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Vishwanath Kulkarni

Bangalore , March 18

I-FLEX Solutions plans to set up a development centre for its services business in Eastern Europe. The company is yet to finalise the location for the centre, said Mr V. Shankar, Executive Vice-President and head of PrimeSourcing, the services division of i-flex. He added the facility would accommodate a couple of hundred developers.

The facility, likely to be operational some time in the next financial year, would be the third overseas development centre for PrimeSourcing. i-flex at present has a development-cum-disaster recovery centre in Singapore and a near-shore centre in the US, dedicated for its services business.

The proposed centre in Eastern Europe is expected to help the company to overcome bottlenecks such as visa restrictions among others even as PrimeSourcing gears up for an aggressive growth, Mr Shankar said.

"We decided on this region as cost is not a differentiating factor between India and Eastern Europe when compared to the US. Moreover, we plan to tap the local skill base through this centre," he added.

A majority of the employees for the development centre would be hired from the local populace, Mr Shankar said, adding the company would initially relocate some of its mid-level managers. PrimeSourcing at present has an employee headcount of about 2,500 drawn from some 17 nationalities.

i-flex's services business offers customised application development, reengineering and maintenance, consultancy, testing and production support and system integration services through various on-site/offshore delivery models. The services business, which is growing at around 70 per cent on an annualised basis, accounts for 39 per cent of the company's total revenues.

Recently, i-flex appointed ComputerLand SA as a privileged partner in Poland, Central and Eastern Europe for sales and implementation of its flagship core-banking product suite Flexcube in 16 countries including Russia, Baltic Republic and Ukraine. In December last year, the company had announced its plans to set up a product development facility in Moscow.

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