Indian IT companies battle it out for Rs 11k-cr Australian pie

BANGALORE: Indian IT companies will be fiercely competing with MNCs for five big IT contracts in Australia valued at over A$2 billion (Rs 11,000 crore).

Infosys, Wipro, TCS and HCL Technologies are participating alongside IBM, HP and Capgemini in request for information (RFI) and request for proposal (RFP) for incremental IT outsourcing work coming from Sydney Water, Rio Tinto, Jetstar, Aurizon and Transport for NSW, said an Australian IT consultancy firm that did not want to be named.

Incumbent IT vendors IBM, Infosys and Accenture have sought RFIs and RFPs to participate in mining major Rio Tinto's A$750 million IT-BPO contract. The work is in HR, analytics, engineering and logistics. Rio Tinto had previously outsourced procurement to Infosys and finance & accounting (F&A) to IBM. Accenture was engaged with the mining major for ERP and application support, while CSC maintained its IT infrastructure. These previously outsourced 10-year contracts were worth A$3 billion.

Jetstar, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Qantas Group, is considering outsourcing work related to ticketing, customer loyalty programme, analytics, HR and F&A. Wipro TCS and Genpact are participating in the RFIs/RFPs. "Jetstar is currently using Lincom for virtual desktop support. It has been subcontracted through Tech Mahindra. Jetstar's customer support is partially outsourced to Teleperformance and Convergys," the consultancy said.

Australian companies are reviewing monolithic contracts and are breaking them down into smaller ones to drive operational and cost efficiencies.

Australian companies are reviewing monolithic contracts and are breaking them down into smaller ones to drive operational and cost efficiencies.

"Analytics and BPO will lead the charge (in contracts). Public sector contracts have opened up in a big way. There will be at least 7-8 RFPs in both federal and state governments in the next six months," said Mohit Sharma, director of Australia-based advisory firm Mindfields.

Siddharth Pai, president in outsourcing advisory firm ISG Asia Pacific, says Australia is one of the early adopters of offshoring, with Telstra using offshoring a decade back. Infosys counts the telecommunication and media company as one of its top ten customers.

Australia's largest rail freight operator Aurizon is floating an incremental A$500 million contract for IT and BPO services. The freight operator is looking to outsource F&A, procurement and analytics, for which Capgemini, Wipro, Genpact and WNS have sought RFIs and RFPs.