Apollo Health Street tops both Healthcare Industry Payers & Providers BPO lists

Brown-Wilson's 2008 Black Book of Outsourcing survey has ranked Apollo Health Street Limited, the BPO unit of Apollo Hospitals Group, first in both the Healthcare Industry Payers and Providers BPO vendor categories.

AHS also ranked second in the 'HMOs, PPOs & Health Insurers BPO' and sixth in 'Third Party Administrators & Medicare/Medicaid Management Services Organizations BPO' vendor categories.

Every year Brown-Wilson Group evaluates leading global outsourcing service providers and advisors across 26 management criteria and 18 key performance indicators based on client experience. Independent and unbiased, Brown-Wilson Group invites more than 300,000 global outsourcing users to participate. This year's study included more than 24,000 responses worldwide.

The listing provides buyers of outsourcing and consulting services with an independent assessment of the world's leading providers and advisors based on category.

Source: The Black Book of Outsourcing, 2008.

‘BPO space has huge scope, needs new biz paradigm'

Tuesday, 10 June , 2008 | Business Line | Sify.com

Bangalore: ‘BPO’ may be a good catch phrase, but the industry is past the era of mere offshoring; today it is all about globalisation of services and achieving domain expertise and efficiency, said Pramod Bhasin, Vice-Chairman, Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies), and President and Chief Executive Officer, Genpact.

“The term ‘BPO’ has outlived its use. It doesn’t represent the full depth and capacity of the industry and the types of services it offers. Today, it is important to build full scale services and an ecosystem around processes. The industry requires a combination of technology and process expertise. India one day will be known for delivering process and re-engineering expertise. There are unprecedented growth opportunities in this,” said Bhasin, at the two-day Nasscom BPO Strategy Summit held in the city on Monday.

Revenue watch

The Indian IT-BPO revenue is set to grow by 33 per cent in the fiscal year 2008. Exports are expected to cross $40 billion, while the domestic market will clock over $23 billion.

The BPO industry alone is estimated to touch $12.5 billion in 2008 and has the potential to grow five-fold by 2012. The industry today employs two million people directly and indirect job creation is seven-eight million. But shortage of adequate employable manpower is still a cause for concern. “We need about 200,000 more employable graduates in the industry. We also need to fight attrition,” cautioned Bhasin.

All this can be done only if the country “puts its act together in education reforms and infrastructure initiatives,” urged Bhasin. A private-public partnership is required to achieve this, he added.

In his address, Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, Nasscom, and Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Zensar Technologies, listed out the BPO industry agenda on hand. The industry must look at harnessing opportunities in rural India, encourage reverse migration and adopt green IT practices, nurture creativity and provide opportunities for women to take up leadership roles.

Jainder Singh, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, stressed the need to create investment regions and the importance of moving up the value chain to stay globally competitive.

Operation locations

At a press meet in the sidelines of the summit, Som Mittal, President, Nasscom, said the industry body has, in a study conducted along with AT Kearney, identified 50 potential locations in the country that are attractive centres for BPO operations.

Apart from the seven main centres of Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata and NCR, the study has identified 43 more centres with varying degrees of attractiveness and advantages. They include Ahmedabad, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh (Challengers); Aurangabad, Bhopal, Goa (Followers); and Allahabad, Dehradun and Patna (Aspirants).

Nasscom is in the process of talking to State Governments and other parties concerned to develop these regions as BPO centres of excellence, said Mittal.

It is also looking at international partners for the adoption of Green IT.

HIL to pick up 8.5% in Apollo BPO

21 May, 2008, 0029 hrs IST,Khomba Singh & Sanjeev Choudhary, TNN
News Article from The Economic Times.

NEW DELHI: Mauritius-based firm Healthcare Investment (HIL) is picking up around 8.5% stake in Apollo Health Street (AHS), the healthcare BPO arm of India’s largest healthcare company, Apollo Group, for around Rs 61 crore. This values the company at just over Rs 700 crore. HIL is learnt to the healthcare investment arm of a leading financial firm. However, ET could not identify the name of the financial firm.

AHS is planning to offload 20% stake of its post-issue paid up capital to raise around Rs 160-170 crore from the capital market through its initial public offer (IPO). According to sources, AHS is now allotting 23 lakh shares to Healthcare Investment at Rs 260 per share through issue of equity shares or compulsorily convertible preference shares as part of the pre-IPO placement.

At present, the Reddy family, the promoters of the Apollo Group, holds around 60% stake in AHS, which is expected to come down to around 48% after the IPO. AHS officials declined to respond to a query from ET citing company’s silent period.

The company would use the funds issue to repay the $120 million debt to Bank of India and Barclays Bank. Last year, the healthcare BPO firm raised debt to fund the acquisition of the US-based BPO Zavata for $170 million. AHS plans to repay about Rs 96 crore to these banks while the rest of the fund would be used for the expansion of its upcoming facility in Chennai.