Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd, India's top mobile services firm, said on Monday it aimed to improve customer service by outsourcing its call centre work to four firms in a $230 million, multi-year contract. Bharti said its contract with back-office firms Hinduja TMT Ltd, IBM Daksh Ltd, MphasiS Ltd and TeleTech Services would also create economies of scale and reduce capital expenditure over the medium term.
Bharti shares ended 0.75 percent lower at 290.65 rupees as the main index fell 1.9 percent.
Over the past two years Bharti, 30.8 percent owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, has outsourced network building and maintenance and IT infrastructure to firms such as Sweden's Ericsson and IBM to drive down costs.
"The whole deal should be worth over 10 billion rupees ($230 million) over the next four to five years," Akhil Gupta, joint managing director at Bharti, said.
While a growing tribe of big companies such as General Electric are relying more on India's $5.2 billion back-office outsourcing industry, local firms have so far either managed services on their own or outsourced only small chunks.
But Manoj Kohli, president for Bharti's mobility business, said it was unable to attract the best people for its own contact centres because they were not a part of Bharti's core business.
And with rapid growth in subscriber numbers, New Delhi-based Bharti also needed more support to cope with all the queries.
Bharti, which competes with carriers such as Reliance Infocomm and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, reported a 60 percent on year jump in mobile users to 12.2 million at the end of June.
Under the agreement, the back-office firms will set up units around India, with IBM Daksh setting up three, Hinduja TMT and Mphasis two each and TeleTech one.