BPO pours $15M into building

By Debra Magallon-Estero

A BUSINESS process outsourcing (BPO) company is investing $15 million in the construction of its first company-owned building in Cebu, to show its intention to grow its business in the country.

The Aegis PeopleSupport building, located at the Asiatown IT Park, will also increase the company’s employee base in Cebu from 2,500 to 5,000.

“We want to create more jobs and grow the (domestic) market here,” Aegis chief operating officer for India and the Philippines Rajiv Ahuja said yesterday on the sidelines of the project’s groundbreaking ceremony.

He said that it is the company’s policy to build and operate its own building in every area it operates in. In Cebu, Aegis PeopleSupport plans to build two.

The first phase of construction, set to be completed in 18 months, involves an 11-story building with a gross floor area of 13,900 square meters. It will occupy a land area of 2,200 square meters.

Second

The second phase, whose construction date is yet to be set, will involve a 15-story building covering a total floor area of 12,700 square meters.

Aside from offices, the first building will house parking spaces, retail establishments at the ground floor, an employee food court, a multi-purpose function area and training rooms at the mezzanine.

Both buildings will be registered with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) as information technology (IT) facilities.

Aegis has a workforce of 32,000 agents with multilingual capabilities in 32 locations worldwide. The company serves more than 60 Fortune 1000 companies in the areas of acquisition, customer care, technical support, receivables management, health and transaction processing.

Ninety percent of Aegis Philippines client portfolio is in the United States. But at the end of this year, 200 to 400 members of the company’s work force will service domestic clients.

In India, Ahuja said, 19,000 employees out of Aegis’ 23,000 workers cater to domestic companies.

Among the industries the company is considering for its domestic account are banking and financial services, technical support, telecommunications, travel and hospitality, healthcare and media, and publicity.

Aside from the domestic client base, Ahuja said the company is also preparing for new accounts after it has observed a 30-percent increase in the number of inquiries about its services.

“The BPO industry is pretty much recession-proof,” he said. He added the inquiries come from companies from different industry sectors.

Although the BPO industry in India is bigger than the Philippines’, Ahuja said Filipinos have distinct advantages that will help the country grow. These include the Filipinos’ ability to adopt the American culture and their “extremely good” English speaking skills.

Filipinos are also disciplined workers, he said.

In the next two years, Aegis is looking at increasing its workforce in the Philippines from 8,000 to 15,000.