CEO Vineet Nayyar in Calcutta on Tuesday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta, Dec. 27: Mahindra-British Telecom is looking at acquiring companies in strategic areas, including BPO and telecom equipment manufacturing firms.

The company will invest Rs 300 crore over the next two years to fund its expansion plans.

“We are open to strategic acquisitions in niche areas. Currently, we are exploring options to take over a BPO company to provide support services to our clients,” said Vineet Nayyar, CEO and managing director, Mahindra-British Telecom (MBT).

“Though we have not yet zeroed in on any specific target, we are continuously on the look out since financing will not be a problem,” Nayyar said.

MBT, a joint venture between British Telecommunications plc and Mahindra Ltd, recently acquired Axes Technologies Inc of Richardson, Texas, for $54 million.

“The acquisition of Axes helped us diversify our client base from telecommunication service providers to telecommunication equipment manufacturers,” he said. “We will look at similar strategic moves and consider such synergies for our future acquisitions.”

MBT, which inaugurated its development centre in the city with 60 engineers and an initial investment of Rs 10 crore, will soon scale it up to a 150-engineer facility.

“As we build a full-fledged campus over the next two to three years, the headcount at the centre will go up to 2000-3000,” Nayyar said. The total investment for the project will be about Rs 150-200 crore.

Though Bengal IT minister Manabendra Mukherjee said the state government would allot land to MBT at Bantala by January, Nayyar said they would consider both Bantala and the newly proposed IT park in the city.

“We took a policy decision to expand our operations outside Maharashtra. We are not looking at setting up any other development centre outside Calcutta, but will expand our existing operations in Chennai and Noida,” Nayyar said. Calcutta will be the largest development centre for the company outside Maharashtra.

MBT will almost double its headcount to 15,000 over the next two years from the current level of 8,000, he added.

In 2004-05, MBT had earned a revenue of $205 million and is targeting $280 million this fiscal.