Polaris to up headcount by 2,000 this year

Polaris Software Lab, a Chennai-based speciality application services provider, has announced that it will be increasing its headcount by 1,500-2,000 this year. At present, it employs over 7,000 people.

Arun Jain, chairman and chief executive officer of Polaris Software Lab told mediapersons that it would be increasing its Hyderabad headcount to close to 2,000 in the next 18-24 months from 1,250 at present. Andhra Pradesh chief minister, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy officially inaugurated the company's super-speciality centre focussed on the investment banking vertical - The Capital - in Hyderabad.

Set up at an investment of Rs 70 crore, the two lakh sft centre has the capacity to house 2,000 seats. It contains eight centres of excellence focussed on securities, money markets, derivatives, foreign exchange, margin lending, fixed income, equities and custody. Jain said that the company was open to expanding to Tier-II cities like Tirupati as well.

It is estimated that banking and financial services institutions spend $400 billion annually on information technology. According to Gartner, the share of IT spend on investment banking applications and services is about 24%.

Jain said that the company was looking at mining the existing clients besides acquiring new ones to achieve balanced growth. "The Capital has relationships with seven of the top 10 global investment banks with the revenues from most of these being in the range of $one million to $five million. In the next three to five years we hope to expand this range to $five million-$20 million," he added.