One of the country?s largest business process outsourcing firm-Genpact-is planning to open delivery centre in the US to service high-end projects of its clients.
This is a detour from the current trend where IT companies are trying to cut their onsite presence to save costs. Genpact already has four centres in the US and is presently in talks with its clients, who want to outsource high-end work but within the boundaries of their country.
?Cost structures in the US have changed a lot after the economic crisis. Moreover, the unemployment figures are also adding up. Servicing clients from the same geography will add capabilities to our portfolio that never existed,? said NV Tyagarajan, COO, Genpact.
The cost of employees in the US, which is comparatively higher than that of people in India or at its other delivery centres, is not an area of concern for Genpact. ?Doing such high-end projects would mean revenues will also be more than what the offshore projects fetch,? he said. Tyagarajan said the company is in dialogue with several of its customers.
However, he declined to share the details of the centre. ?It would happen as soon as the discussions materialise in a contract. The crisis is leading to a delay in decision making,? he said. Several global corporations have inhibitions about outsourcing parts of their projects to foreign locations. This includes certain public sector entities and also projects of private sector companies that involve sensitive information.
Genpact is also servicing the China market from China and has also started its India operations about nine months back. ?Like China, we want to service India from India,? said Tyagarajan. Though, the domestic market currently does not make up for a significant part of its overall revenues, the company is seeing huge opportunities in the financial services, telecom and certain manufacturing and services sectors.
?We have set up a separate business unit for India, which is presenting exciting opportunities. Several Indian companies grew at a dizzying rate for the last couple of years and their back-office could not keep pace. So, that?s a big opportunity,? he said. Tyagarajan added that companies now want to employ global best practices and are asking for re-engineering, analytical and accounting processes.
?Against the popular perception, most of the processes don?t require big-bank investments but lead to huge savings and efficiencies,? he added.