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InterGlobe Technologies, a provider of IT and BPO services to aviation, travel and hospitality industries, will shortly open its second centre in Manila, the Philippines.
The new BPO centre will have a 1,000-seat capacity. It will be operational by October this year, Mr Vipul Doshi, CEO of InterGlobe Technologies, told Business Line .
Key factors
The move comes at a time when factors such as accent, service orientation and large flock of fluent English-speaking professionals have strengthened the Philippines' position as an attractive destination for voice-based work, particularly for US clients.
Last year, a study by Business Processing Association of the Philippines claimed that the country's IT-BPO annual revenue could more than double to $25 billion, and create 1.3 million jobs by 2016. But, today, while all major BPO players have a Philippines foothold as part of their global delivery network, industry veterans here argue that India's own BPO edge has now evolved far beyond voice.
“While we continue to focus on India, there are an increasing number of US clients and some Australian clients who want their voice-based work to be done from the Philippines. However, the UK and other Australian clients are comfortable with Indian voice accent,” Mr Doshi said. InterGlobe provides application development and maintenance, software verification and validation, and consulting services on the IT side, and contact centre and back-office services on the BPO side to companies such as KLM, Virgin Atlantic, and Singapore Airlines.
500-seat centre
It already has a 500-seat centre in Manila with 800 people working in it. “For the new centre, we will start with 200 people in October and then ramp up to full capacity in 12-18 months,” he said.
Mr Doshi believes that besides the incremental voice work that US clients are sending to the Philippines, there is also a portion of voice work that has moved from India to the Philippines. “One gets better rates and margins in the Philippines and the attrition levels are lower. Actually, in a sense, work is getting segregated… one client told us that they wanted voice delivery from the Philippines and back-office work from India,” he said.
InterGlobe also wants to set up an onshore centre in the US.
The US plans, he said, have been spurred by the incentives and tax breaks being doled out by various US states towards job creation. “Our US plans will take shape in FY13,” he added.
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