The Hindu : Business : Sutherland makes foray into Kerala

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 01, 2006

Business

Business

Sutherland makes foray into Kerala

K. Venkiteswaran

Kalamasserry campus can house 3,000 professionals

— PHOTO: Special arrangement

NICHE SERVICES: Industries Minister V K Ebrahim Kunju (right) and chairman and CEO of Sutherland Global Services exchanging documents after signing an MoU in Kochi on Tuesday. IT Secretary P H Kurien looks on.

KOCHI: New York headquartered Sutherland Global Services on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kerala Infrastructure Development Corporation (KINFRA) to set up a state-of-the-art service delivery centre and training infrastructure on a 25-acre land at Kalamasserry. The upcoming campus is expected to house 3,000 professionals over the next three years in the first phase. It will involve an investment of Rs.120 crore.

Dilip Vellodi, Chairman and CEO, Sutherland Global Services, and the Industries Minister, V K Ebrahim Kunju, exchanged the signed documents at a function held here.

Proactive IT policy

Later addressing newspersons, Mr Vellodi said infrastructure, human resources and local support were among the factors that made the company choose Kochi for the campus.

Kerala had a pool of talent and nearly 23,000 engineering graduates were coming out of the campuses each year besides 100,000 graduates from other disciplines, he said. This, coupled with the proactive IT policy pursued by the government had made the company zero in on Kochi.

The company already had a presence in Chennai and Mumbai where it employed 6,500 and 1,500 employees, respectively. The company had a turnover of Rs.1,000 crore last year. This calendar year, it was expecting to clock Rs.1,400 crore.

To start with, the facility at Kalamasserry (which would be in the Special Economic Zone) would have 500 employees. This would go up to 3,000 in three years.

Eventually, Sutherland was expecting the Kochi facility to employee nearly 7,500 people. The facility would become operational in the third quarter of 2006.

According to a release, Sutherland is managing global client relationships in 14 locations across America, Canada, India and the Philippines.

The company has specialised in servicing prominent clients in banking and financial services, retail, information technology and communication industries. Its service portfolio includes process consulting, back office processing, technology support, customer care and account management services that address the entire "customer management lifecycle".

New client to drive Kochi unit

K. T. Jagannathan writes from Chennai:

Sutherland Global Services has signed up a new client in the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) space. Dilip Vellodi, Chairman and CEO, said in a telephone conversation with this correspondent that the new client was U.S.-based and a name to reckon with in the mortgage processing area. ``This is the first time that a mortgage processing company is outsourcing the entire business start-to-finish,'' he said. The nature of the job involved rule as well as judgment-based work, he said. Hence, it would be a high-value job. ``A part of it will be done in Kochi and the rest in Chennai,'' he added.

The upcoming Kochi campus would also be the centre of learning and leadership development facility for Sutherland in the entire Asia-Pacific region, Mr. Vellodi said.

He said Sutherland was also looking at the area outside Manila for a new facility in the Philippines. ``We will make an announcement in a month,'' he added. In mid-2005, Sutherland moved to the Philippines by setting up a facility in Manila with 500 seats. Sutherland would up the headcount in Manila by another 250. The company would soon make an entry into a new geographical location in the western hemisphere.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail