Dell to open fourth call centre in India

The company also plans to double the size of its India-based product development team during the next two years, the statement said.

The contact centre in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of Delhi, is expected to add up to 1,000 workers to Dell’s total Indian employment of 10,000 by the end of 2006.

India will be the only country in Dell’s 30-site customer contact network that supports customers in all geographic regions.

“Our teams in India have integrated well with Dell’s global operations,” Rollins said in a statement.

India’s booming information technology and call centre industry directly employs a million people, and indirectly about three times that number in jobs ranging widely from transport and security to catering and housekeeping.

A report by consultancy firm McKinsey in December forecast India’s business services and information technology exports would surge by more than 25 per cent a year and reach $60 billion by 2010.

Heavy demand for outsourcing of services such as payroll processing and insurance claims has helped the industry grow at a compounded annual rate of 56 per cent since 2000.

Analysts say companies like Dell save 40-50 per cent on costs by outsourcing work to India, which has one of the world’s largest English speaking IT pools. Close to 120,000 trained IT professionals and 3 million other graduates are added each year to the workforce.

Earlier Reuters had reported Dell would be setting up a fourth call centre, quoting an unnamed source close to the plans.