Source: afp.google.com

Prudential, Britain’s second-biggest insurer, said Wednesday that 3,000 jobs, including 1,250 positions in India, would be transferred to British outsourcing company Capita in a bid to save costs.

“Capita has committed that all employees affected will be offered roles on their existing terms and conditions of employment,” a joint statement said.

Prudential said the proposed 15-year agreement with Capita would enable it to achieve its overall cost saving target of 195 million pounds (273 million euros, 402 million dollars) per year by the end of 2010.

The agreement meanwhile allows Capita to acquire business and assets from Prudential for 25 million pounds, including part of PPMS, Prudential’s offshore operation based in Mumbai. PPMS employs 1,800 staff in total.

“The agreement with Capita is another significant milestone in our programme to deliver continued superior performance and profitability in our UK business,” Prudential UK chief executive Nick Prettejohn said in the statement.

“We have set out very clear priorities for the business and this agreement helps us to deliver our strategy by removing fixed costs from our operations and achieving significant operating efficiencies,” he added.

Some 1,750 of the 3,000 positions transferred to Capita are based in Britain.

Source: www.business-standard.com

US-based Sapient Corporation, which provides IT services to global clients, plans to expand its Indian operations over the next one year apart from tapping the domestic market for business growth.

Of the 6,000 people employed by the $490 million company, 3,800 are based out of the three centres — Bangalore, Gurgaon and Noida.

“India has emerged as being critical to the growth of the company. It will continue to drive growth with more people being recruited for various positions,” Sapient India Managing Director Sandeep Dhar told Business Standard.

The company employs 1,000 people at its Bangalore office, 400 in Noida and the rest in Gurgaon.

“However, in future, the Bangalore and Gurgaon centres will witness growth in terms of manpower. Next year, we intend to recruit 1,000 people for the Bangalore office alone. At present, India accounts for 70 per cent of the company’s overall operations. We expect the workload to increase once the company bags new clients,” he added.

Though Sapient has development centres in Los Angeles, Munich, Dusseldorf, Miami and New York, according to Dhar, the Indian development centres are the fastest growing for the company.

“India is part of the company’s globally distributed delivery model. Several teams and business practices are led from the Indian office. They handle the projects end-to-end,” he pointed out.

Sapient, which provides business and IT strategy, business applications, business intelligence, marketing and outsourcing services, derives 75 per cent of its revenue from North America and the remaining 35 per cent from Europe.

The company offers its services to technology, telecommunications, energy, financial services, automotive, healthcare and life sciences, education, consumer/retail products and, travel and hospitality sectors.

It also caters to federal, state and local government clients in the US and in provincial and other government entities in Canada and Europe.

The company is now keen on tapping the Indian market for growth. “The Indian economy is growing at a healthy rate. This has created business opportunities for companies like Sapient. We are targeting a dozen clients in the first year in IT consulting and financial services,” Dhar said.