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News
Xchanging Exploring Small-Town Story
12 Feb 2009
India, 12 February 2009 – FTSE-listed BPO giant Xchanging Plc is planning to set up 250-300 seater operations in India's hinterlands. The billion-dollar company is chasing a small town BPO story as it looks to increase the domestic headcount 40 percent annually leveraging on the larger pool of resources and skillsets. While a few domestic BPOs have made tentative efforts to tap India's semi-urban potential, Xchanging could well be the first MNC major to script such a move.
Xchanging got its major presence in India by acquiring 75 percent stake in Cambridge Solutions for £83 million ($116 million approx). Currently, its headcount in India stands at 3,150 spread across Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgoan and Shimoga. Speaking to ET, David Andrews, CEO, Xchanging, said the company would be primarily looking at expanding into tier 3 and 4 towns with smaller operations. The BPO company already has presence in a tier 2 city, Shimoga, in Karnataka with 250 employees. Andrews said it would be prudent to build small centres in such locations as it would give them better control on the process and quality.
The tier 2 and 3 locations are able to procure resources at lesser costs as well as having lower attrition rates. Comat Technologies (Chitradurga in Karnataka) and Lasone (Thiruvallur in Tamil Nadu) have tested the semi-urban pockets in the recent past. Tata Chemicals has set up 125-seater captive BPO at Badayun district in Uttar Pradesh. Domestic financial powerhouse HDFC runs a backoffice at Puttaparthi through a third party vendor.
Xchanging provides BPO and IT services largely to the financial services vertical. It had been a Europe centric entity till the acquisition of Cambridge Solutions last year.
Andrews said Xchanging would be achieving a revenue of $1 billion in 2009 and this would see the India geography contributing around 30 percent.