The Hindu Business Line : Sundaram BPO arm stepping into tier-2 cities

On expansion mode: Mr T.T. Srinivasaraghavan (left), Managing Director, Sundaram Finance, and Mr P.S. Raghavan, Executive Director, Sundaram Business Services, at a press conference in Chennai on Monday.

Our Bureau

Chennai, Jan. 28

Sundaram Business Services, the Chennai-based BPO arm of Sundaram Finance, is expanding into tier-2 cities of Tamil Nadu. It plans to invest Rs 10 crore in setting up BPO facilities in Madurai and in Tiruchi.

The Madurai facility will go live on February 11 with around 100 employees and the Tiruchi facility is to begin operations before the year-end, Mr T. T. Srinivasaraghavan, Managing Director, Sundaram Finance, told newspersons.

SBS plans to hire around 500 employees for its Madurai facility over the next 12 months. In the first phase, it will provide policy administration services for a leading Mumbai-based life insurance customer from Madurai. Some of the processes will be migrated from the company’s Chennai centre to Madurai not only for Indian clients, but also for its international customers, he said.

Mr P.S. Raghavan, Executive Director, SBS, said there was no major cost-saving for the company by setting up a facility in tier-2 cities. It is only the abundant availability of manpower that makes recruitment of employees easier. Madurai has a good public transportation system and a well-developed intra and inter-State bus and railway systems, making it easy to transport employees.

SBS focuses on ‘non-voice’ support services. It offerings accounting services, credit processing, deposit processing, employee administration, and insurance related processing services to clients.

For fiscal ending March 2008, SBS is likely to report revenue of Rs 30 crore compared with Rs 17 crore in the previous year. In July 2007, it picked up a majority stake in the Chennai-based Professional Management Consultancy, a BPO company that doubled its headcount to over 1,600, Mr Raghavan said.