Telstra to establish India captive centre with Infosys

Telstra, Australian telecom major, which has been outsourcing technology work to IT major Infosysfor nearly 10 years, is planning to set up a captive offshore centre in the Indian subcontinent. Infosys shall aid Telstra set up the captive centre with close to 200 people to begin with, as the telco is looking to work on emerging technology areas at minimal costs, people knowing about the development said.

A Telstra spokesperson said that Telstra has always been reviewing opportunities to find novel ways to enhance customer experience across all areas of their business. He added that no decision had been made as to whether an offshore captive centre would be part of that plan.

Analysts say that Telstra’s move to set up a captive centre in the country is in line with what they call a ‘second wave of captives’ in India.

In April, India’s software lobby, Nasscom – National Association of Software and Services Companies, said that global in-house centres, as it calls captives, had become an integral component of the fast-growing Indian information technology-business process management or IT-BPM sector and contribute a 20% share or 22 billion dollars in IT-BPM exports from India. The country has close to 1,050 captives employing around 790,000 professionals. Nasscom stated that India’s software and back office exports stood at 108 billion dollars in the last financial year.

Last week, Diageo – British liquor major said that it would hire 1,000 professionals at its newly opened captive back office in Bengaluru by the year 2017. Global in-house centres, or captives, operate in the country across all service lines – IT services, BPM, engineering services, and product development.

Nasscom said in April that banking, financial services and insurance, software, telecom, and semi-conductor are vital industry verticals with a growing focus in aerospace, health care, retail, and automotive.

Analysts say that global companies are struggling in their shift to adapt novel technologies and business models and seem at working on smaller models in closed units before they implement across organizations.

Such moves, a research analyst, could be the next operational strategy for enhancing the effectiveness of IT and business processes or could be part of future-proofing customers’ operations. He added that customers were facing tremendous disruption in their core industries with the novel-age companies and would like to have some technology capability in-house, specifically in newer areas like digital, which can help them navigate digital disruption. He further added that India’s traditional advantage of the huge base of English-speaking and higher-educated talent pool continued to be an attraction for the global firms. He concluded that India was becoming a hotspot for talent in novel technologies for the same reason the nation was popular for traditional IT services.