Wipro Ltd?s business process outsourcing (BPO) arm is planning to shift 20% of its workforce overseas in the next five years. It currently employs 24,000 people, out of which 2,500 are placed in the company’s 15 overseas delivery centres.
Wipro BPO senior vice-president Ashutosh Vaidya told FE that language and local market expertise are driving this trend. ?Around two years ago, 98% of our workforce was placed in India; the matrix has changed to 90:10 now. Going forward, we expect our international centres to grow at a faster rate,? he said. The company has centres in the Philippines, Eastern Europe and Australia among others and plans to tap newer geographies like Japan. ?Delivery centres in international destinations like Philippines not only have the language advantage, they also have a better understanding of the local market nuances,? he said. Several Indian IT companies like Genpact have huge delivery centres in countries like Manila, the Philippines and Chile due to these advantages. The attractiveness of these new low-cost destinations has sparked off an entire debate on whether India is losing its competitive edge to these nations. Vaidya said India will continue to be the company’s biggest centre. He refused to give details of how many people will be employed by its international centres. “We are increasingly moving towards a non-linear growth model, where growth in revenues is proportional to growth in employees, so the number is hard to predict,” he said.
The company has opened 15 international centres in the last 18 months. “Though the process of starting operations in new countries depends on customer acquisitions, we expect to keep up the pace,” he said. Vaidya added the company is also open to acquisitions to fill the gaps in countries like Japan or to gain domain expertise in areas such as healthcare or even strengthen its financial services practice.
Talking about the current demand situation, he said that the growth will be driven by the banking, financial services and insurance verticals while healthcare, manufacturing, retail and telecom are also looking up. “Continental Europe, Australia and Canada are new areas, which offer a lot of opportunities,” he said.
