Oak Hill Capital Partners, a $1.6-billion private equity firm and General Atlantic have agreed to pay about $500 million for 60 per cent of General Electric's business-processing operations in India, sources close to the deal said.

GE Capital Services is the leader in offshoring services to India. Set up in 1997, the company employs over 12,000 people in eight sites in India in four cities. It has five centres -- one each at Gurgaon, Bangalore and Jaipur -- and two in Hyderabad.

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The transaction is expected to close within six months, pending regulatory reviews.

"The transaction, subject to customary approval, values GECIS at $800 million. GE will retain 40 per cent stake in GECIS and use the proceeds of 60 per cent stake sale to fund growth," Pramod Bhasin, CEO of GECIS, said on Monday.

Both General Atlantic Partner and Oak Hill are equal partners in this transaction.

GECIS will continue to serve GE under a multi-layer contract and the current GECIS global management team would also be retained. About 1,000 GECIS employees will also remain with GE. With this transaction, GECIS is now an independent company.

GE chairman and CEO Jeff Emmelt said, "We look forward to being GECIS' continued customers."

Gecis is regarded a very versatile business process outsourcing outfit.  It has centres of excellence in finance and accounting, insurance, collections, customer fulfillment, commercial finance, industrial and equipment, analytics, learning, IT services and software. These centres handle more than 450 processes for 30 different business units in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia.

Additional Inputs: PTI