Three IT cos bag $600 mn Walmart deal

Walmart Stores Inc, the world's largest retailer, has picked three IT vendors including India's Infosys Technologies for multi-year contracts worth over $600 million, the Business Standard said on Friday.

The other vendors are Cognizant Solutions and UST Global, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified source close to the development.

Initially the three vendors are expected to earn Rs 2.5 billion to Rs 3 billion ($54 million-$65 million) each annually, which will rise as Wal-Mart increases outsourcing more work.

Infosys and Cognizant, which will provide application development and support, are expected to get a larger share of the contract, the paper said. UST will be responsible for testing these applications, it said.

"What is more important is that these three vendors have now got a ticket to be in the club of Walmart's list of preferred vendors which will help them in growing this account in the long run," the paper quoted the source as saying.

"We do not comment on market speculation," a spokeswoman for Infosys told Reuters. Walmart's media relations director, John Simley, said in am emailed reply to the paper, "We have a large and growing business and productive relationship with many Indian companies. We do not comment on speculations about the nature of any business relationship."

A Cognizant spokesman also declined to comment, the paper said.
Source: IndiaTimes

HCL Tech Inks $200-Mln Pact With UK-Based Insurance Co

India’s fourth largest software exporter, HCL Technologies, Nov 23 said it has bagged a $200 million contract from the UK-based insurance firm Equitable Life Assurance Society.

HCL would provide complete solution to the company, including policy administration, finance, IT operational support and call center services, a HCL statement said.

The deal is expected to help Equitable Life save about eight million pounds in costs in the first year.

“Future savings and predictability of costs mean Equitable Life can reduce its provision for future costs by an amount in excess of 100 million pound, the statement added.

HCL Insurance Business Services Ltd, a part of HCL Tech has signed the deal.

The contract, which comes into effect in March 2011, will deliver substantial cost benefits to Equitable Life’s policyholders through the transfer of core processing and support activities, HCL said.

Equitable Life has over 8 billion pound under management on behalf of over 500,000 policyholders and members of group pension schemes.

“This is a major win for HCL IBS since the acquisition of Liberata Financial Services in 2008 and reflects our position as a leader in transforming our clients’ Life and Pensions operations,” HCL Senior Vice-President Stuart Drew said.

Tata Comm, Infosys & four others in deal with US cos

Six Indian companies, including Tata Communications, Infosys Technologies and Apollo Hospitals, have signed separate collaboration agreements with US-based firms for joint business development at Washington on Monday.

The agreement signing ceremony, organised by industry body CII, coincides with the state visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the US.

Data services provider Tata Communications has inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tyco Electronics to work together in providing additional connectivity and transmission, using dark fibers on the submarine cable system.

Indian IT major Infosys Technologies has signed a multi-year enterprise agreement with Microsoft, to work together in areas like databases, besides infrastructure and application software.

Apollo Hospitals has signed an MoU with stem cell therapeutics company StemCyte to establish a cord blood bank facility at its Ahmedabad-based hospital.

Drugmaker Cadila has joined hands with biotech firm Novavax to support production of key vaccines in India, including the recently-developed H1N1 Pandemic Vaccine. Jubilant Organosys also entered into a joint venture with two US institutes — University of Alabama and Southern Research Institute.

TechM bags 5-year STel deal

New telecom entrant STel Ltd has awarded a five-year IT outsourcing contract to Tech Mahindra, at least two people familiar with the transaction told ET last week.

STel, which plans to compete with incumbent phone firms including Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications, had shortlisted Tech Mahindra and Wipro for outsourcing system integration, managed services. The contract also includes maintenance of the phone firm’s business and operational support systems.

A senior STel executive confirmed the transaction, but a Tech Mahindra spokesman declined to offer any specific comments. “This contract does not include any fixed investments by STel, and is based on ‘pay as you go’ model,” another person added.
Under this model, a service provider offers different services to a customer as and when required, and charges a fee based either on number of users or number of transactions completed. This model helps customers avoid high capital expenditure in setting up their own IT infrastructure.

