Outsourcing story keeps getting bigger

Economic Times
Driven by strong demand conditions, new customer additions, big deal wins and employee additions, domestic software companies are set on a high growth path over the remaining three quarters of FY07. Analysts say that a surge in future demand can be gauged from the fact that many big companies, including Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Fidelity, Wells Fargo and GE are looking at outsourcing significant parts of their software development work to Indian software firms. Already in the first quarter, Indian IT vendors both mid and large sized have had significant customer wins and have added 37% more employees on an average year-on-year to meet this robust demand. In the June ‘06 quarter, TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, Satyam and Patni together added 253 new clients. The revenue per active customer increased from Rs 15.3 crore in September ‘05 to Rs 18.6 crore in June ‘06. There has also been a surge in offshoring ERP projects. more...

BA's former Indian offshore unit floats on NYSE

Silicon.com
The former Indian offshore outsourcing unit of British Airways (BA) has raised more than $255m after completing its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). WNS floated at $20 per share on its opening day on the NYSE on 26 July, with shares reaching a high of $25 earlier this week and giving the company a market capitalisation of almost $1bn. The 12.7 million shares offered represent just over 28 per cent of the company. WNS, which reported $202.6m in revenue for the last year, was originally set up by BA as a wholly owned captive business process outsourcing (BPO) division in Mumbai in 1996 to support the airline's back-office operations. The company started offering services to other airlines in 1999 and became independent, with venture capital funds giving private equity firm Warburg Pincus a majority stake in WNS in 2002. more...