HCL plans to buy four captive BPOs

Mumbai: HCL Technologies has plans to acquire three or four captive BPOs in the banking and financial services space in the Asia-Pacific region, a senior official with the company said.

The company is in the early stages of negotiations, said Mr Premkumar S., Corporate Vice-President, HCL Technologies, said.

The company also has plans to start an ‘enterprise transformation service’, which will involve working on the customers’ entire range of business processes, said Mr Vineet Nayar, Chief Executive Officer, HCL. “It is not just about IT cost reduction. It is about reducing the customers’ production cycle time. There is a significant emphasis on reducing cost (these days),” said Mr Nayar.

“IT constitutes just 3 to 10 per cent of costs. All our existing clients are under cost pressure. We will help our clients not only in IT transformation, but also in complete business transformation,” he said. The new business will be on gain-share basis, he said.

The company expects mark-to-market accounting losses due to the rupee’s depreciation against the dollar. “We have an element of loss in this quarter due to mark-to-market accounting,” said Mr Anil Chanana, Executive Vice-President (Finance). The exact loss would depend upon the exchange rate at the end of the quarter, he said.

The company had hedged itself for $1.9 billion around end-June. HCL Tech had minimum exposure to Lehman Brothers, which has filed for bankruptcy, and no exposure to Merrill Lynch, which is being bought over by Bank of America, said Mr Vineet Nayar. The company does not expect the financial troubles of these firms to impact its business.