Chennai-based STel plans to start rolling out GSM services pan-India during the fourth quarter of the current financial year.
The company has unified access services licences and spectrum to operate in six Indian states - Bihar, Orissa, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, North East and Assam. The telecom service providers in India opt to share passive infrastructure such as telecom towers and outsource non-core activities such as network and technology management, to reduce costs and roll out services faster, the second person said.

Recently, Tech Mahindra also bagged a Rs 2,000-crore deal for end-to-end outsourcing of IT applications and infrastructure from Etisalat DB Telecom, a joint venture between the UAE-based Etisalat and the Dynamix Balwas group. It also won a $500 million outsourcing contract from new telecom entrant Swan Telecom in August this year. STel had earlier applied for licences in all the 22 circles but was eventually granted a licence for only six circles.

Privately held STel is a joint venture between Bahrain Telecommunications Company (Batelco) and the Siva group. Siva Group is a $3-billion group with diversified business interests in verticals such as wind energy, shipping and logistics and hospitality, while Bahrain’s Batelco is a diversified, integrated telecommunications operator with mobile, fixed and wireless broadband, datacom and fixed line services.

HCL Tech bags $200-m deal from UK co

HCL Technologies said it has bagged a long-term deal worth about $200 million from UK-based insurance firm Equitable Life Assurance Society.

“The contract is ‘evergreen,’ it is for a period of 30 years. The revenue from the deal will come (mostly) in the first five to six years and decline gradually as policies decline,” HCL Technologies’ senior vice-president Stuart Drew said.

The deal has been awarded to HCL Insurance Business Services, the IT firm’s UK-based life and pensions administration business.

Currently, about 340 people are servicing the account. “We expect about 100 people will be taken in by Equitable Life, rendering about 240 people surplus. They will be relieved under suitable schemes,” Equitable Life Chief Executive Chris Wiscarson said.

“HCL will take care of the work of these 240 employees, with about 50-70 jobs being taken care of from HCL’s Chennai centre,” he added.

As part of the deal, HCL will provide complete solutions, including policy administration, finance, actuarial services, IT operational support and call centre services.

Wipro bags Australian univ deal

Australia's University of Canberra, which awarded an outsourcing contract to Wipro in May earlier this year, plans to bring down its operational costs by up to 40 per cent over next three to four years, and focus better on its core business of teaching and research.

The University of Canberra, along with other Australian educational institutes are expected to spend around $650 million on different IT initiatives in order to modernise their processes, bring down operational costs and compete better in the global education market.

“There is a real competitiveness happening in education and I want every spare dollar to go into teaching and research”, said professor Stephen Parker, vice-chancellor and president of the university.

The university decided to outsource when it felt its IT support was expensive and not as effective as it should be. “It was a new world to me and we linked to the people in India who can do such things,” said Mr Parker.

Bruce Lines, registrar of the university added that offshoring of services was not an easy choice because of anti-offshoring sentiments in Australia.

However, the university decided to go ahead with outsourcing in order to save 30-40 per cent in operational costs, and manage different applications and data records of almost 10,000 students better.

“I almost fell off my chair when somebody mentioned the term offshoring, but gradually we realised that it is more about efficiency gains beyond pure cost savings,” he said.

Universities in Australia are also expected to use some $350 million infrastructure grant from the government towards modernisation of their processes and administrative systems.

“Education is Australia’s third biggest export market. There is a huge potential to tap this unexplored market, where universities need huge IT support not only to maintain administration, but also for high end research and development,” said Kannan Natarajan, general manager at Wipro for Australia, Asean and Middle East Markets.

Meanwhile, the university did face backlash when it announced its contract with Wipro. “We realised that it makes sense not only for cost benefits, but also because there are people who can do a job better than us,” said Mr Parker. “We are living in globalisation which is about exchange and it is not one way,” he added.

As educational institutes prepare to address a growing market, their investments in modernisation of different systems is likely to increase.

Wipro sees strong deal pipeline

Wipro, India's No. 3 software services exporter, sees robust deal pipeline on the back of improving IT demand worldwide, a senior official said on Tuesday.

