BANGALORE: One of the top three retailers in the world, Tesco has officially launched its captive Hindustan Service Center (HSC) in Bangalore. HSC will support the Tesco group by delivering IT and IT-enabled business processes to the group's global operations. Tesco operates over 2,300 stores across 13 countries and employs more than 330,000 staff.

The HSC will act as a center of excellence for the business, supporting existing technologies and the introduction of new leading edge retail-focused technologies and applications like Retek. The state of the art campus in Whitefield is Tesco's first shared service center outside the UK.

Launching the new center, Tesco International and IT director Philip Clarke said, "The variety and availability of high-technology skills in Bangalore made the city the obvious choice for the new center. This new center will play a key role in the future development of the business."

HSC CEO Meena Ganesh said, "We are already attracting some of the best talent in the industry and plan to increase our headcount to 770 by the end of 2005."

Tesco has long been a major investor in India. Its non-food sourcing office, now based at HSC, buys more than $70 million worth of products from the Indian sub-continent each year. Tesco sells around one million pairs of shorts bought from Bangalore itself, and over four million vests and t-shirts sold in Tesco stores across the world come from Tirupur.