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At least one section of industry isnt unhappy about the meltdown. The recession in the US is good news for the USD200 to 250 million legal process outsourcing LPO industry in India. While outsourcing of litigation work from the US and Europe has increased considerably, what is interesting is new forms of businesses like risk management, corporate compliance and know your customer KYC guidance work from a number of global corporates that have come up.
Companies like Pangea3, UnitedLex and CPA Global consider risk management and compliance a highgrowth area. UnitedLex risk team in India has seen a fivefold growth in the last six months. This is prompting them to hire at a time when other sectors are either freezing recruitments or are firing.
Regardless of the extent of recession, the regulatory environment will only become more strict so companies will need to comply,says the coCEO of Pangea3, Sanjay Kamlani. The LPO setup a new risk management and assurance group recently and this work is already 15 percent of Pangea3s overall business.
In todays scenario, companies want to know their risk profile so that they can disclose and be transparent in order to comply with regulations. We are working with a large heavymachinery manufacturer in the US to understand the risk associated with thousands of contracts they have with their vendors and suppliers,says UnitedLex chief solution provider Ajay Agrawal.
With more of this kind of work coming in, they have scaled up their operations and have gone from 98 to 330 employees in India.
CPA Globals India country head Bhaskar Bagchi says the industry has been growing at a very fast pace and the current economic situation is a catalyst for even faster growth as corporates start to put pressure on billing rates of international law firms.
Huge amount of work related to the recession is in the dialogue stage for us,he adds. The company is in the process of taking its headcount up from the current 450 to 1,200 by July. Mr Kamlani feels that as work on the USD700billion troubled asset relief programme TARP, with which the US Treasury department plans to purchase distressed assets, especially mortgagebacked securities from the countrys banks starts, Indian LPOs could see a could see a lot more business. Mr Agrawal says, This is a Y2K kind of an opportunity for us.
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