Indian call center to expand in U.S.

Date: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 6:12 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

It might seem surprising that an Indian company would set up a call
center in the United States where workers are far more expensive. Their
true motivation may be to transfer employees to the U.S. by using the
intra-company L-1 visa. To use the L-1 visa, companies must have an
office both in the U.S. and the foreign country where the aliens come
from.

Since the L-1 is cheaper, faster, and easier to obtain than the H-1B,
this company will be able to transfer unlimited numbers of aliens to
work in their U.S. office, and they won't even have to pay income or
social security on their foreign workers. I suspect that they don't
intend to hire many American citizens since they would cost
significantly more to employ.

http://rss.com.com/2100-1011-996211.html?type=pt&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news

Indian call center to expand in U.S.

By Ed Frauenheim
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 9, 2003, 12:36 PM PT

http://news.com.com/2100-1011-996211.html

Turning the tables on offshore trends, a call center company with
operations in India aims to acquire a U.S. facility.
iSeva, an Irving, Texas-based company that provides call center
services from a 500-seat facility in India, wants to snap up a
1,000-seat U.S. call center, said Gagan Sharma, the company's vice
president of sales and business development.

"We have had discussions along those lines," Sharma said Wednesday.
"Clients increasingly are looking for a blended solution--partly
onshore and partly offshore."

Sharma said iSeva plans to raise $5 million in funding for a second
500-seat facility in India and then another $10 million to be used for
a U.S. acquisition. iSeva has a list of potential acquisition targets,
Sharma said. But he declined to provide names on the list.

iSeva's interest in U.S. operations runs counter to the way call
centers, back-office business and information technology projects have
been shifting from the United States and Western Europe to India and
other low-cost areas of the world. Farming out IT work and other
business functions overseas is expected to increase, as corporations
try to cut costs and focus on their "core competencies." U.S. IT
companies recently have been rushing to beef up their overseas
operations to compete with offshore players such as India-based Infosys
Technologies and Wipro Technologies.

Earlier this year, Giga Information Group analyst Stephanie Moore
predicted Indian IT companies will expand into other low-cost regions
such as China and Eastern Europe, and even acquire top-tier IT services
companies.

iSeva's hunger for a U.S. call center echoes that prophesy. The company
is driven partly by regulatory requirements that some call center work
be done in the United States, Sharma said. A U.S. call center also can
ease clients' worries about disaster recovery issues and about having
operations too far away, he said.

Another boon for customers is the face-to-face interaction for
complicated projects such as servicing mortgages. "It just helps us
with the more complex work," Sharma said. "It helps the service level."

iSeva offers a range of customer relationship management services
including outbound and inbound phone services, Web chat services and
systems integration work. The company has 11 clients and has been
profitable in the last three months, Sharma said.

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