Satyam Computer Services Ltd announced strategic initiatives to strengthen its presence in South Africa. The company plans to recruit about 200 South African locals in support of the Black Economic Empowerment Charter (BEEC) for the Republic of South Africa. In the near future, it also plans to set up a BPO centre in South Africa if the demand increases.
Addressing the media, Virender Aggarwal, director and senior vice-president, Satyam APAC and MENA, said: “With South Africa constituting more than 60% of the IT market of African continent and a 20% annual growth in the IT spends, the country offers tremendous business opportunities. Supplementing this is the local manpower pool which can be honed into talented software professionals with Satyam’s training.” Given the potential, both in terms of business and human capital, we have set an aggressive target of 75% y-o-y revenue growth and we will invest heavily in further developing the local human capital through various skill enablement initiatives. In the next two to three years, we plan to achieve a leadership position in South Africa, he said.
“While we are still exploring on the BPO services, we hope to achieve about $11 million from South Africa through the existing businesses,” Agarwal informed. Incidentally, South Africa needs about 60,000 people by 2010 through skill improvement programmes.
The company is banking on a sizeable number of contracts emanating from South Africa in the coming years and sees potential in providing IT solutions to the banking and financial, energy and utilities and government sectors.
Further, as part of its global strategy, the company has also recruited and trained 50 South African technical graduates in the last one year. The first batch of 20 has been successfully deployed in projects in South Africa. The company plans to hire almost 200 more local technical graduates, train them in India and bring them back to South Africa to associate with various customer projects.
Currently, the company serves six of the largest firms in the country, employs over 120 technical resources at customer locations and has offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town.