America's Fiserv to invest $10m in India BPO unit

America's Fiserv to invest $10m in India BPO unit

NEW DELHI: US-based outsourcing (BPO) and IT firm Fiserv, which provides services to financial and health care industries, has decided to enter India.

The $3.4 billion revenue company will invest around $10 million, to begin with. The investment will go into a 1,00,000 sq feet facility in Noida, and Fiserv will hire 1,000 people by April 1.

Fiserv Global Services (FGS) has appointed Arun Maheshwari (former CEO of CSC India) as group president, who said that Fiserv India would service some of FGS' 16,000 customers as well as Indian clients.

"The facility is getting ready and will be available in next three months. We are currently working out of a smaller facility," he said.

Maheshwari said Fiserv has started recruitments. He said the company would focus on both BPO and IT sectors, and it would spread to other Indian cities in 2007.

The company also sees India market as a big opportunity. "Feserv India would be an independent profit centre," Maheshwari said. Fiserv, which has acquired 130 companies in the last 20 years, is also looking at acquisitions in India.

"We want to replicate the strategy of acquisitions in India too. We are talking to bankers and acquisitions can be in IT or BPO side," he said. Maheshwari said Fiserv could acquire company with 300 to 3,000 people.

The company already outsources some of its work to Indian vendors. "We can get some of that and we will convince the senior management to send more work to the Indian unit," he said.