— PHOTO: Bijoy Ghosh

OFFSHORE STRATEGY: Stephen Rohleder (left), COO, Accenture, with Harsh Manglik, Chairman and Managing Director, Accenture India, addressing a press conference in Chennai on Friday.

CHENNAI: Accenture, a global management consulting, technology and outsourcing company, plans to increase its headcount in India to 35,000 from 27,000 this year.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Steve Rohleder, Chief Operating Officer, said the company would be expanding its operations in Chennai by adding another facility, with a seating capacity for 3,000 people, near its existing facility at Sholinganallur, to support its growth plans.

The company had ramped up its headcount in Chennai to over 3,000 from 1,100 over the past 12 months.

Accenture's Global Delivery Network consists of over 44 delivery centres, including ten in India. The Chennai operation, part of the network, will continue to focus on providing technology and business process outsourcing services to its global clients.

Key BPO space

Mr. Rohleder said India was a key country for Accenture overall, a critical element in its Global Delivery Network, in particular, and integral to the company's growth strategy. Its Global Delivery Network also included the largest number of people in the BPO space, with more than 12,000 BPO professionals working in delivery centres, providing high-value capabilities in a variety of horizontal services, including finance and accounting, HR and procurement, as well as in specific industries like banking, insurance and healthcare. "Overall, we expect to have 65,000 people in our Global Delivery Network by the end of this (fiscal) year, with about half of them in India," he said.

Mr. Rohleder said Indian operations formed the foundation for Accenture's global offshore strategy. Last month, he said, Accenture announced its intention to make its Indian operations the largest for the company in the world.

He said the company had 18 per cent attrition rate and it was putting in place systems to deal with it, including retaining high performers by assessing the pay scales across all the 48 geographies of the company.

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