Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

MUMBAI: India’s third-largest software exporter, Wipro, has started offering legal process outsourcing (LPO) services as part of the knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) services business headed by former banker and Wipro BPO senior VP Ramit Sethi.

The focus of the LPO will be to offer services such as patents and contract management rather than paralegal services and litigation support, where the clientele are mostly law firms.

“The objective is to provide end-to-end services catering to the same global customer. LPO becomes a logical extension given the cost pressures that clients are facing now. We find that there is a very healthy demand for the services.

When we go to market, our first call will be intellectual property-related and contract management work that caters that is outsourced by corporates as opposed to niche legal work for law firms,” Mr Sethi said. The LPO currently employs about 80 people and is not very large ‘but from the perspective of the LPO industry where most firms are just starting off, it is quite large’, he added.

Unlike Infosys, which also recently started an LPO business, Wipro’s intent seems to be to keep the LPO more low-profile, and as an extension of its existing services. The business does not have a separate head and is managed as part of the KPO services by Mr Sethi himself in consultation with Wipro’s general counsel Madhu Khatri for legal domain skills.

Infosys, on the hand, had recruited Karlyn Stanley, a former partner in a private equity and an attorney with around 25 years, to head its LPO practice in the US. In addition, it had appointed a director offshore to based out of India.

There are also differences in the customers the firms are targeting. While Infosys is also targeting law firms for its clientele, Wipro is more focussed on companies.

“In the LPO world, there are two kinds of work — corporate outsourcing and law firms outsourcing. We are looking at the former but that doesn’t mean we won’t take up opportunistic jobs. We have the capability,” said Mr Sethi. The LPO industry is growing at over 100% but from a very small base.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/amex-to-end-outsourcing-local-calls/2008/04/09/1207420493860.html

CALL centre operators in India or the Philippines will no longer field queries from American Express customers in Australia.

Credit card giant American Express will once again service all Australian calls locally, and has created 150 new call centre jobs in Melbourne and Sydney to do so.

Luisa Megale, the head of Public Affairs at American Express, said the company started to outsource Australian calls to their centres in Mumbai, India, and Manila, the Philippines, four years ago. She said the decision to reverse offshore outsourcing centred on customers’ calls becoming more complex and requiring local knowledge. “The reason we did it was because our card members have totally shifted the way they work with us,” she said.

Ms Megale said that as consumers grew more technologically savvy in recent years, more simple inquiries were being answered through the company’s website. As a result, most inquiries put to call centre operators were complicated, she said. “The calls we were getting to our call centres were multifaceted and really quite complex … some required local knowledge and just the depth and length of the calls meant it was probably better for us to service our customers locally,” she said. “It was right for the business then and the decision to bring the call volumes back is right for our business and our customers now.”

Ms Megale said that no jobs were lost in the company’s call centres in Mumbai, India, and in Manila, the Philippines. But she said over the past two months more than 80 new jobs were created in Melbourne and 70 jobs in Newcastle.

Finance Sector Union director Rod Masson welcomed the company’s decision to end offshore outsourcing. “We think it’s a good decision that stems from the wish to have people locally to deal with complex financial issues. I would think it is likely to be in direct response to what Australian consumers want.”

Source:http://www.televisionpoint.com/news2008/newsfullstory.php?id=1209010453

The decks have been cleared for the proposed Digital Entertainment City, the world-class facility designed to train animation professionals in Hyderabad.

The government will finalise the partner in the special purpose vehicle (SPV) designed to initiate the Digital Entertainment City in a few weeks. Four animation training schools - Picaso, Toonz, Crux and Taksha Academy, are in the race to set up an animation training academy in Hyderabad, according to IT secretary SK Joshi. While Picaso has a tie-up with Canada based Centennial College, Taksha has an association with University of Teesside, UK.

An SPV, Hyderabad Digital Media, has been launched to create the animation city in Hyderabad. The government is looking for an Indian animation company with foreign collaboration to be a leading partner in the project.

“We are selective about the partner and we will finalise a company with foreign collaboration in the coming 10 days. We want industry players to be part of the venture and not third party companies such as real estate developers,” Joshi said.

The government will take the equity partnership for the allocated land and the rest will be borne by the leading partner and other animation companies who wish to join in the project. The total outlay of the project will be about Rs 400 crore.

