Concentrix to strengthen its analytics practice in India

Company plans to invest $20-$25 million in India over the next two years

Following its acquisition of the customer care services business of IBM last year, global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services firm, Concentrix is looking at investing between $20 million-$25 million to expand its India operations, a part of which will go towards strengthening its analytics practice in the country.

The US-headquartered company, in September last year, had acquired the customer care business from IBM, also known as IBM Daksh, for around $505 million.

Jyllene Miller, senior vice-president of Concentrix said the investment would be made over the next two years and a large part of it will go towards strengthening the analytics practice. Miller, who heads marketing, client engagement strategy, global industry and analyst relationships for the company said the company has identified analytics as a "heavy opportunity for growth, between $7 million to $8 million would be invested in India to strengthen it.

Concentrix has over 45,000 employees globally out of which 20,000 are in India. "The strategy is to grow the existing operations," said Miller who is on a week's visit to India and is meeting the company's clients across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

She also said that while there are some signs of a global recovery in spending, clients are looking at vendor consolidation in order to drive better pricing. "They are also looking at deriving more business based outcomes."

Concentrix deploys the combined strategy of onshore, near shore and outsource, she added. In future, it is looking at growing its existing markets of Eastern Europe, India, Latin America and the US.

Before the IBM acquisition, the strength of Concentrix was around 10,000 employees. Miller also said that the integration process with IBM Daksh was almost complete. The acquisition has catapulted Concentrix into the league of the Top ten BPO companies in the world.

Aegis, the business process management arm from the Essar group also announced recently that it will sell its BPO business in the US, the Philippines and Costa Rica to Paris-based Teleperformance for a sum of $610 million (around Rs 3,638 crore).

Miller said that while the company has the largest operations in India from a delivery standpoint, it is also excited about the country from a revenue generation point of view. "We have some really good (deal) signings in the last quarter in India."

Miller added that while "automation is key," for the industry, the company is still figuring out whether to deploy robotics - the latest buzzword in the industry.