Progeon, the business process outsourcing arm of Infosys Technologies, has decided to set up a new facility at the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) being developed up by Mahindra & Mahindra in Jaipur. Today in Sify Finance

The company, listed among 19 Indian companies in the top 100 upcoming private technology companies in Asia by US magazine Red Herring, has zeroed in on the SEZ for its new facility, M&M Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Anand Mahindra said here yesterday after announcing plans for the new SEZ.

"Progeon has decided to enter our SEZ and its facility would be set up over a 1,00,000 sq feet area," Mahindra said.

Progeon has a fully secured and networked capacity of 3,444 seats spread over 3 cities on more than 300,000 square feet. Headquartered at the Infosys campus in Bangalore, Progeon has a second center at Pune, which has been operational since early 2004. Progeon currently has more than 4,767employees.

The company is focused on providing BPO services in strategic segments. The segments currently being targeted are banking, security, insurance & healthcare, finance & accounts, knowledge services, and telecom.

Progeon defines these segments as strategic because of the leverage they offer - with each client engagement Progeon is better equipped to deliver through deeper domain expertise. ‘Strategic customers’ are those with whom the company can build long-term relationships.

This makes the point of entry less important since Progeon is focused on providing end-to-end solutions to such clients. The company currently has 19 clients in these focused areas.

The company specialises in end-to-end transaction processing and envisages voice related work as an important component of a complete solution, although not the dominant aspect. Common governance, relationship pattern and risk models, and access to low-cost pools of labor globally allow clients to make the best use of people and end-to-end technology.

Progeon has also been very successful in being able to provide year-on-year productivity and quality improvements to clients. Progeon achieves this through efficient process management, stringent quality focus through techniques like six-sigma methodology etc., and through effective use of technology to achieve greater process optimisation.

Another important aspect of Progeon's operations is its the maturity of its processes derived through greater domain expertise. A granular understanding of business processes as well as the control environment within which they are executed enables Progeon to adopt a highly structured approach towards offshoring, resulting in a highly predictable experience for its clients.

Progeon has also established a center in Eastern Europe in Brno, Czech Republic, as part of its plans of providing its clients with access to cost-effective talent pools in multiple geographies. Progeon's Czech centre serves clients in 11 languages.

The SEZ, development of which will entail investments of about Rs 1,100 crore in the first phase, will be executed by a special purpose vehicle, Mahindra World City Jaipur Ltd. This is a joint venture between Rajasthan State Industrial Development & Investment Corporation and Mahindra-Gesco Developers Ltd. | Read more Finance news. |

M&M's Arun Nanda said they expect investments of about $2 billion to flow into the SEZ once it was complete.

"We are looking to attract companies from IT and IT-enabled services, light engineering, IT hardware, auto components and apparel industry," he said pointing out that the companies get a ready infrastructure and tax benefits by setting up base in the SEZ. M&M, which has already developed a SEZ in Chennai in partnership with the Tamil Nadu government, plans to set up two more -- one each in eastern and western India.

Source : Sify Finance