"The deal pipeline is good ... the demand environment is building up. The IT demand situation is improving," Suresh Vaswani, joint chief executive of the company's IT business, told reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

The company last month reported a 18.76 per cent increase in its consolidated net profit at Rs 1,161.7 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2009.

The IT exporter had a net profit of Rs 978.2 crore in the September quarter of last fiscal.

Total income of the company rose to Rs 7,057.4 crore during the July-September quarter of the current fiscal, from Rs 6,664.8 crore in the year-ago period, as per the Indian accounting norms.

"We see more stability in volumes and pricing as well as an improving demand environment. Our broad portfolio of services and strong delivery excellence continues to position us as a partner of choice with customers, as they focus on capital conservation and cost transformation," Wipro Chairman Azim Premji said.

The country's third largest software exporter's revenue from IT services in rupee terms grew by 5 per cent to Rs 4,996 crore from the year-ago period. However, in dollar terms, the revenue fell by 4 per cent to $1,065.2 million.

"Looking ahead for the quarter ending December 31, 2009, we expect revenues from our IT Services business to be in the range of $1,092 million to $1,113 million," Premji said.

In the reported quarter, the firm added 37 new clients to its IT services business, which accounted for 72 per cent of its total revenue.

Capgemini, Logica, AT&T, BT now eye local IT services

The domestic information technology (IT) services market is no more a lowprofit option and entry of global players in this segment is a testimony to its growing maturity and lucrativeness.

Earlier, the domestic IT services market was characterised as ‘where you would pay for the hardware but get the services for free’. This has changed over the last few years with the profit margins in some segments comparable to the developed markets.

Says Seepij Gupta, analyst, software and services research, IDC India: “In some segments of the domestic IT services markets — application management and managed services, for example — the profit margins range between 25-30 % and 16-32 %, respectively. This kind of profitability makes the India market almost at par with the developed economies.”

Rising profits also reveal the growing maturity of the local market where corporates and governments are willing to spend a larger amount on technology. Sudip Saha, analyst, services research, Springboard Research, says the maturity curve is getting sharper in the domestic market reflected in the larger size of IT outsourcing deals as well as longer-term contracts. “Corporates are realising that having internal IT departments is expensive and it better to outsource,” he added.

European IT services majors like Capgemini, Logica, Groupe Steria and Atos Origin have already planned their local market moves. Segment-specific players like AT&T and BT too have made their foray into the telecom technology services market in India.

Anand Sankaran, chief executive, Wipro Infotech, said domestic IT services market is reasonably attractive and has steadily seen more vendors getting in: while the market was dominated by the likes of IBM, TCS, Wipro, Hewlett-Packard and HCL Infosystems, it is now seeing aggressive pitches by Infosys Technologies and Accenture.

Springboard Research says the domestic IT services market size was $5.7 billion in 2008 and is expected to touch $6.6 billion this calendar. According to Mr Saha, there are sectors in India like utilities and infrastructure which are actively looking at outsourcing their IT requirements and in the process expanding the market.

The domestic IT services market has already set certain global benchmarks which are either being very closely studied or even getting emulated. A classic example of this is the Bharti-IBM IT outsourcing deal, which set a benchmark for the global telecom industry.

Infosys eyeing acquisitions in Europe, US

The back-office arm of Infosys Technologies, India's No. 2 software services provider, is looking at acquiring firms in Europe and in the United States of $50 million to $100 million, a top official said on Monday.

Infosys BPO would also hire 1,200 people in the current financial year, the unit's chief executive, Amitabh Chaudhry, told reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

TCS, Wipro eye $400 mn Target outsourcing deal

India’s top tech firms Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and several others are pursuing Target’s captive technology centre for a potential acquisition, in what could be a transaction bundled with a long-term outsourcing contract worth $300-400 million. America’s second-biggest discount retailer Target has around 1,500 staff employed at its Bangalore centre, currently doing software development and maintenance work.

“We have been in discussions with them for the past few months and the dialogue is still open,” a senior executive at one of the tech firms exploring this transaction told ET on conditions of anonymity. “There is no conclusion yet about how this transaction can be structured, and it’s very early days,” he added. Both TCS and Wipro count Target as one of their top retail customers.