The 100-acre Entertainment City will house world-class infrastructure to encourage animation, gaming, television, film, multimedia, radio, music and new media. The city will also have a Digital Entertainment City Task Force (DECTF), comprising industry leaders and state government representatives.

According to estimates, a training institute with 100 animation and gaming work stations would cost around Rs 50 crore. India has around four such institutes — including the ones managed by Infosys and DQ Entertainment. However, this is reckoned to be expensive by many institutes and IT firms.

Several IT companies that are executing offshore animation and gaming projects are interested in partnering in the animation city. Featuring in this list are Wipro, DQ Entertainment, FX Labs and 7Seas Technologies.

At present, there is a huge shortage of trained professionals in animation and gaming in India. According to a Nasscom study, India will need over 3 lakh professionals in content development and animation segment by 2008 to cope with the growing demand. At present, there are only 12,000 people available in this industry.

The animation market in India is estimated at $285 million at present and is expected to touch $1 billion by 2010. This, coupled with low overhead costs, is making India a hub for outsourcing of post production work. The industry apprehensions are that a surge in demand coupled with talent crunch will lead to huge manpower costs, taking away the cost advantage that India enjoys in this segment.

According to the CII-AT Kearney study, the total cost of making a full length movie in India is around $15-25 million compared to $100-125 million in the US.

Source: www.tradingmarkets.com

New Delhi, Apr 23, 2008 — At the time when the Indian IT majors are going slow on hiring due to rising rupee and a downturn in the US economy, global software firms are hiking their staff capacity in the country and plans to hire 40,000 employees over the next couple of years.

In the last three months, foreign IT firms have announced their plans of hiring 40,000 people in India within the next two years, a study by industry body Assocham said.

“The foreign firms are planning the intake 40,000 (employees) as announced during January to April 2008,” the study said.

This would be a significant development for the job market as the shrinking margins had dimmed the hiring outlook of the Indian IT majors, it said. Among the Indian firms disclosing their plans, Satyam Computer Services, one of the top IT firms, stated the addition of 3,000 people this year.

Information Technology, one of the highest employment generating segments in the services sector, has been feeling the pressure of increased value of the rupee against dollar, rising wage inflation and the slowdown in the US economy.

“At the time when the Indian firms seem to be curtailing the wage hikes and right-size the staff strength to prevent the squeezing margins, the robust headcount expansion plans of the foreign IT companies renders a positive outlook to the job market,” Assocham President Venugopal N Dhoot said.

The largest headcount expansion has been planned by US- based Computer Sciences Corp. The company has announced the addition of 16,500 headcount over the next two years.

The second largest expansion plan has been announced by global business process outsourcing giant Cognizant, which intends to raise its Indian strength by 14,700 this year.

UK-based Zylog Systems has drawn the hiring plans of more than 4,000 employees, it said.

Xansa, another UK-based firm, has announced its plans to double headcount from 5,200 to 10,000 in three years. Ness Technologies, an Israel-based firm, has announced recruitment of 1,000 people this year to its present strength of 2,800. Another firm, Vmware Inc, plans to raise its engineering staff to over 1,000 people in the next two years.

However, the Indian IT industry appears to have been hit by the US slowdown with recruitment firms saying the software companies are trying to cut down on new additions.

Analysts feel that there is a definite decline in the recruitments in the last two-to-three months. This is prominent in the IT services segment and not so much in the Business Process Outsourcing and product development segment.

Source: www.techtree.com

The 2007-08 Indian Semiconductor and Embedded Design Service Industry Report says that the country’s semiconductor design services industry is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.7 percent, to reach $10.96 billion by 2010, from the present level of $6 billion. The report says the industry is expected to clock a revenue of $7.3 billion by the end of 2008. The projections have been compiled by the India Semiconductor Association (ISA) and the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Last year, Chairman of the ISA had anticipated a 25 to 35 percent growth in the semiconductor industry since there was an increasing trend of a brand value for semiconductors within India, attributed mainly to MNCs looking at semiconductor-related outsourcing from India. Nevertheless the industry is expected to grow 25 to 35 percent during this year. Due to growing expertise in complex end-to-end design, strong IP development, and talent, India stands out as a preferred destination for semiconductor and embedded design, according to the report.