opens centre in Argentina; to employ 250

Expanding its footprint in Latin America, the country's largest software exporter TCS today said it has opened a new delivery centre in Buenos Aires for providing consulting, BPO and IT services which will employ 250 professionals.

"Our growing presence in Latin America continues to be of strategic importance to our overall business growth and we remain committed to working in close collaboration with institutions and universities (here) to help foster the development of local talent in Argentina and provide our customers with IT solutions from this location," TCS CEO S Ramadorai said.

The new centre would provide consulting, advanced IT solutions, BPO services and IT product implementations besides, housing the company's first regional SAP centre, the company said in a statement.

This is the eighth global delivery centre of TCS in Latin America, in addition to centers in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico.

Indian IT companies have been focusing on South America and countries such as Argentina and Brazil as a destination for offering services to clients in the US time zone.

Shares of TCS were trading at Rs 568.50, down 0.42 per cent in afternoon trade at the Bombay Stock Exchange.

We over-hired: Infosys COO

Infosys Technologies Ltd, India's second-ranked software exporter, said the business environment is challenging and clients are cautious in spending, although pressure for price cuts has eased.

The company, which employs more than 100,000 people, is not seeing any reason to accelerate hiring at this point of time due to the uncertain business environment, Chief Operating Officer Shibulal said.

" We are very honestly over-hired ," he said. "There is a very slight blip of activity, but there is nothing to tell me it (a recovery) is secular in nature."

Hopes of a pick-up in demand for outsourcing, which had been hit by the global downturn, increased after major Indian IT firms including Infosys beat street estimates in their April-June earnings and announced some large deals in the recent months.

But Infosys officials said that decision making by clients continued to be slow. "The situation is still quite challenging," S D Shibulal said. "If you look at our customers, they are not really seeing any increase on their revenue side. And because they are not seeing any increase on their revenue side, they will continue to be concerned."

The head of Nasscom, India's leading IT industry lobby, said signs of recovery in the United States were yet to translate into real business growth for outsourcing firms, though a pick-up was expected in the second half of the year.

Infosys Chief Executive S Gopalakrishnan said he expected technology spending by the company's clients to be flat in 2010 from the previous year. Ahead of the news, shares in the company valued at about $27 billion, closed up 0.9 per cent, underperforming a 1.5 per cent rise in the benchmark index. The company's shares have doubled so far in 2009, outperforming a 70 per cent rise in the broader market.

Large deals yet to come
Infosys has forecast its first annual revenue fall for the year to March 2010 on demand for fee cuts by its overseas clients. Most negotiations with clients on price cuts was over and the company was not seeing a second round of such talks, Shibulal said, but large deal flows were yet to resume.

"Overall, deals above $500 million which used to be there before the downturn, they have not reappeared in significant manner," he said. Infosys and local rivals Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro last month won IT services contracts from oil and gas major BP Plc.

Shibulal said Infosys' share of the contract was worth $116 million over five years.

IT industry may create 40k jobs this fiscal: Nasscom

NASSCOM has projected that some 30,000-40,000 students will be absorbed by IT companies this fiscal. Talking to ET, Nasscom president Som Mittal said: “Typically, we take one to two lakh people annually into our industry. In the current fiscal, we had made offerings to 80,000 fresh graduates, of which we are expecting that some 30,000-40,000 will join.”

He further added: “This year, we have asked companies to recruit those who have completed their eighth semester to ensure that hiring is closer to the need of companies. This is being done, so that companies don’t have a huge talent pool who are in the pipeline to join the industry.”

Asked about the outlook of the industry in 2010-11, He said the industry was on a wait-and-watch mode about the growth in FY11. “We will review the situation in December this year. We have already reached end of the recession. By end of the calendar year 2009, we expect deals, some large deals are coming up.”

Mr Mittal said the industry in the past one year has witnessed slowdown in growth, as a result of the global crisis. Nasscom estimates for the IT-BPO industry for 2009-10, include export growth at 4-7% and domestic market growing at 15-18%.

While uncertainty prevails, the sentiment now being reflected is that the worst of the crisis is over. “The industry has demonstrated maturity, resilience and enhanced efficiency. Of specific interest was the growth in domestic market, a three-fold growth in emerging verticals and geographies, enhanced globalisation and over 90% repeat business from clients in this tough environment,” he said.

Mckinsey & Company in its report on the perspective of the IT industry by 2020 has given the current pace of reforms and expected constrains in talent and infrastructure supply, the exports component of the Indian IT industry is expected to reach $175 billion in revenues by 2020.

The domestic component will contribute $50 billion in revenues by 2020, which is larger than the total exports revenues for India now.

The Nasscom president said the during the recessionary period the IT industry has invested in new verticals and geographies, which would start yielding results shortly. “Continental Europe, Latin America, the Middle-East, Japan and Korea remain the new emerging markets for IT industry,” he said.