Kale targets aggressive growth in BPO space

Mumbai: Aviation and banking major Kale Consultants Ltd has outlined an aggressive growth strategy and has identified business process outsourcing (BPO) as one of its key drivers.

It has leveraged its domain expertise and client relationships in the airlines vertical to create a competitive niche. In order to further strengthen its growing airline processing business, Kale is looking at acquisitions in the airlines processing space. It plans to fund the same through private placement of equities.

Kale set up its airline processing centre (APC) in Mumbai in April 2001 to provide outsourced business processing services — a strategic extension of Kale's domain expertise in airline revenue accounting. The APC provides end-to-end revenue accounting and audit services, using Kale-owned software products for the purpose. In its first year of operation (FY02), the BPO services accounted for 13 per cent of the company's revenues of Rs 504.59 million.

Says Kale Consultants managing director Vipul Jain: “Kale's competitive advantage in the BPO segment is derived from its IPR-led total business process management model. Unlike other pure BPO/IT service players that focus primarily on the cost advantage, our model offers value-added services to our airline customers. The planned acquisitions will enable Kale to catapult itself into a new growth trajectory even in the present challenging environment.“

Kale's recognition and market leadership in the airlines products space can be gauged by the fact that it is the exclusive co-development partner of IATA, for the CEO Cockpit project, which is a high-end business intelligence product targeted at the CEO of an Airline.