Some of the world’s top retailers, including UK’s Tesco and America’s speciality retailer Home Depot, have been outsourcing projects to Indian third-party service providers, including TCS and Infosys, apart from their own captive centres in order to support their existing IT systems and also develop newer applications. Tesco, for instance, saves over $100 million every year by outsourcing its IT projects to India, and primarily drives projects from its own captive in Bangalore.

“Target’s India centre could be doing at least $100 million worth of projects (revenues) every year,” another person familiar with the retailer’s India operations told ET on conditions of anonymity. Officials at Target did not reply to an email query sent by ET. TCS, Infosys and Wipro also declined to comment. Few years ago, many retailers started with an Indian captive operation as there were not many service providers who could understand their core operations better. Target entered India in 2004 through a JV with ANSRSource, a Texas-based BPO outsourcing company.

“There is a certain equity in building up the operations (captive) initially, but over the course of time, there is the objective of monetising the operations,” said Avinash Vashistha, CEO, Tholons, an offshore advisory firm.

“Once a particular process becomes commoditised, then any adding of additional resources is not justified as it adds up to the costs.”

TCS, one of Target’s Indian suppliers, supports the retailer’s operations from its delivery centres in Uruguay and Chile, apart from India. Target, which competes with Walmart Stores, reported quarterly revenues of $14.6 billion for the second quarter ended August this year.

Over the past few months, many companies have sold their technology captives in India. Divesting non-core captive operations is a strategy adopted by banks such as Citigroup and UBS for focusing better on their core operations, and also gain better outsourcing rates by bundling such transactions with a multi-year contract.

An upfront payment also helps them unlock value from non-core assets. Citibank sold its Indian back-office business to TCS for around $505 million in October last year, and Citi Technology Services for around $127 million to Wipro in December last year. Both these transactions came with assured outsourcing business of around $3 billion together for these vendors.

Mahindra Satyam bags Saab deal

Mahindra Satyam on Tuesday said that it won an IT outsourcing contract from Swedish defence and aerospace firm, Saab, to develop its operations for the global defence and security market in India in a deal valued at around $300 million.

The contract, which spread over a period of five years encompasses engineering services and technology maintenance, will enable both the companies jointly address the Battlefield Management System (BMS) for the Indian Army, according to a release.

Mahindra Satyam said that it has already initiated the setting up of a centre of excellence for network centric warfare (CoE – NCW) which will offer comprehensive skills and a repository of tools, systems, middleware, integration platforms and system showcases in the field of NCW.

The company through the CoE hopes to tap the high potential market for nationwide security, for which the Indian government has large investment plans. “This relationship will jumpstart our foray in mission critical areas of defense. Our commitment in the domestic market will be reaffirmed by this collaboration and also set the stage to enter uncharted territories in the global arena,” said C P Gurnani, CEO, Mahindra Satyam.

The centre, which will be accessible to both the partners, is for mission critical applications and Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence solutions for global opportunities. The capabilities of the centre will also span areas of homeland security to provide end to end security solutions.

“We view this relationship with Mahindra Satyam as a strategic meeting of two highly skilled teams believing in technical and engineering excellence,” said Åke Svensson, President and CEO for Saab.

Mahindra Satyam, which counts Citigroup, GE, GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco Systems Inc and Nissan among its top five clients, has over 430 clients now. Over the last four months, the company, erstwhile Satyam Computers gained over 32 new customers including some large clients.

Satyam was acquired by Pune based IT services firm Tech Mahindra in April, after the firm’s defamed founder B Ramalinga Raju confessed to perpetrating India’s biggest corporate fraud. Customer confidence took a knock after Raju’s confession.

The company is attempting to regain contracts and enter into new strategic alliances to turn-around, even as its accounts are in the process of being re-stated.

TCS bags multi-million Cardiff deal

India's Tata Consultancy Services' contract with Cardiff City Council for technology services is a multi-million dollar deal that will run over 15 years, a company source said on Tuesday.

Under the deal signed last week, Tata Consultancy will provide a host of IT services for faster and efficient delivery of services in Cardiff.

