Intelenet loses BMI deal to Ventura

British Midland Airways (BMI) has snapped its ties with IT service provider Intelenet Global Services and diverted a contract for providing backoffice support entirely to the UK-based Ventura Plc, which has an office in Pune.

Ravi Pikle, BMI commercial development manager India and Middle East said, "BMI has shifted the backoffice operations completely to Ventura which they had subcontracted to Intelenet."

The carrier, UK's second largest full-service scheduled airline, had been outsourcing its customer service operations jointly from Intelenet and Ventura, which shared the revenues on a 55:45 basis.

While Pikle declined to comment on the deal size, market sources put the figure at £300,000.

Intelenet is a 50-50 joint venture between Housing Development Finance Corporation and the UK-based financial major Barclay's Bank. This was the reason for the Mumbai-based company getting a major share of the revenue, they said.

The shifting of contract to Ventura was logical as BMI has a stake in the company. The Ventura deal is believed to have been signed for five years.

Meanwhile, BMI has opened a new contact centre in Pune to cater to the increase in business and has trained a dedicated workforce of 250 agents to serve over 200,000 customer enquiries each month. The company expects a 150-seat centre to work for the carrier and get an 8-10 pound sterling business per hour, while the work will be conducted under a 15-hour window in two shifts.

Around 35 agents will continue to service BMI from Ventura's UK site and the agents in Pune will provide essential support services such as application processing, payment processing, back office, collections and data management. Ventura has a workforce of over 7,500 people working out of UK and India, and provides both on and offshore services.

BMI operates over 1,600 flights a week and has a fleet of 42 aircraft serving 38 destinations in 15 countries. Its main operational base is London Heathrow where it holds 12 per cent of all take off and landing slots.

Added Anupam Arun, country manager India, Ventura, a subsidiary of Next Plc, UK, "BMI operations are being consolidated under one umbrella. A part of the contract was outsourced to Intelenet initially, as we did not have the required capacity and staff strength."