Syntel strengthens India Focus

BANGALORE, INDIA: Knowledge Process Outsource (KPO) solutions company Syntel Inc. has outlined initiatives to increase domestic market share. It plans to increase the capacity of the Global Delivery centers and also the India-based sales team.

Keshav Murugesh, chief executive officer and president, Syntel Inc. told CyberMedia that the company is looking forward to an extensive marketing and branding campaign.

Though he refrained from sharing details regarding team expansion and client acquisition, he said, “We will soon announce a new sales leader for India and will bring in other sales persons around that leader to buffer our existing India-based pre-sales and sales teams.”

Elaborating on the expansion plans, Murugesh said that Syntel plans to invest around Rs.120 crore for India. This will be carried out in two phases - the first phase will be in Chennai campus and second will focus on Pune SEZ with 4,500 seating capacity.

He said, “Bulk of the investments will be towards Phase one of Chennai SEZ campus where we are creating capacity of 5000 seats, a cafeteria, a training facility for 1200 persons, a welcome block and recreation facilities. Overall built up would be 650,000 square feet. We would start our phase two at Pune campus by the end of the year and are currently awaiting approvals to commence construction.”

In the past three years, Syntel India witnessed a compound annual growth of over 230 per cent. In 2008, Syntel's revenues from India accounted for nearly three per cent of its global revenues, this was an improvement from around two per cent in 2007.

He added, “We are working to increase our customer concentration in India. In the second quarter of 2009, Syntel had 96 hunting licenses and 57 clients, out of which four are based in India.”

In 2004, Syntel had two KPO clients in the financial services and managed only one process. It has grown to 12 clients and around 50 business processes. It is also developing service offerings around technology like grid computing, cloud computing, remote infrastructure management, and software-as-a-service. It is eying at manufacturing and automotive industry for opportunities in areas like product lifecycle management (PLM) and engineering services.

Its total revenue for the second quarter recorded a marginal increase of four per cent to Rs 481 crore compared to Rs 464 crore in the first quarter of 2009.