MphasiS BFL Ltd. to open BPO unit in Kolkata

Kolkata, Dec 7 (UNI) Indian software and back-office service firm MphasiS BFL Ltd. is planning to open a BPO unit in Kolkata in near future.

Talking to mediapersons, MphasiS BPO president Sandeep Dhar said here today that the company has met IT minister Debesh Das to discuss his plans.

" We are looking at opportunities available here," he said.

However, he did not divulge investment plans in the Kolkata unit and the total number of people to be recruited.

He said, the project planning is at primary stage and the company was still surveying. Land allocation and investment related topics would be discussed later.

MphasiS, 51.2 per cent owned by U.S. computer service firm Electronic Data Systems Corp., foresees accelerated growth from the next fiscal starting in April as it wins outsourcing contracts by leveraging on its parent's strength.

" We expect to return to above-market growth rates by the first quarter of the next fiscal and we have lots of synergies coming in, in terms of overall sales effectiveness that we get from servicing the EDS channel." In June, EDS completed a 0 million deal to take a majority stake in MphasiS. That stake will rise to 61.8 per cent when EDS gets legal approval for merging its wholly owned subsidiary, EDS India, with the Indian company.

EDS, the world's No. 2 technology service provider after International Business Machines Corp., has offered to acquire another 20 per cent of MphasiS for about 0 million.

MphasiS currently has about 12,700 employees, and the figure would rise to about 19,000 after the merger with EDS India is complete. The company plans to hire another 10,000 workers before the end of 2007, Mr Dhar said.

The total revenue from the BPO segment was US $ 350 million last fiscal, out of which US 0 million was from the BPO services. The rest was from application technology and IT operations, he added.

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