ITC Infotech to increase staff to 3000

By siliconindia staff writer   |   Thursday, 11 September 2003, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE: ITC Infotech, a wholly owned subsidiary of ITC Ltd, and US based business process outsourcer ClientLogic have announced the launch of their JV contact center operations called CLI3L, which will operate from the ITC Infotech park premises in Bangalore. They also said that the inbound call center, which has been operational since June, will look to increase its present strength of 650 people to reach 1,500 employees in a year’s time. ITC Chairman, Y.C Deveshwar, said that ITC Infotech in itself would employ around 3,000 people by the end of the next calendar year. The organization presently employs around 700 people and will be increasing this number to 1,000 in the next three to four months. "It’s a 50 50 joint venture between the two companies, where ClientLogic brings to the table clients and process knowhow, while ITC Infotech brings quality and cost effectiveness. We expect the venture, CLI3L, to break even in the first year of operations and bring in revenues of around Rs 50 crore," said Deveshwar. Thomas Harbison, Vice Chairman, President and CEO of ClientLogic Corporations, a subsidiary of Onyx Corporation, Canada said that an investment of $five million has been put into the JV and more investment will follow with growth. The clients of the organization, based out of the US and Europe, belong mostly to the technology and communication sector and 75 percent of them are first time outsourcers. The company already operates 33 call center operations around the world and emphasized that the Indian JV will function as a node in the network. Replying to a question on whether jobs will be moved from other call center locations, MD of CLI3L Walewin Lichtenauer said, "At the moment CLI3L will operate as a separate call center in the network but we will be constantly looking at optimizing on capacity and locations in the future." He added that while outsourcing within the same country can cut down customer costs by 20 percent - 40 percent, outsourcing to "lower cost human resources" countries like India could bring the cost down by 60 percent -70 percent. He also said that the Bangalore center so far had exhibited itself as the center with one of the lowest attrition rates for any of its size operated by ClientLogic. Speaking at the conference, ITC Infotech MD, Sanjay Verma said, "Three years back when we started, 95 percent of the company’s revenues were being generated from the parent company. This year, that has been reduced to 15 percent. A little more than 50 percent of our revenues come from Europe, 30 percent from the US and 10 percent from other countries especially Japan. Our domestic share remains less with just two clients in India."

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