Knoah plans another 500-seat call centre

Knoah Solutions, a city- based business process outsourcing (BPO) services provider, is planning to ramp up its employee strength by another 400 to reach a team size of 1000 by the end of June 2004.

The company is primarily eyeing the MCA, BCA pass-outs with good communication skills to fill its rolls.

Knoah currently has a 500- seat facility at Kavuri Hills near Madhapur, and is now planning to expand its infrastructure by adding another 500- seat facility, this time within the city surroundings.

"We are looking at Ameerpet area to locate our second facility," Bipin Chandra, the vice-president (India operations) of the company, said.

Knoah has invested over $ 1 million in technology infrastructure and the existing facility. It is planning to invest over $ 2 million in 2004.

"We have grown from a size of 60 people at the end of 2001 to 600 now," Sri Myneni, the chief executive of the company, said.

"On a year-on-year basis, we grew by 300 per cent over the year 2002 with staff numbers increasing from 200 to the existing strength," he added.

The company provides technical support and customer service outsourcing for the US and the European customers.

"We have won three new clients including one of the largest Internet service providers (ISPs) in Europe and two wireless product developers," Myneni said. In May 2001, the company bagged a technical support service contract from Earthlink, one of the world's largest ISPs.

The company is now planning to provide network management services including remote management for global majors.

The company developed a few products for captive use that includes KnoahsARK, which is a custom developed software suit that maximises productivity in the areas of training, quality, workforce and knowledge management.

Other products include a voice recording software. The company currently handles over half-a-million transactions per month, which includes over two lakh chat transactions for its customers.

"Our agents support 2 to 4 simultaneous chat sessions to ensure high service levels and the average wait time in a transaction is less than 30 seconds," Bipin Chandra claimed.