Genpact Moves to Double U.S. Workforce in Next Few Years

SOURCE: Hindu Business Line

Offshore BPO major Genpact is planning a major ramp-up of its ‘onsite’ presence by doubling the US workforce to 2,000 professionals in the next 2-3 years. It currently has about 1,000 professionals in the US, across functions such as revenue cycle management, mortgage processing and loan modification.

“This whole area of business process management and driving improvement in business processes will demand more onsite presence, more domain-specific capabilities and very high-skilled re-engineering capabilities. I think we need to be closer to our customers when we do this kind of work. So we are very comfortable from a business model and demand perspective, with regard to our hiring plans in the US,” the Genpact President and CEO, Mr Pramod Bhasin, told Business Line.

Of the 1,000 professionals that the company currently employs in America, between 60-70 per cent are US citizens. That proportion is likely to remain even when the company scales up its numbers in the US. The NYSE-listed Genpact offers a broad spectrum of services to global clients such as AstraZeneca, eBay, Kimberly Clark and Walgreens. Genpact delivers its services from a network of centres in 13 countries including China, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Spain, South Africa and the US.

“There is another element about local hiring in the US which I think Indian companies need to be very conscious about. The unemployment level in the US has created a situation where you can hire good professionals, cheaper. So if you are going to get expertise and easily, I think we need to be a little more thoughtful about it and leverage it more. We would like to do that,” Mr Bhasin added.

For Genpact, a lot of work needs to be done at the front-end with clients, and hence the need for a strong onsite presence.

“A lot of re-engineering work, local helpdesk services, or work around our Smart Enterprise Processes has to be done onsite. Also, from an industry perspective, to be global players, we have to be nimble. Local hiring cannot be a scary issue, we have to embrace this strategy,” he pointed out.