Date:25/11/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/11/25/stories/2005112502420900.htm

Back Ugam Solutions to open second centre in Mumbai

Our Bureau

Pune , Nov. 24

UGAM Solutions, provider of research and analytics services, catering to the market information needs of global enterprises is opening its second `International Centre for Research and Analytics' at Malad in Mumbai.

The facility would be inaugurated on November 24 by Mr Kiran Karnik, the Nasscom President. The company has its first facility at Mahalaxmi in Mumbai. Mr Sunil Mirani, Chief Executive Officer, Ugam Solutions who was in the city to participate in `Outsourcing ventures 2005 - Exclusive KPO Edition' told presspersons that the second facility is spread over an area of 32,000 sq ft and would have a seating capacity for over 600 people across all the shifts.

Currently the company has about 425 people on its rolls and this expansion would take it to over 1,000 professionals, he said. He noted that the company was targeting to have 3,000 professionals by 2009.

Mr Sunil said an investment of $3.2 million is the investment outlay for the new facility and is being utilised from the internal accruals. Mr Sunil said the company was also looking at acquisitions in North America and Canada in their space. He said the criteria for acquisition was the skill set that would be transferred, the language capabilities and is expecting to complete the acquisition within the next six to eight months.

He said as part of its expansion plans, the launch of the Computer Aided Telephonic Interview (CATI) services for conducting surveys for Market Research and its entry into the high growth area of Marketing Analytics is also on. He said the CATI service would be launched from Ugam's new centre that would have a seating capacity of more than 250 research associates, catering to both Business (B2B) and the Consumer (B2C) sector.

He said it would deploy Nortel voice switches, EPABX, high speed fixed line IPLC between India and the US having adequate redundancy with 99.9 per cent uptime.

Mr Sunil noted that with the addition of the CATI services, Ugam would be able to provide the full range of services across the market research value chain. Its service offerings would include Data Collection, Survey Programming, Data Cleaning and Tabulation, Verbatim Management (coding of open ended responses), Panel management and Report Writing, he added.