Tata Consultancy and its rivals such as Infosys Technologies and Wipro are aggressively vying for deals in markets such as Europe and Asia Pacific to cut their dependence on the US, which brings in more than half the sector's revenue.

According to Ovum's Straight Talk service, the deal is reportedly worth £150 million, spanning 15-years.

Under the deal, TCS will help drive the council's mission-critical Strategic Transformational Change Programme.

Tata Consultancy, a part of the diversified Tata Group that spans commodities autos and services businesses, last month beat forecasts with a 29 percent rise in quarterly net profit helped by demand from recession-hit financial customers.

Mid-tier tech cos eye $2 bn local deals

With larger rivals already chasing the lucrative domestic market, mid-tier tech firms such as Patni Computer Systems and Hexaware are attempting to enter the market by jointly bidding with experienced bidders. India’s government departments and other state-owned firms are set to spend around $2 billion on IT during the next 12 months. Hexaware, MindTree and Patni are among the many mid-tier Indian tech firms seeking to explore new business with an experienced partner.

Hexaware, for instance, is pursuing 2-3 large deals as part of a consortium and several smaller ones on its own. The company’s strategy for the Indian market will be different from its strategy for overseas markets, said Hexaware’s vice-chairman and chief executive officer, PR Chandrasekar.

“If we treat India as just another location for our services, it will not work. It will need fairly dedicated focus and some innovation on how we source talent and price our offerings. You also need to leverage your niche capabilities, especially if you are not one of the big players,” said Mr Chandrasekar, who was earlier with Wipro, India’s third-biggest IT company.

In order to focus better on the Indian market, companies such as Hexaware and Patni have recently formed focused business units. While Narendra Upasani heads Hexaware’s India business, Deepak Khosla is responsible for growing Patni’s revenues from the country.

For large contracts in the government and public sector, Hexaware will work as part of a consortium because these projects usually require the bidder to have a prior track record in executing similar projects.

Experts such as Guru Malladi, partner at Ernst & Young said it will be challenging for mid-tier tech firms to take on bigger rivals. “A Rs 5,000-crore project, for example, can never be delivered by a single player. But I do see an element of challenge for mid-size players who have so far not operated in the domestic market. Large players have to sometimes rely on small players but they may not see value in mid-size players in terms of cost or efficiency arbitrage,” said Mr Malladi.

“Globally, this kind of scale is not available anywhere, even if it may not be the largest in revenues,” pointed out Jeya Kumar, CEO, Patni Computer.

Like Hexaware, Patni is chasing 3-4 contracts in the domestic market as part of a consortium. “With the kind of large deal sizes we are seeing, you have to have a multi-vendor strategy,” added Mr Kumar. Apart from the government, Hexaware will focus on sectors such as travel and transport, insurance, hospitality and logistics, and technology offerings across sectors.

According to Mr Malladi, mid-size players have to be more strategic in their outlook using their niche skills to enter the market. Hexaware, along with others like Patni and Mindtree are turning towards India, drawn by the large opportunity and significant growth potential.

HCL may lose BSNL IT contracts worth Rs 1,700 cr

IT firm HCL Infosystems will have to give up two large IT contracts jointly worth over Rs 1,700 cr after the company emerged as the lowest bidder in all the four zones for state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam’s (BSNL) $1-b IT outsourcing contract. This is because, as per the BSNL tender norms, a single company cannot be awarded more than 50% of the total contract.

After emerging as the lowest bidder or L1 in East, West and South zones, HCL Infosystems has now become L1 for managing BSNL’s IT requirements in the northern region also. But considering the telco’s tender conditions, the IT company can be awarded only a maximum of two contracts thus implying that it can provide solutions to BSNL in only two regions. In all the four zones, HCL’s bid has been supported by HP, which will supply hardware and systems and Convergys, which will provide billing solutions.

HCL Infosystems chief executive Ajai Chowdhry told ET on the sidelines of an event in Delhi that the company has emerged as the lowest bidder in all the four zones adding that BSNL was yet to award the contract. Asked about HCL’s preference for the zones Mr Chowdhry said: “It is for the telco to decide which regions will be allotted to us. We are well placed as far as positioning is concerned”.

