IBM's staff in Indian backoffice unit jumps 3-fold

NEW DELHI  - IBM's backoffice unit in India has boosted its staff

strength more than three-fold to 20,000 in less than two years to meet rapidly

growing demand for outsourcing, a top official at the unit said on Monday.

"We've seen a 100 per cent growth in revenue over the two years,"

Pavan Vaish, chief operating officer at IBM Daksh Business Process Services

Ltd., told Reuters in an interview.

He did not give absolute numbers.

IBM, the world's biggest computer-services firm, bought Daksh in 2004 as part

of its strategy to use India's low-cost but technologically superior software

industry as a global delivery hub for software needs and client services.

Armonk, New York-based International Business Machines Corp., which gets

about half its revenue from information technology consulting and outsourcing,

is the largest multinational firm in India with 43,000 employees. Nearly half

work at Daksh.

Vaish, one of the founders of Daksh, said the jump in the number of employees

from about 6,000 less than two years ago was fuelled by growing outsourcing from

Fortune 500 clients, many of whom are customers of parent IBM.

"We've seen a new traction in customer wins," Vaish, a graduate

from Harvard Business School, said over phone.

IBM Daksh's customers have doubled to nearly 40 over two years and include

Bharti Airtel Ltd., India's top mobile services provider and financial

information publisher D&B Corp. - formerly known as Dun & Bradstreet.

India's booming backoffice processing industry, which provides services such

as payroll accounting and high-end financial analytics, is expected to post a 37

per cent surge in revenue to $6.3 billion for the year to March 2006.

Daksh, a fully owned subsidiary of IBM, does not release financial numbers

separately.