Wipro BPO to focus on non-linear growth

Wipro BPO, the Rs 1,000 crore arm of the Wipro Technologies, will continue to focus on non-linear growth and not add mass. The division, which has been revamped over the past two years - slowly weaning away from being a voice-heavy BPO provider "" has only added around 500 people while growing its top line by 50 per cent in this period.

Its current headcount of around 19,000 is expected to go up to around 21,000 by the year-end. T K Kurien, head, Wipro BPO, said: "We are cranking out more value from leveraging our high-end resources and we want to focus on this. The process improvements which we have been effecting over the past two years have stood us in good stead. But for that, the rupee appreciation would have affected us severely."

The company recently started its KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) arm with renewed focus and it already employs around 700 people. It intends to hire 100 statisticians in the coming days to launch the quantitative analysis practice.

Wipro BPO, on a year-on-year basis, has posted a 20 per cent growth to Rs 251 crore for first quarter of current fiscal, while its operating margins have shored up by 35 per cent to Rs 57 crore. Sequentially, both these parameters have taken a hit by close to 5 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively.

This arm is also set to kickstart its China centre during the current quarter with an initial employee base of 50-75 and is hoping to ramp this up to 300 in an year's time. This is the second overseas centre for Wipro BPO after the one in Romania which employs around 100 currently and is expected to double that by June next.