Hero Mindmine drops China plan

Hero Mindmine, the training and HR services arm of the Hero Group, has decided against setting up an English business process outsourcing (BPO) training office in China due to lack of English speaking people in the country.

"There are hardly any people speaking English in China and we did not see much prospects in the Chinese market for an English BPO arm. The response was not very good so we have stalled the plans of an office in China," Sunil Kant Munjal, managing director and CEO of Hero Corporate Services, told Business Standard.

In last few months, Hero Mindmine had been toying with the idea of setting up a BPO training arm for IT-enabled and other customer services industries in China. It had been studying the market to direct investment towards ITeS development but that is now on a backburner.

Hero Mindmine, backed by the Rs 10,000 crore ($2.2 billion) Hero Group, provides learning solutions in the areas of training delivery, consulting, content development and assessments for sectors like Airlines, Automotive, BPO, FMCG, IT, Pharma, with clients such as Accenture, American Express, CSC, GE, Godrej, HP, ICICI, Infosys, LG, McKinsey, Msource, Samsung, Standard Chartered Bank, Tatas, Toyota and Wipro.

At present, Hero Mindmine claims to have 1,50,000 successfully trained candidates working in leading MNCs. The company has built content delivery methods in the areas of communication skills, sales, customer service, leadership, people management, strategic planning, team building, cultural sensitisation.

It also provides services in integrated project implementation, outsourcing strategy, assessment and measurement of skills.

With offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Noida the company aims to expand to other cities also. In April this year, Hero Mindmine entered into an agreement with Team Productivity Consultants to help consolidate its training house and increase its reach in Asia Pacific. The company has exclusive alliances with DynEd International Inc and Ordinate Corporation.