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EDS to double staff to 5000 in India

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CIOL Bureau
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MUMBAI: Electronic Data Systems Corp., the world's second-largest software services firm, plans to more than double its Indian staff to 5,000 by the end of 2005 to meet demand from new contracts it hopes to land, a top official said.

Texas-based EDS, which started operations in India in 1996, has 2,000 employees in the country offering both software and business process services to its global customers.

"We see continuous opportunity to build on the strength of our operations here," David Clementz, vice-president of service delivery, told Reuters in a phone interview while visiting India.



"Those additions will be timed with the completion of some deals we have in the pipeline, and with the assumption that we will win those deals, we will be needing that capacity."



EDS said late last month its contract pipeline was at its strongest for almost two years.



Moody's downgraded the company's debt ratings to junk status last month, which had some investors worried about its ability to win new business. But the move has not had any impact on its client relationships, Clementz said.



"So far it has not been an issue with us," he said.

The company's main centres in India include three facilities in Madras, one in Mumbai and one in Gurgaon near Delhi.

It has just opened a new center in Pune, 180 kilometres from India's financial capital, Bombay. The Pune centre will house more than 700 people by the end of the year.

Some 70 percent of India-based EDS employees are involved in software support and the rest work in back office services.

BALANCING GLOBAL DELIVERY

Clementz said the company's growth in India had accelerated in the past year as it worked out its global delivery model. The firm is trying to slash costs by moving some operations abroad.

Such Indian expansion plans tie into a strategy being adopted by many multinationals, in which global customers are served over high-speed telecoms links by India's low-cost, skilled workers.

Competitors such as IBM and Accenture have also been expanding their operations in the country.

Competition for outsourcing deals has intensified in recent years. But Clementz shrugged off competition from low-cost Indian software service providers, saying they were too small and were chasing different kinds of business.

"The volume and the interaction is quite a bit more significant today than it was, say, three years ago," he said.

"Yes, we are competing with them, yes we see them in the marketplace," he added. "But the targets they are going after are much more niche type. And we are looking for large integration opportunities.

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