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Dialog Axiata Group CEO and Director Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya (left) with Indian BPO giant Firstsource Solutions CEO and Managing Director Matthew Vallance and Executive Vice President and Head of Asia Business Unit Sanjay Venkataraman at the media briefing yesterday to announce the ground breaking joint venture. Pic by Daminda Harsha Perera.
Dialog dials Indian giant for BPO
Mobile telecom leader Dialog Axiata yesterday struck a crucial deal with India’s largest listed pure-play BPO firm Firstsource Solutions, making the latter a joint venture partner to tap for more local and global IT-Enabled Services (ITES).
The joint venture between Firstsource and Dialog will be consummated through the former investing US$ 1 million in acquiring a 74% share of Dialog Business Services, the recently-formed BPO venture of the Dialog Axiata Group. The joint venture company will hitherto be known as Firstsource-Dialog Solutions.
A subsidiary of ICICI Banking Group, the Mumbai-headquartered Firstsource set up in late 2001 employs over 26,000 BPO professionals globally and has operations and corporate presence in the United States of America, United Kingdom, India, Australia and the Philippines.
Its revenues in the 2010/11 financial year amounted to US$ 448 million, of which 36% came from solutions to healthcare sector, 28% to telecoms and media and 25% from banking, finance and insurance sectors. The global BPO market is estimated at $ 300 billion. Firstsource is also the first pure-play BPO in the world to have secured ISO 20000, 14001 and 27001 certifications.
The joint venture with Dialog is under Firstsource’s Asian Business Unit, which was started a few years ago to handle outsourcing business within India. This unit now generates 11% of the revenue.
In addition to serving local BPO clientele, Firstsource-Dialog Solutions will from its inception manage Dialog’s customer contact management operations across its mobile, fixed line, pay television and broadband businesses. At present Dialog’s BPO operations has a staff of 417.
Dialog Group Director and CEO Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya said that the joint venture signified a “meeting of minds and visions” between Sri Lanka’s largest and best in class contact centre/BPO operations and a globally leading industry specialist.
“Together we can aspire to become a regionally if not globally leading provider of IT-Enabled Services,” he said, adding that the joint venture would also buttress Sri Lanka’s overall IT ecosystem at a time when the Government had identified BPO as a thrust industry.
“With the entry of Firstsource as the major investor in this company and the infusion of global best practice in BPO operations, I am confident that Firstsource-Dialog Solutions will be a forerunner in Sri Lanka’s ITES and BPO space and will make a significant contribution towards furthering our country’s vision of being a leading ITES and BPO destination in the region,” Dr. Wijayasuriya stressed.
He said that Dialog foresaw BPO as a growth sector well in advance, as a result of which a world class contact centre was set up. The Dialog Enterprise Contact Management centre is the first and only facility in Sri Lanka to have been awarded International Industry Standard COPC-CSP 2000 certification and has been the recipient of several regional awards over the past years.
Firstsource Solutions CEO and Managing Director Matthew Vallance expressed delight over the joint venture, while also expressing confidence about its prospects both locally and globally.
“Our foray into Sri Lanka is an important step and a natural extension of our Asian business expansion. Sri Lanka is very attractive with bright opportunities and growth prospects,” he added.
“Given our strong footprint in the Indian market, this is a strategic decision to venture into the sub-continent to address the growing requirement for customer relationship management. We are delighted to partner with Dialog, which is the most preferred and respected brand in Sri Lanka and market leader in the telecom space,” he added.
Firstsource expects Lankan operations to add about 10% to its global revenues and the employee base will be increased in tandem with growth in new projects and customers. “We hope to deliver innovative and value-added business process management solutions to Sri Lankan clients from across multiple sectors,” the company said.
Firstsource provides what it described as ‘complete customer lifecycle solutions,’ with specific services being customer acquisition, customer services, transaction processing, collection and recoveries management and research and analytics.
Its clients include Fortune 500, FTSE 100 and Nifty 50 companies. Among its clients are five of the top healthcare/insurance companies in the US covering over 1,000 hospitals and eight of the top 10 general purpose credit card issuers, whilst in India it handles three of the leading mobile telcos and two of the top five private banks.
It has been among top 10 BPO companies adjudged by NASCOM for the past four years.
Dialog customer base tops 7 m
Dialog Axiata said yesterday its subscriber base is now in excess of seven million.
It finished the financial year on 31 December 2010 with a base of 6.8 million, achieving an over 55% industry revenue share. In 2010 Dialog’s postpaid and prepaid subscriber bases grew by 10% and 7% respectively compared to the previous year.
