Tag Archives: India

Infosys BPO buys Australia-based Portland Group for AUD 37 mn

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Bangalore:

Infosys BPO, the back office subsidiary of Infosys, has acquired Australia-based sourcing and category management services firm Portland Group. The A$37-million all-cash deal is expected to be completed by early January 2012.

According to Infosys, which has often been criticised by analysts and industry watchers for not being aggressive on acquisitions despite sitting on almost $4 billion of cash, the deal will help it establish presence in the Australian market with more offerings in the value-added segment

“The deal will essentially enable us to have a reach into the Australian market. It will enhance our sourcing and procurement capabilities. Infosys’ focus has always been on value-added services and this will add to it,” Swamithan D, CEO and MD of Infosys BPO, told ET.

Portland Group has over 100 employees with a reported revenue of approximately A$31.3 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011. “Portland Group has over 100 procurement specialists with domain expertise and some 40-odd clients. None of them is our clients as of now. The deal will certainly help us intensify our service offerings and take sourcing and procurement functions to a higher level,” he added.

The acquisition is expected to start contributing to Infosys revenue by next quarter. The country’s second-largest IT services firm is seeing a greater role for its BPO business as it transforms itself from an IT services firm to a business solutions firm. According to the company’s executive co-chairman, S Gopalakrishnan, BPO is now leading the sales in many of its new wins where earlier it would have been bundled along with IT services.

Infosys’ BPO business is set to hit the $500-million-mark in revenue this year. “For Infosys, only 7% of business comes from BPO services. But I see that as an opportunity. Traditionally you would have thought that BPO comes later.

But now BPO is leading the sale and everything else gets pooled to BPO,” Gopalakrishnan told ET in an interview last month. According to him, BPO is also gaining prominence as IT services firms move to platforms which have some amount of business processes embedded in them.

Since October, the company has added incentives to its technology sales team if they are able to sell the BPO business as well. So far Infosys’ technology sales team was only responsible for selling IT services.

The last acquisition that Infosys made was also in the BPO business. In 2009, it acquired the US-based McGamish Systems to expand its presence in the insurance and financial services sector. The company signed a $250-million deal with Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands and acquired three shared service centres located in India, Poland and Thailand from Philips in 2007.

Portland Group CEO Galvin Solsky said Infosys will provide Portland’s clients with a highly compelling proposition that does not currently exist in the Australian market. “It (the deal) will allow us to offer our clients a truly integrated and globally competitive solution to deliver procurement benefits in the most effective and efficient way possible,” he said in a press statement. Infosys closed down 0.25% at Rs 2,667.35 on the BSE on Tuesday.

source: http://www.articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/ The Economic Times / Home> Tech> ITeS / ET Bureau / December 21st, 2011

Toil to Beat Bangalore, Obama tell US Children

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US President Barack Obama has exhorted American students to toil harder at school, and has told them that their success would determine the country’s leadership in a world where children in Bangalore and Beijing were raring to race ahead.

Obama has repeatedly said that American schools would have to ensure that they continue producing leagues of top professionals, so that the American hegemony in human resource continues in this century.

“At a time when other countries are competing with us like never before, when students around the world in Beijing, China, or Bangalore, India, are working harder than ever, and doing better than ever, your success in school is not just going to determine your success, it’s going to determine America’s success in the 21st century,” Obama said. “The farther you go in school, the farther you’re going to go in life,” he told students at a school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Last year, while announcing an end of tax incentives to US companies which created jobs overseas, Obama had launched the ‘Say no to Bangalore and yes to Buffalo,’ slogan. Since then, he has time and again brought up the competition presented by developing countries like China and India while asking Americans to rise to the challenge to keep the American supremacy alive.

“You’ve got an obligation to yourselves, and America has an obligation to you, to make sure you’re getting the best education possible,” Obama said in his latest remarks.

He said preparing the students for success in classroom, college, and career would also require an enormous collective effort from teachers, principals as well as the administration.

Asking students to work harder than everybody else and seek out new challenges, he said his call was directed at all Americans alike. “… I’m not just speaking to all of you, I’m speaking to kids all across the country.”

 

source: http://www.emirates247.com / By Agencies / Published Thursday, September 16th, 2010