Mumbai, Aug. 16: Barclays Bank Plc, the UK-based financial services conglomerate, has acquired a 50 per cent stake in Intelenet Global Services Ltd (Intelenet) from HDFC Ltd for Rs 164 crore.

This is the first time that Barclays has picked up shares in an Indian business process outsourcing company. It is likely that the bank will outsource a sizeable chunk of its back-office operations to Intelenet, said Susir Kumar, CEO of Intelenet.

The stake-sale came only days after HDFC had acquired 50 per cent in Intelenet from Tata Consultancy Services at a consideration of Rs 161 crore. With this acquisition, HDFC’s stake in the BPO outfit had gone up to 100 per cent.

Announcing the “partial divestment” of its stake in Intelenet, HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh said, “We were amongst the early entrants in this industry vertical and we intend to be a long-term player in the BPO space. Barclays was looking for an opportunity to acquire an established business platform with some immediate capacity and access to experienced staff. They decided that Intelenet was an attractive alternative to expand their existing offshore operations.”

Parekh added that while Barclays was looking for a strategic investment opportunity in an appropriate BPO company in India, they also wanted to leverage such a company for realising their offshore objectives.

“Barclays will bring in significant expertise in the area of international financial services, which we believe, will augment Intelenet’s delivery capability in this domain and fuel growth,” he said.

Sources said while Barclays is one of Intelenet’s clients, the acquisition of 50 per cent stake in the company indicated its ambitious plans for outsourcing from India.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Kumar said Barclays is set to drastically expand outsourcing from India. Currently, about 100 people cater to the financial services conglomerate.

He also noted that the company aims to exploit the huge potential of the BPO segment in the next few years. It is expected that by 2009, Intelenet’s income is likely to touch Rs 1,200 crore with a workforce of around 15,000 to 20,000.

An understanding has also been reached with Barclays whereby the latter will not have any access to proprietary information of Intelenet’s other clients, he added.