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HCL bags British Tele's $75m ITES deal

Bipin Chandran in New Delhi

The Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Technologies has bagged a $75 million contract from British Telecom, possibly the biggest-ever deal in the history of the Indian IT-enabled services sector.

According to industry sources, HCL Technologies is expected to employ over 500 people in the project by June 2003.

Thus far, Indian business process outsourcing outfits have been characterised by smaller deals, which on an average employ 50-odd professionals.

"The project, which is currently on a pilot stage, will see a rapid ramp-up by the company to 500 people by June 2003. The project would be handled out of HCL Technologies BPO centres in India as well as in Northern Ireland," said sources adding that the project would be executed over the next five years.

While the company's Indian operations are handled by HCL eServe, HCL Technologies Northern Ireland provides services out of the European country.

Sujit Bakshi, CEO of HCL eServe, said the company cannot reveal the names of customers and details of the deals.

According to the sources, the project would be for the BT Conferencing, one of the British Telecom companies for its European and the US operations.

"The project would see the HCL handling the backoffice operations as well business process of BT Conferencing from HCL's centres," said a source.

He said the company is expected to move into a new facility in India. "The company already has about 440 seats in the Noida and about 500 seats in Belfast. It also have a 830 seats set up where we are ready to move in," said a source.

India's BPO sector has generated considerable interest among global corporations looking at out sourcing key business processes.

According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies, the Indian BPO sector has seen employment increasing fourfold from 25,000 in 1999 to 106,000 in 2002.

According to Nasscom, the ITES sector will grow beyond $20 billion by 2008. According to the apex body, the ITES industry had witnessed a growth of 70 per cent in 2001-02 and is projected to grow at 65 per cent during 2002-03.

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