While IT service providers by and large overlook the potential of smaller cities and towns as an ideal ITeS destination, Omega Healthcare has identified the temple- city of Tiruchi for expanding its base and leveraging its strength in the medical coding space.

The US-based company started operations in Tiruchi in 2012 with 250 seats. “It stands at 1,900 at present. We intend to almost double this to 3,700 by the end of this calendar year,” Gopi Natarajan, Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Omega Healthcare, told Business Line .

Speaking over phone from Tiruchi , Natarajan said that Omega has contracted a builder for setting a 50,000-sq-ft facility. “This is expected to go live by October–December.”

The company at present operates out of three facilities in Tiruchi — two of which have a capacity of 800 seats each, while the third has 300. “Two floors at the third facility is dedicated for recruitment and training. We have established the Omega Training Academy with training rooms and testing centre,” he said.

On the potential of Tiruchi city, he said “there are quite a number of educational institutions within a radius of 30-40 km and the company needs candidates with life sciences background for the coding job; the other graduates are recruited for data analytics. We have a good supply of candidates and the network connectivity is good.”

“Almost 50 per cent of the candidates are from Thanjavur and a good number of them — women, willing to work on the night-shift. Train connectivity is excellent between these two places and candidates find it convenient to commute the distance.”

Andhra Pradesh on radar Omega plans to expand to Andhra Pradesh as well. “It has not been finalised yet, but we are looking at Vijayawada,” he said without giving more details, but adding that tier-II and -III towns will be ideal destinations for expanding.

The company, which has a presence in Manila, is looking to diversify there. “We will be opening a second centre in the Philippines at Cebu, possibly during the second quarter,” Natarajan said. The size of the team in Manila is 450. On the opportunity in medical coding, he said “it offers huge growth potential due to the healthcare reforms in the US, creating the need for more processing jobs. At Omega, we are gearing up to meet the demand for medical coders by training and offering AAPC certification for our coders. We expect to have more than 2,500 AAPC certified coders by the end of this year.”

Meanwhile, the company plans to set up a mega coding academy in Bengaluru and get the same accredited by an US agency. This academy will start functioning from April.

This will be its third training facility, after Chennai and Tiruchi.

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