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| Integreon in the News |
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| India knowledge spas will create jobs, wealth |
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| Hindustan Times 27/03/2007 |
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THE 25,000-SQUARE-FOOT Mumbai campus of Integreon Managed Solutions Inc is a knowledge spa.
Behind locked doors, more than 1,000 people are busy doing everything from drafting contracts for US law firms to building regression models on stock returns for hedge funds.
Lokendra Tomar, who heads the knowledge-service practice at Integreon, used to be a fund manager. Matthew Banks, Tomar’s counterpart for legal services, was a lawyer in London.
“A Wall Street client,” Tomar says, “will typically
come with a simple requirement, such as getting graphs and charts done for presentations; soon, it would be buying analysis.”
“It's like a rich lady coming in to get her nails filed,” says Banks, in support of my spa analogy “If she likes your
work, she says, 'Can you cut my hair? Do you do Botox?”
“But the difference between us and a spa is that while some may view pedicure as a luxury, the work we do for investment banks and consulting and law firms is critical to their operations,” Banks says.
Software code-writing and back-office transaction processing are already well-established businesses in India. More recently, however, the country's lure as an outsourcing location has begun encompassing newer, more complex areas.
From fixed-income and equity analysis to litigation research and patent filing, India is fast becoming the world capital for services that require specialised knowledge.
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Software code-writing and back-office transaction processing are already well-established businesses
in India |
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Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc has begun hiring engineering graduates in India to create a pricing group for exotic derivatives. The team's work is focused on overseas markets.
At least four Indian billionaires — not to mention hundreds of millionaires — owe their riches entirely to outsourcing of computer software-related work.
The same pattern may now repeat in consulting, investment banking and other professional services as savvy entrepreneurs take advantage of the country's young, educated workforce to move an increasing number of tasks offshore.
In such an environment, it won't take very long for home-grown professional services companies to become world-class.
Already, about two out of five freshly minted law graduates in India are deciding to spend their early years of drudgery in a back-office company servicing international clients. The pay is better, and it takes two years to become a team leader. Such quick career progression doesn't happen in law firms.
Four years ago, knowledge-process outsourcing was barely a $1.2 billion-a-year, industry. It was dwarfed by call centres and back-office services. That gap is shrinking. Knowledge outsourcing may garner $17 billion in sales by 2010, according to Evalueserve, a business and financial research company with more than 1,400 analysts in India, China and Chile. India's share of these services may be 70 per cent.
When a third-party service provider is involved, clients usually ask for — and get — complete secrecy. A law firm once sent a UK private investigator to Mumbai to verify security practices before sending work to India.
“He was ex-Scotland Yard, and we thought he would pick holes in our systems,” says Joyce Thorne, head of training at Integreon. “Instead, he asked us to loosen up a little.”
Integreon was founded in 1999 in New York as a company preparing presentation materials for consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The lure of cheap labour costs brought it to India in 2000. |
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