Anand Achuthan, Tech Mahindra executive director, (center) leads the opening of the Cebu facility at the eBloc at the Cebu IT Park. With him during yesterday’s opening are Sujit Baksi, chief executive for business services group (left), and Edwin Paul, service delivery leader.
(CDN Photo/Tonee Despojo)
Information technology (IT) services provider Tech Mahindra yesterday opened a second facility here as it aims to ramp up its Cebu workforce to 1,000 by the end of this year.
Sujit Baksi, Tech Mahindra chief executive for Business Services Groups, said the second facility at eBloc 3 in the Cebu IT Park will have a total of 500 seats for voice and non-voice services.
The company has 300 seats and 700 employees at its first site, established in 2011 at JEZA Building along Gen. Maxilom Ave. in the uptown area. Two other centers in Manila operate 2,500 seats.
Baksi said the Philippines accounts for about 40 percent of their footprint outside India. Tech Mahindra is part of the Mahindra Group from India which has operations in various sectors across 100 countries.
“We expect fast growth here. The Philippines is the fastest growing country for our BPO (business process outsourcing) business mainly because of the quality of manpower we have here, the efficiency and accuracy of delivery,” he said.
He said he sees a shift to more complex non-voice services from voice services in the country. He described the Filipinos to be highly trainable with a very supportive government that now recognizes the importance of the industry to the economy.
“I think the Philippines still has to come up in terms of the more complex non-voice service because unlike India and China, the industry here has not yet attracted highly educated talents to do complex processes like complex accounting,” he said.
Baksi said this will come in time. He noted that the financial and health insurance sectors have set up operations here starting with the basic non-voice services.
Tech Mahindra has a global footprint of 100,000. The BPO business accounts for 22,000 people while the IT group has 78,000 people, he said.
Of the 22,000 in the BPO business, about 6,000 are outside of India including Malaysia, China, Northern Island, USA and the Philippines.
At their eBloc 3 facility, Baksi said about 300 agents are undergoing training. All 500 seats are expected to be filled by June, he added.
“We project to reach about 1,000 employees here in Cebu by yearend including the part-time employees that we hire for our seasonal jobs,” he said.
The Cebu sites provide IT services to a large telecommunications company, retail companies, financial companies and a packaging company.
Baksi said they have invested on more technology to be able to offer more channels of delivery aside from voice like text, technical support, service desk and other non-complex back office work.
The outsourcing company started operating in the Philippines in 2007.
“Indian companies have been eyeing the Philippines because it is growing fast compared to other countries like India and China,” chief executive director CP Gurnani said.
He said non-voice services are being offered by their Malaysia site, but will soon be developed here. /with Silliman Intern Andrea D. Lim
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
