Buy, Buy, Buy

It may someday be common for a Filipino to have an Indian boss, as common as Indians reporting to American bosses. And as the BPO industry evolves in both countries, it will become common too for Americans to be reporting to Filipino or Indian bosses. In the race to grow, the homegrown champions of each country will be buying what they can't develop on their own, causing office workers in the India, the Philippines, and the U.S. will experience first hand what the phrase "flat world" means.

EXL is busy scouting for companies it can scoop up to bulk up, says India's Business Standard. Some are already on the acquisition trail: in 2006 ePLDT's SPI bought an American medical transcription company, while LiveIt, a unit of PLDT's cross-town rival Ayala Corp., bought Affinity Express of Chicago for $28 million.

EXL Service Holdings, an IT services provider, is on the lookout to acquire companies in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, South Africa and China. The company is looking to mitigate its risks by diversifying into delivery and support centres in other cheaper destinations and also offer capabilities to service clients from markets other than the US.

The acquisitions, in each of the geographies, could be in the range of $25-50 million in revenue and will add capabilities in the verticals such as research and analytics where EXL is already fast gaining ground. “We have almost $85 million in cash with the company and the ability to use stock options also lend us flexibility to do at least two of the acquisitions this financial year,” said Rohit Kapoor, president and chief financial officer of EXL.

For adding the voice-based services and clients, the company will look to the Philippines and in South Africa, EXL is on the look out for adding diverse business verticals to its BPO business. The company is also eyeing to service the domestic market. “Although the size of domestic BPO-ITeS market is nothing to boast about, but our international clients who have business in India have been talking to us to set up centres that will service the domestic markets.”