Accenture to add 8,000 staff in India

Accenture said on Monday that it plans to add 8,000 staff in India, indicating that outsourcing to India may be on the rebound.

The company will add the new staff before the end of next year, a company spokesman said on Monday. Accenture currently employs about 42,000 staff in India.

Outsourcing worldwide is expected to see a pick-up soon, and India will be a beneficiary of this, said Siddharth Pai, a partner at outsourcing consultancy firm Technology Partners International (TPI).

There is a large pent-up demand for outsourced services, and customers are once again interested in closing deals, which suggests that some of the interest will be converted into contracts soon, he said.

Services companies have started hiring to ensure that they have the staff in place if they win the orders, he said.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest outsourcer, said last month that it would be adding 8,000 new staff in this quarter, to prepare for an anticipated recovery. The company added 320 staff in the previous quarter.

Indian outsourcers are also expanding abroad. Infosys Technologies, India's second-largest outsourcer, is setting up a second software development and services center in Monterrey, Mexico, it said on Monday. TCS said last week it will expand a development center in the U.S.

The expansions in Mexico and the U.S. are in line with the strategy of many Indian outsourcers to offer their customers in North America a combination of services delivered from on-shore and near-shore locations in similar time zones, and off-shore from India.