Mumbai: Private equity firm Blackstone is close clinching the deal to acquire a majority stake in business process outsourcing company Intelenet for $200 million.

Intelenet, a 50:50 partnership between HDFC and Barclays Bank, is ranked among top 15 BPOs in the country. The BPO was up for sale with both the partners interested in exiting their holdings for some time now.

Blackstone was in advanced talks and the deal was likely to be concluded next week, sources close to the development said. "A few issues still remain to be ironed out," said another source.

Intelenet has revenues in the region of Rs380 crore with an operating profit of around Rs55 crore while Sparsh, its domestic BPO business that is a listed entity, reported revenues of Rs87.44 crore and a net profit of Rs87.3 lakh for the year ended March 2007.

The company has now filed for an IPO in the US.

Sources said the deal could possibly include a management buyout although they did not confirm this. The current management team that includes CEO Susir Kumar and VP (sales, solutions & transitions) Sandeep Aggarwal, among others has been with the company since its inception as a joint venture between Tata Consultancy Services and HDFC.

The valuation Intelenet gets could set the benchmark for the other BPO deals in the offing.

Other BPOs where a stake sale is expected include Citigroup Global Services, earlier known as e-Serve International and one of the earliest players in the BPO sector. The Citi captive is expected to go the Genpact way. Genpact, a General Electric (GE) captive operation called GE Capital International Services (GECIS), become a third-party captive after GE sold 60 per cent in the firm to General Atlantic Partners and Oak Hill Capital Partners and the new outfit assumed non-GE businesses.

BPO exports from the country totalled over $8 billion in FY07, against $6.3 billion in FY06 and $4.6 billion in FY05, making it one of the fastest growing sectors in the country. Nearly all the top IT firms in the country also have BPO operations, and are bidding for the BPOs on the block.