Saturday, September 26, 2009

Tech Mahindra, TCS competing or $400 Million Deal

New Delhi: Tech Mahindra, IBM and Tata Consultancy (TCS) are competing for a $400 million (Rs. 1,800 crore) IT outsourcing contract from Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL). Negotiations are on with these companies for a 10-year deal, but the contract will contain a clause that will allow Sistema Shyam to exit after five years, said a source familiar with the matter to The Economic Times.

Sistema, a Russia-based company providing various consumer services, has a 74 percent stake in the joint venture with the Shyam Group that offers mobile services under the 'MTS' brand in India. Sistema Shyam is the only CDMA player, among the new crop of telecom operators. "A final decision on the deal is expected to be taken by the year-end," said Rajeev Batra, Chief Information Officer of SSTL. He confirmed that the three IT companies were in the reckoning for the contract, but did not confirm the value of the contract.

The proposed deal will not include the operator's BPO operations, as the company has already outsourced its customer care operations to Essar Group's Aegis BPO. The winning company will manage SSTL's IT systems across the 22 telecom circles in the country. SSTL, which is scheduled to launch telephony services in Delhi next month, plans to be a pan-India operator by the third quarter of next year. Early this year, SSTL had tied up with IBM for designing and building its green datacenters in Chennai and Gurgaon.

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