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Neha Kapoor

MUMBAI, May 16

PATNI Ltd, the software company belonging to the Patni Group, plans to foray into the business process outsourcing (BPO) space within six months.

The company is expected to make a public announcement regarding the exact nature of this operation shortly, according to Mr Mrinal Sattawala, Senior Vice-President, Patni Ltd. ``We intend to use the BPO platform to complement the application/product development support services that we currently provide our clients. Hence, our BPO operations would be back-office centric as compared to a call centre business model that is dominant today,'' said Mr Sattawala.

The BPO services would revolve around key verticals such as financial services, insurance and manufacturing that Patni currently focuses on, Mr Sattawala said. He, however, did not divulge the exact scale of operations or the investment that the company would be making in this space.

The company, in which GE Capital holds around nine per cent, expects its traditional software business to record a 25 per growth in revenues this financial year i.e. Jan-Dec 2002. It also planned to augment its current employee strength of 4,900 to 6,500 this year including administrative as well as technical personnel, Mr Sattawala said.

``In 2001, we grossed revenues of $142 million (around Rs 700 crore) which, in a difficult market, was a substantial growth of 40 per cent over the previous year. This growth was fuelled mainly by repeat business with existing clients, which accounted for almost 80 per cent of total business. This year too we are optimistic about growth and expect at least a 25-per cent topline growth,'' said Mr Sattawala.

``For the first quarter (Jan-Mar) of this year, we have registered revenues of $41.5 million, an 8.5 per cent growth compared to the same period last year,'' he said. Majority of its revenues came from the US market at 80 per cent, followed by UK and Europe at around seven per cent and Japan at six per cent, said Mr Sattawala.

The company's main operations include providing support for product development to clients, as well as enterprise application integration, e-business and embedded technology apart from remote infrastructure management that it entered last year. The company counts GE as its largest customer in a client base that includes others such as Guardian Life and Honeywell Group.

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Patni eyeing BPO space

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