Aussie cos look to India

NT Bureau
Chennai, June 23:

Reeling under acute skill shortage, Australian companies are increa-singly looking to India for outsourcing a host of financial operations.

In the past year, over 12 Aussie firms have set up outsourcing centres in India � Optus has moved 150 jobs to Bangalore; Sales Force, Australia's largest call centre, has tied up with Hero group's call centre, Hero ITeS in Gurgaon; IPP Technol-ogies Pty Ltd, a Sydney-based consultants has a contract with Logica CMG for processing electoral data for New South Wales government.

A number of SMEs in Australia are also in the fray. Robertson & Marks in New South Wales is now in the process of setting up a facility in Chennai for CAD related work.

With over 4,000 call centres and 2 lakh employees, Australia has the largest call centres in the world. But today, battered by inadequate staff and cost escalation, many of them are not able to function effectively and are looking towards India as outsourcing destination for profitable operations.

Indo-Australian Chamber of Commerce (IACC), the apex body for nurturing trade between the two countries, in association with the Victorian Emplo-yers' Chamber of Comm-erce and Industry (VECCI) and the Employer's Feder-ation in Melbourne, is drawing up plans to attract a number of call centres and BPO operations in India. 'Our objective is to bring in at least 1 per cent of Australia's call centres, that is, 40 of them to India this year. That is an achievable goal,' says C Sarat Chandran, director, IACC.

With a view to create awareness on these oppo-rtunities among Indian call centres and BPO vendors, the IACC is organising a one-day event - Workshop on Outsourcing Opportu-nities from Australia - today. The workshop would have presentations by several Australian and Indian companies on outsourcing operations.