WNS will hire more local hands

NEW YORK: WNS, which provides higher-end BPO services to American and European companies, is planning to boost capital expenditure at its delivery centres, primarily in India, Neeraj Bhargava, co-founder and group CEO of WNS Holdings Ltd, has said.

Bhargava offered a bullish revenue forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008, at the firm’s annual Investor Day at the New York Stock Exchange saying revenues were expected to be between $302 million and $307 million, representing a growth of 37.5 to 39.7%.

“At the end of March, we had nearly 15,000 people working in our 11 delivery centres. If you look at our forecast for the revenue guidance, we are citing 37.5 to 39.7% growth. Obviously, that will come with additional hiring of people,” Bhargave told DNA Money.

“We won’t disclose exactly how many people we plan to hire but you can safely assume that with our business growing, we will need more people. We are looking at a capital investment of over $36 million next year,” he added.

“We are prominent in Mumbai, Pune and Gurgaon and will expand at these three locations along with a few new regions.”

WNS has grown rapidly by shunning call centre contracts and concentrating instead on better-paying business process outsourcing deals. Bhargava said that WNS was focused on providing more “core services” for insurance and travel companies.

“We are running 100% of a big travel company’s customer service operations, we are running 100% of their transaction operations; we also have high-end marketing analysts working on a variety of marketing and strategic issues for them. We are seen as a true strategic partner there.”

Margins for call centre work are in the low double-digits, but they can top 30% for higher-end tasks, according to Nasscom.