Keane to invest $25 m in BPO

NEW DELHI: US based business and IT outsourcing firm Keane Inc. has announced plans to further expand its IT services in India and foray into the area of BPO through investment in Worldzen. Worldzen provides BPO delivery in India. With a cash consideration of $ 16 million, Keane has taken 62 percent stake in Worldzen’s operations.

As part of its growth plans, the company will further beef-up its existing resource base from a current 1,600 people to close to 5,000 over the next two years. The company will also expand in terms of infrastructure and facilities with an anticipated overall investment of $25 million in India.

"This represents our first BPO foray in the world and moving forward, India is going to drive our future BPO growth, so we would be investing quite significantly over here," said Keane Inc. president and CEO, Brian Keane.

At present, the company employs about 300 professionals in the BPO segment and this figure is likely to go beyond the 2,000 mark within a period of two years. "BPO is an area where exponential growth is possible so we will be expanding to meet our customers’ requirements. We are focusing in delivering optimization driven solutions in three areas — insurance, finance and healthcare," informed CEO for Worldzen, Sandeep Bhargava.

Keane has its presence in three locations — Gurgaon, Noida and Hyderabad and as the company expands, it is looking forward to expanding into other geographic locations as well. According to Keane, a considerable part of the company’s investment will go towards infrastructure.

In keeping with the trend of BPO firms moving away from bigger saturated metros, Keane is also eyeing the smaller places to have its BPO operations. "Presently, Worldzen is based in Gurgaon, but we are looking at smaller cities like Jaipur, Chandigarh and Allahabad for starting our BPO center," Bhargava explained.

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