“As is the norm at BSNL, the financial bid by HCL Infosystems will be evaluated and it will go through the process of negotiations. The entire procedure will take some more time, after which the contract will be awarded,” Mr Chowdhry added.

Earlier this year, HCL had won Rs 230 cr enterprise resource planning (ERP) contract from BSNL. HCL’s mandated surrendering of two contracts may benefit other IT firms like TCS and Mahindra Satyam. For instance, TCS is the second lowest bidder for south zone and west zone while Mahindra Satyam along with Spanco is next to HCL is L2 the East zone.

In the West zone, HCL’s had bid amount was for Rs 980 cr, followed by TCS which quoted Rs 906 cr and Spanco/Mahindra Satyam at Rs 1,042 cr.

In the East Zone, HCL Infosystems was the lowest bidder at Rs 861 cr followed by Mahindra Satyam/Spanco (Rs 904 cr), TCS (Rs 934 cr) and Prithvi Information (Rs 2,000 cr). In the South Zone, HCL’s bid was of Rs 865 crore, followed by was While TCS’ Mahindra Satyam, Wipro and Infosys bid Rs 906 cr, Rs 1,030 cr, Rs 1,500 cr and Rs 2,000 cr respectively.

This IT outsourcing contract is part of BSNL’s 93-million line GSM project worth over $1 b, for procuring network equipment, tower infrastructure and technology solutions and services. The project was split into four zones to allow companies to bid separately for each zone.

TCS plans to bid with CMC for Rs 5K cr UID projects

As India’s top tech firms prepare to bid for projects worth almost Rs 5,000 crore to set up the country’s unique citizen database, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) plans to bid jointly for this opportunity along with CMC, a government-focused subsidiary it acquired some eight years ago.

The world’s biggest citizen database being set up by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will rely heavily on biometric and fingerprint information of the country’s 1.2 billion citizens, and would seek solution providers who can bring relevant expertise.

“Whether we bid as a consortium or not will largely depend on the conditions specified in the RFP (request for proposal). If they want a single point of contact, then CMC will act as a sub-contractor to TCS,” said CMC, CEO and MD R Ramanan.

On its part, TCS has been leveraging CMC’s relationships with different government agencies and departments in order to create a competitive government business, bigger than domestic rivals Wipro and Infosys. For instance, TCS worked together with CMC on winning the Rs 1,000 crore e-passport project awarded last year.

“For some of these projects, an existing capability and understanding brought by the age-old CMC helps them do better,” said a senior executive at one of the rival firms which had bid for the passport project.

“Training is one of the biggest bottlenecks in any government project-and this is where CMC proves an asset to TCS,” he added.

Experts such as Alok Shende, principal analyst of Ascentius Consulting say that CMC does provide TCS an edge over others.

Wipro bags 10-yr IGI deal

IT major Wipro said it has entered into a 10-year IT outsourcing agreement with Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) for providing IT infrastructure and services for IGI Airport here.

As part of the agreement, both the companies will form a joint venture (JV), to be named as Wipro Airport IT Services Ltd, with Wipro holding 74 per cent stake in the JV and DIAL the remaining 26 per cent stake, Wipro said in a statement.

The JV would be the innovation partner for DIAL and focus on emerging business models and technologies for airports as well as build competencies in airport specific applications, it added.

DIAL is a joint venture, comprising infrastructure major GMR Group, Airports Authority of India, Fraport and Malaysian Airports.

As per the agreement, Wipro would be responsible for end-to-end IT management in the IGI airport's new integrated terminal (T3), which will be one of the largest terminals in the world, for 10 years.

"We are delighted to have a strong partner like Wipro with proven capabilities in delivering superior business value as our partner in realising that vision for us," GMR Group Chairman (Airports) Kiran Kumar Grandhi said.

Wipro Joint CEO and member of the board Suresh Vaswani said, "This partnership will create new industry standards in modern airport management based on world class IT and business processes powered by innovation."

