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Aegis acquires AOL's call center operations in India
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 02 September 2008, 16:25 IST |
3 Comments
Bangalore: Aegis BPO Services, part of the Essar Group, has acquired AOL's call center operations in India. As part of the acquisition, which is expected to close at the end of April 2008, Aegis will take over around 1,200 AOL employees and enter into the tech support segment. AOL's call center operations include both voice and non-voice activity and it will now be serviced by Aegis. Though the value of the acquisition was not disclosed, some industry observers said that Aegis was likely to have paid around $25-30 million for AOL's call center business in India. Aegis has a top line of over $200 million (Rs 800 crore).
"This acquisition gives us clear visibility and expands our line of services," said Aegis MD Aparup Sengupta. Aegis, which has consistently taken the inorganic route to grow the business having made eight acquisitions since 2003, would continue to pursue this strategy, she added.
Aegis said it had won the deal through competitive bidding. However, it was unlikely that any large BPO player would have shown interest in picking up this business, given the small scale of AOL's operations.
AOL International Executive VP Maneesh Dhir said, the decision to divest its call center business was part of a strategy to focus on core operations.
AOL started its call center business in India in July 2003 and it also got a KPO and software services operation. It has BPO relationships with other third party vendors. Following this acquisition, Aegis' head count will go up from 19,000 to over 20,000.
Aegis is currently focused on telecom, BFSI, retail, healthcare with presence in 17 centres in India and nine in the U.S.
