Cognizant to set up BPO unit in Bangalore

Tuesday, 26 November 2002, 20:30 IST
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BANGALORE: Cognizant Technology Solutions, a Nasdaq-listed software services company, is setting up a business process outsourcing (BPO) unit here to exploit growing opportunities in the financial sector. With a dozen software development centres spread over five cities in India, the New Jersey-headquartered firm is planning to initially set up a 150-seater call centre-cum-back office process centre in the first quarter of 2003 -- January-March. Cognizant joins a select band of software services companies like Indian IT majors Infosys Technologies and Wipro, which have entered the BPO space to cater to the needs of their existing clients and those outsourcing business to India. "We will be initially serving our existing clients in the financial, banking and insurance sectors for voice and back office processes. But, over a period of time, we will be looking at other clients in this area too," Raju Bhatnagar, head of BPO at Cognizant, told IANS. In terms of employment opportunities, it would be a mixture of the run-of-the-mill graduates as well as those with finance and accounting backgrounds like commerce graduates and chartered accountants. Cognizant has software development centres in Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore, employing 4,100 of its 5,200 staff in India. It chose Bangalore because "of the usual reasons. It is cosmopolitan, costs are lower and has the talent pool. We also have the biggest software development centre here", said Bhatnagar. The BPO sector has been growing at a phenomenal 77 percent annually with more and more companies outsourcing to India to cut costs while getting the same quality of service from the large English-speaking talent pool. Bhatnagar, formerly of eFunds, is the chairman of the Maharashtra task force on IT enabled services (ITES). He is also on the advisory panel of the ITES boards of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
Source: IANS