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India Life Hewitt buys Embrace
Niche HR and payroll BPO player India Life
Hewitt, as part of its global expansion plans, has acquired a majority
stake and management control (80 percent) in Singapore-based Embrace
2002 Pte.
Going forward, India Life will now build
on its capabilities to offer a pan-Asia-Pacific (Apac) solution
to large corporations (using India as its key production and delivery
base) besides expanding to 12 other countries in Apac, including
Thailand and Philippines.
The company plans to invest $5-$10 million
over the next two years towards two strategic acquisitions and expansion
of facilities. The newly acquired Embrace is a part of Singapore
Technologies, a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings—the Singapore
government owned holding company with interests in telecom, defence,
electronic and real estate with sales of $7 billion.
This acquisition will add customers like
Singapore Technologies Group, BenQ, and Nokia from three key countries—Singapore,
Hong Kong and Malaysia to India Life’s kitty besides a proprietary
Web-enabled integrated HR system called Embrace@Work.
Interestingly, this acquisition will also
enable the company to further push for building an ‘Asian Shared
Service Model’ targeted at large pan-region MNC players who
can now use India as a single-point delivery and production base
to cater to the needs of group companies within the Apac region.
India Life managing director Manish Sabharwal
said that the Apac region would continue to be the thrust market
for the company given the fact that the region did not yet have
any well-established regional player.
“The idea here is to offer a regional
solution coupled with cost competitiveness India has to offer. Most
MNCs today are looking for a vendor who has a regional footprint
and who can offer an integrated solution for their group service
requirements. In Apac, currently 80-90 percent of organisations
still have internal HR and payroll departments, which is a huge
market for us to go after,” Sabharwal said.
On the team consolidation front, India
Life is looking at hiring 250 people over the next two years to
service Embrace, while the current 40-member team of the newly acquired
company in Apac will be retained for front-end operations in theregion.
— The Financial Express
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