Kirk LaughlinBPO services provider Hinduja Global Solutions plans to foray into Jamaica with a greenfield centre by September this year, a top official told Reuters on Thursday.
The company, a part of the diversified Hinduja Group, has already got a letter of intent (LoI) from a Jamaican company to set up a 100-seater BPO centre in Jamaica to cater to the utilities vertical.
“We will start with hundred seats, but it will probably build out to about 500 seats,” Chief Executive Partha De Sarkar said, adding it is still too early to talk about the required investment in the centre.
The firm had cash and cash equivalents of Rs 468 crore. In February, Sarkar said he had plans to go to Latin America. Separately, he had earmarked Rs 50-60 crore for new BPO centres in FY12.
“We have not really found the kind of target that we were looking for,” in latin Ameica, Sarkar said. “So we have decided to go on our own, and if things work out, we should have our own greenfield centre in Jamaica.”
Hinduja Global, which started four new centres last fiscal, also plans a hundred-seater centre in Delhi by next month for domestic clients, he said.
“We don’t have a presence in north India, we are starting in a small way,” he said.
The company currently has 32 centres and provides services to clients from industries such as telecom, technology, consumer electronics, health insurance and utilities, among others. The firm had started operations in 2,000 with one client and 25 employees and its total headcount now stands at 19,442 employees.
Hinduja Global also hopes to close a joint venture agreement in China by end-June.
Earlier in the day, Hinduja Global’s Jan-March consolidated net profit rose 18.8% to Rs 30.86 crore. Revenue jumped 31.5% to Rs 294 crore.
“It’s historically been our strongest quarter,” Sarkar said. “I would say consumer electronics was what drove growth, basically coming from the North American geography and the Philippines.”
The firm grew 20.3% in FY11 and aims to sustain a growth in mid-teens to early twenties range in FY12, he added. Hinduja Global expects to slightly improve its margins in FY12 by half to one percentage point due to a combination of better pricing and cost controls, Sarkar said. The firm recorded operational (EBITDA) margins of 14.5% in FY11, down from 18.2% in FY12.
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