The India support centre for the world’s third-largest retailer, Tesco, has just extended its services to another five countries in Europe.
Tesco Hindustan Service Centre (HSC), based in Bangalore, which has been catering to retailers in the UK, Ireland and US across multiple business operations, will now support the chain in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Turkey and Hungary. It recently opened a third office in Bangalore.
Confirming the development, Tesco HSC CEO Sandeep Dhar told Business Standard the India hub is serving these markets in areas including finance, commercial & marketing, supply chain, space range & display, and property verticals.
When asked whether the Bangalore hub would offer its back-end services to Tesco in India, once it is permitted to set up multi-brand stores in the country, Dhar refused to comment.
Currently, foreign direct investment (FDI) is not allowed in multi-brand retail. But the Committee of Secretaries (CoS) has recently recommended 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail. The cabinet is yet to take up the matter.
The UK-headquartered, $112-billion company, which operates in 14 countries, is keen to tap the promising Indian retail market. But pending government permission, it is in a joint venture partnership with the Tata group’s Trent to operate cash-and-carry (wholesale) stores in India. There’s no FDI cap in the cash-and-carry business.
It has hired more than 700 people, including engineers, finance and operations management specialists, architects, for the new facility in Bangalore, taking the total staff strength to 5,500.
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Tesco HSC was set up in 2004 on a 15-acre campus. The company did not want to talk about the investments made towards the India centres. Currently, Tesco HSC is the only technology and operations centre supporting the chain globally.
The India hub has been described by the company as a centre of excellence to support the company globally. While Tesco HSC offers certain information technology services to the retailers across all 14 countries, it supports the group in other business process management areas such as finance, marketing, supply chain, display and property verticals in UK, Ireland, and the US.
Now, five other Tesco markets too will get business process support from its Bangalore back-end hub.