KOLKATA: Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp will start BPO operations in India early next year, a company official informed. "We will have 150 to 175 seats in Bangalore and 250 to 275 seats in Pune for our BPO operations which will start in the first quarter of 2003," R. Bhatnagar, head of the BPO business at the U.S. firm's Indian operations, told reporters.

"We are looking at clients in the banking, financial services, insurance and health sectors," Bhatnagar said on the sidelines of an industry seminar. He did not give details.

BPO covers remote white-collar services that include insurance claims processing, documentation, payroll management and accounting delivered through phones, computers and Internet. The units are springing up fast in India which boasts of a large pool of English-speaking graduates who can be hired for much less than their U.S. counterparts.

General Electric already employs over 10,000 people in Indian back-office operations, including call centres. Other multinationals like Citigroup have been joined by domestic IT giants Infosys and Wipro. Cognizant, based in Teaneck, New Jersey, runs its software services from its offices in India on behalf of big U.S. and European corporations. Its third quarter revenue rose 35 percent to $61.2 million from a year earlier.

© Reuters