TechM, Aegis, Conflux bag Rs 750-crore Etisalat deal

Etisalat DB Telecom, a new entrant in the Indian telecom space yet to launch services, has awarded an end-to-end outsourcing contract to three BPO service providers — Tech Mahindra, Aegis and Conflux, the company said on Tuesday.

The deal, spanning over five years, is valued at over Rs 750 crore. Etisalat is a JV between the UAE’s Etisalat Group and India’s Dynamix Balwas Group with Etisalat holding 45% in the JV.

Tech Mahindra will be responsible for managing Etisalat DB’s customer care operations in the north and the south, while Aegis BPO would manage the west and the central region. Conflux will be responsible for servicing customers in Bihar. Etisalat DB earlier awarded a $400-million IT outsourcing contract to Tech Mahindra.

The three BPO’s multi-site centers will provide both inbound and outbound services in the respective regional languages, besides English and Hindi. The three BPO vendors would provide customer management services to the operator, including billing, collections, customer service and customer retention. The centres will also be responsible for the complete management of back office processes. Customers will also have access to the contact center via e-mail, chat and SMS.

“We are confident that these associations will enable us to manage the customer lifecycle efficiently and provide a higher level of customer experience,” said the company in a statement.

The operator has telecom licence in 15 circles, including New Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The operator plans to start telecom services by the year-end.

Satyam wins $8 mn worth new deals in Q2

Mahindra Satyam said on Wednesday it had won 30 million dirhams ($8 million) worth of new contracts in the Middle East and North Africa region in the July-September quarter.

Mahindra Satyam is planning to double its business in the region in the next 18 to 24 months, said a company statement.

Earlier the company had said that it is winning new outsourcing deals, but business is yet to see a total turnaround as some cautious clients wait for stability to return to the company.

“While there have not been any major client losses since April, some customers continue to keep Mahindra Satyam on their "watch list" to track its performance for about six months,” said Atul Kunwar, head of operations in Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and India.

Mahindra Satyam was earlier known as Satyam Computer Services. Satyam was acquired by India's Tech Mahindra in an auction in April after the firm was hit by India's biggest corporate fraud that was revealed in January.

"Definitely, there is a sense of optimism that has started to come back but it isn't something that's windfall kind of a situation right now," Kunwar said.

Kunwar said Mahindra Satyam was seeing good business momentum in the geographies excluding the United States, with the company "actively participating" in some deals in Europe that could bring in revenues of about $50 million over four to five years.

"Europe is actually, from the point of view of looking at all these terrains, moving faster towards getting the momentum."

Non-US regions bring in about 50 per cent of Mahindra Satyam's revenue and the firm expects a sharp surge in India, Africa and the Middle East businesses in about two years, Kunwar said.

TCS wins $63 mn deal from MP govt

Tata Consultancy Services, India's top software firm, has been selected as the lowest bidder for a Rs 2.93 billion ($63 million) project in the state of Madhya Pradesh, an official with the state power utility said.

"For the IT implementation work, Tata Consultancy Services has been selected as the L-1 (lowest bidder)," S A Ansari, Chief Engineer (IT) of the MP.
Madhya Kshetra Vidyut Vitran Company Ltd, told Reuters over telephone from the city of Bhopal.

The project will be formally awarded after approval from the board of directors of the state's distribution utilities, and will be completed in 18 months, he said.

A spokesman for TCS confirmed the company had bid for a project in the state, but declined to give further details.

The project is part of a central government-funded power reforms programme to use information technology to cap electricity distribution losses in the country.

HCL Info bags $114 mn Rajasthan govt deal

IT hardware firm HCL Infosystems has been awarded a Rs 529 crore ($114 million) IT project for Rajasthan's power distribution utilities, a top official of the utilities said.

"We have awarded the order to HCL Infosystems," R G Gupta, chairman of Jaipur, Jodhpur and Ajmer Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Ltd, said from Jaipur.

The project involves applying technology to identify power losses across all cities and villages of Rajasthan and has to be completed in 18 months, he said.

A company spokesman declined to comment but said HCL Infosystems had bid for several R-APDRP (Re-structured Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme) IT projects including the one in Rajasthan.