Captive Call/Contact centers
A company which plans to send jobs to India has two options – either do it on its own (captive centre) or outsource it to the companies in India which have the relevant skills. You could consider combining the two models too.
Captive centers are those centers that are operated for servicing their own clients and not third party clients.
Few questions that you need to dwell upon before deciding on starting your own centre are:
- Is it a one one-off outsourcing assignment or a long term assignment?
- How much flexibility do you want for future downsizing or expansion?
- Are you using any proprietary technologies? If so, captive could be better.
- Do you want to control the day to day operation?
- Is it better to build a captive centre from scratch or acquire one?
Few of the captive centres in India are,
- 3Com in New Delhi
- Accenture in Bangalore. Currently has a 5,000 seater BPO facility [not sure how many employees] supporting internal HR needs.
- American Express in
- RBS Business Services Pvt. Ltd (earlier ABN Amro Central Enterprise Services -ACES) in Gugaon and Delhi with 2,000+ employees. Handles credit risk management, authorization of payments.
- AOL Online Member Services India (P) Ltd in Bangalore (Staff strength: 1500). The center, a wholly in-bound server centre with 24/7 operations providing customer acquisition and support services out of Bangalore for AOL members globally, handled 10 million member calls in the last one year (till June 2003).
- Bank Of America – has formed a 100% subsdiary Continuum Solutions [May 2004]. As of June 2005 it has 1,000 employees in Hyderabad which started in Mid-2004. A research outsourcing unit is being setup in Mumbai in June 2005 which will accomodate 500 employees.
- British Airways has 2,400+ employees who manage passenger accounting, error handling and frequent flier miles tracking for BA and other airlines.
- Caterpillar Commercial Private Ltd: Based in Bangalore, will provide various IT-enabled services such as data processing supply chain management, application software and web development to Caterpillar Inc and its various subsidiaries world-wide.
- Citibank employs 2,500+ people in Mumbai and Chennai. They handle finance and processing of loans.
- Continuum Solutions: The captive unit of Bank of America will start its operations in Hyderabad in Q2 2004.
- Countrywide Financial Corporation (CFC): The US-based mortgage banking firm has set up a captive BPO outfit, with a capacity of about 250-300 seats in Mumbai.
- DELL International Services has about 8000 employees in Bangalore(2), Chandigarh and Hyderabad. Supports PC customers worldwide.
- D-Link: has commissioned a sophisticated global tech support centre in Mumbai to provide voice-based technical support for its products to English speaking D-Link overseas business units worldwide. The centre has a capacity of 100 seats and is presently manned by a team of 50 engineers (as of Sept 15, 2003).
- Deutsche Network Services Pvt Ltd (dNETS), a division of Deutsche Bank, employs 50+ in Bangalore.
- Fidelity Investments in Gurgaon.
- GE Capital Service in Bangalore, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkota. GE has 16,000+ employees who provide network support and risk management to 30+ GE businesses globally.
- Global e:Busines Pvt. Ltd, founded in 2000, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard Europe BV with its headquarters in Bangalore.
- Hewlett Packard (HP) in Bangalore, Chennai.
- HSBC Electronic Data Processing India (HDPI) in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Vizag. It has over 8,000 employees.
- JP Morgan: In 2003 the US bank major set up captive units in MindSpace (Malad) and Technolopolis Knowledge Park (Andheri), Mumbai. As of September 2004 they had employed about 2,000. The unit undertakes research activities and transaction processing for investment banking, financial services and investment management. The second unit will be setup in Bangalore by end of 2004.
- Lloyds TSB: Leading British bank has its BPO in Bangalore, will start in Hyderabad soon.
- Morgan Stanley in Mumbai. To employ about 1600, investment bank’s backed to be handled from Mumbai.
- Scope International: A wholly-owned BPO subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, started operations only in 2002 and already employs over 3,000 people. Pre-tax profit in 2003 was $196m and $600m in 2004 (estimate).
- Prudential Process Management Services (UK) in Mumbai employed about 850 people [as of Oct 2003], 1800 [as of July 2007].
- Sitel – in Mumbai. Formed as a joint venture with Tata International.
- Visual Graphics Computing Services India – in Chennai and Trivandrum is a wholly-owned subsidiary of McKinsey & Company. Visual Graphics is engaged in the development and application of graphics software and special templates for the production of visual communication material like graphics, charts, exhibits, overhead transparencies, onscreen animated presentations, and multimedia products for McKinsey’s global offices.
They will work on payment and cash management processing.
provides transaction support for operations in UK, Euope and Australia.