Notwithstanding US President Barack Obama’s anti-outsourcing stance, the US technology and consulting majors are scaling up their operations in India on the back of anticipated increase in demand for off-shoring.
In the offing are—expansion of existing delivery centres in India, setting up of new facilities and scaling up of captive centres by MNCs as their clients start rolling back outsourcing contracts.
Consider this, one of the top global IT player—CSC, which has around one-fourth of its global workforce (around 92,000 people) in India, is planning to add around 5,000 more in the country over the next 12-18 months. CSC India group president Vivek Chopra told FE that the company will increase the total percentage of its offshore workforce from 40% to 50% adding that he is not too worried about Obama’s statements.
American technology and consulting giant Accenture too plans to increase its headcount in India from 42,000 to 50,000 by August. “According to our conversations with top clients, we expect tidal wave of growth to hit the outsourcing industry by mid-2010. It will be a mix of pent-up demand from the pre-recession times and new initiatives from clients which are yet to be formally communicated to IT players. The revenue flow will pretty much take the industry by surprise,” said Peter Lowes, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and leader of the firm’s Outsourcing Advisory Services practice.
He added that the growth in demand will translate into significant scaling up of existing operations and captives along with launch of new centres, giving a big boost to not just the country’s export revenues but also the number of people hired by the industry. Another case in point is Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions which though has not given out clear cut numbers like its peers, but plans to more than double its capital expenditure in the current fiscal to $180 million against $77 million spent during the last fiscal.
The company, which has 75% of its 78,000 people strong workforce in the country, plans to direct majority of the new investment into scaling up existing facilities in places like Coimbatore, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore among others apart from adding new ones.
Even one of the ‘Big Four’ Consultants, Deloitte plans to double its workforce in the country from the present 12,000 to 24,000 in the next three years. Around 8,000 of them will be added to Deloitte’s US-India chapter, which functions like Deloitte US’ captive and does audit, tax and consulting work, Hari Kumar, managing director of Deloitte US India Office told FE.