Hard at work

Calcutta, Jan. 29: ICICI OneSource, one of the top 10 business process outsourcing firms in the country according to a Nasscom survey, will set up a unit in the city.

The company has taken up a 90,000-sq-ft area in Technopolis, the flagship project of Phoenix Software Ltd. Technopolis has a built-up area of 6.75 lakh sq ft with office space of 4.5 lakh sq ft, said Rahul Saraf, the promoter of Forum and Technopolis.

Officials said the centre would have a seating capacity of 1000 to 1200. ICICI OneSource will service the back-office operations of Lloyds TSB Bank of the UK from this centre. For this project, the company got the financial services outsourcing project of the year award by the National Outsourcing Association of the UK.

ICICI OneSource already has three centres each in Mumbai and Bangalore and one each in Chennai and Amherst in the US. It employs 7,500 people with a seating capacity of over 6,000.

The Calcutta centre will be its 13th office worldwide and is set to be operational between June and July, while Technopolis will be completed by June.

ICICI OneSource, with expertise in financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, utilities, media, retail, print and publishing, will also open a centre in Nevada in the US early next month, officials added. It is also the first BPO to obtain the Customer Operations Performance Centre Incorporate certification, which is the leading global authority on contact centre and vendor management.

The BPO company of the ICICI group is set to clock a turnover of $126 million by the end of this fiscal, up from $74 million last year. The firm grew by 134 per cent last year and expects a three-digit growth rate this year, which is substantially higher than the industry?s 54 per cent.

G.D. Gautama, Bengal principal secretary for IT, said other BPO firms like Mumbai-based Cap Gemini are also planning to set up centres here.