Progeon plans units in US, Europe, China

Infosys Technologies' BPO subsidiary Progeon is looking at setting up delivery centrEs in China, Europe and the United States.

"We are looking at setting up a near shore delivery centre in either in Europe or the US or both. We would also set up a centre in China to service global orders," Progeon managing director and CEO Akshaya Bhargava said on the sidelines of a Nasscom seminar on knowledge process outsourcing.

"Our clients in the US and Europe want us to have near shore centres so that they can outsource the whole processes rather than offshore a part of them," he said.

Bhargava said the demand for the delivery centres close to the customer location was coming from clients themselves and the company was in discussions with them.

The company already has a delivery centre in Czech Republic with 100 people, who service clients in 11 languages.

Progeon is planning to expand further in Czech Republic and other locations in Eastern Europe like Poland and Slovak Republic.

Bhargava said Progeon's centre in China would be set up to service clients in Japan and South Korea, besides China and would not have English language capabilities.

"The centre in China would leverage the existing infrastructure of Infosys and would come up in another two to three years. It would enable us to serve global orders better," he said.

In India, Progeon operates from Infosys facilities in Bangalore and Pune. In Pune, the company has 1,000 employees and the remaining 3,700 are in Bangalore.

Bhargava said Progeon would follow Infosys where it goes. "Next Progeon facility would be at a second tier location like Chandigarh and Bhubaneshwar," he said.

Progeon has around 5,000 people. "We added close to 773 people in first quarter and in 2005-06 expect to add 3,000 professionals in all," he said.

The company is expecting revenues of $80 million in 2005-06 as against $43 million in 2004-05.