Quatrro BPO eyes China outsourcing market

Quatrro BPO, promoted by Raman Roy, has lined up its strategy to tap into the Asian markets. The company, which started its China operations in Shanghai a month ago, now expected increased outsourcing work from China with the Olympics due later this year. Roy estimates deals worth around $80 million. The company is planning 1,500-seat unit that would act as a subsidiary.

Quatrro is also exploring ways to tap the domestic market and plans to start operations in India to cater to this market.

The company, however, refused to give out specific details about its China plans and only said that it was working out its strategy to tap the Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) market that would include voice and non-voice-based help-desk services.

The China outsourcing market has been gaining ground with demand growing from the domestic market growing, besides Japanese companies increasingly outsourcing customer support and help desk work to Chinese companies because of similarities in language and culture. "Considering the slowdown and a possible recession in the US, Indian IT and BPO companies should start looking at opportunities in their neighbourhood given that these are would be the economies of the future," said Edge Zarrella, Global Partner-in-Charge of IT advisory KPMG.

Quatrro also has operations in Singapore and Sri Lanka through partnerships with local BPO companies. It runs a 1,400-employee organisation in Gurgaon. In an effort to ramp up, it recently acquired Chennai-based Scope eKnowledge, a knowledge process outsourcing company with 500 people. It also bought the BPO arm of Flextronics bringing in 120 people into its fold for work in technology back-end services.

Quatrro has a funding of $100 million, which includes a $90 million investment from Olympus Capital and other venture capitalists, and an additional funding taking the total investment in the company to $200 million. Roy also founded Spectramind, a BPO that he sold to Wipro for $83 million.