India to be Capgemini's largest centre

Capgemini, the information technology services and consulting major, plans to add 6,000 people in India over the next 12 months, which will make this the company's largest global centre, with over 26,000 employees. The company has a little over 20,000 employees at its headquarters in Paris.

The move is also expected to help the company increase its offshore leverage from 29 per cent currently to around 40 per cent in the next three years. This will help it reduce costs further.

"We are seeing good traction in verticals like banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), public sector, lifescience and BPO segments. Offshoring was already happening among the large corporates in Europe; it was the medium-sized firms that were taking time to make this shift," Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer (Financial Services), Capgemini India & Asia Pacific, told Business Standard.

Parekh added that the work at its centre in Chennai was in progress. "The centre, when completed, will have capacity of 20,000. The first phase of the centre will be ready by February-March 2010 and we will have close to 600 people working from there," he added.

The company has already announced hiring of 1,000 people for the centre of excellence being set up for its business information management unit (BIM). Paul Nannetti, general manager, Capgemini's Global BIM Service Line, said: "This is a significant shift on our part. By doing this, we are placing India at the centre of gravity. This also means clients are ready to shift their core process, like business intelligence, offshore."

Other than BIM, the company has selected four other growth potential areas. These four offerings are testing, application development and maintenance, infostructure transformation services and smart-X, smart metering and smart grids.

"It is not that we are not present in these sectors, but we are now gearing our focus in this," said Parekh. For instance, testing already has 5,000 people working for the company. BIM globally has 7,000 consultants. Of the new work the company gets, close to 25-30 per cent is offshored.

Parekh also said unlike what is being said about outsourcing deals in Britain, the company has seen good growth in the region. The UK, he says, is one of the strongest markets for the company for offshoring.

The company is also gearing up its India business focus. It's been just over a year that Capgemini entered the Indian market with its consulting services and slowly introduced its other offerings.