In the aftermath of the financial debacle in the US and Obama coming into power, India was dreading a backlash to her BPO sector. Obama had spoken of reining in outsourcing. The future of outsourcing in India or business process offshoring seemed slim indeed. However, 2 deals seem to be the harbinger of better days for Indian BPO.
Hyatt Corporation, one of the leading hotel chains has outsourced part of its financial and accounting services to India's leading BPO firm, Genpact. Genpact will start with nine hotels and then another six next year, followed by another 10 by 2010. Hyatt has signed a five year deal with Genpact to handle transaction services for part of its North American portfolio. This agreement is likely to be a trend-setter in the hospitality industry. Other global hospitality chains are quite likely to follow suit.
Also the global pharma giant, AstraZeneca has relegated all sorts of corporate services including human relations and finance to Infosys in Bangalore.
Tata Consultancy Services will soon be acquiring Citigroup's Indian back-office which will set it up revenue wise for another nine and half years. Fidelity, too is contemplating selling its captive units now based in Bangalore and Chennai. Over the years, GE, AIG, British Telecom and Unilever have either held their own captive units offshore or sold their back office operations to third parties. Even the Global Hyatt Corporation handles its accounting operations out of its shared service center in Mumbai and the leading hotel chain InterContinental Hotels operates a shared service center from Gurgaon.