Bangalore: Global IT consulting major Accenture today (Dec 3) announced it would more than double its headcount in India to 10,000 by December 2004, from the existing 4,300 professionals.

"We are more than doubling our headcount to over 10,000 people by December next year," Accenture India Country Managing Director Sanjay Jain told reporters in Bangalore.

Accenture India Delivery Centre Head Chaitanya Kamat said, the company was adding new capacity for ramping up its operations in the country.

In Bangalore, which provides BPO services, he said, Accenture is adding 5,000 seats by April 2004, in addition to the existing 2,650 seats to take the total to 7,650 seats.

Kamat said the $ 11.8 billion firm plans to add 1,300 seats by March over the existing 1,000 seats.

Accenture Global Managing Partner for Outsourcing Martin I Cole said, "BPO is growing more rapidly and there is an opportunity to bring in more work to India".

He said India was the only country for Accenture to offer voice based BPO services, besides emerging as the fourth largest employer for the company in the world, but declined to comment on specific investment plans.

"Accenture strongly believes in high value service offerings, we start with outsourcing by only enabling capability. Offshoring to India, we are not going to be the low cost mode, but high value provider," Cole said, adding outsourcing from India was cheaper than in the US.

Cole said Accenture had over 40 centres across the globe and last year outsourced $ 3.6 billion worth of software, which is growing at 30 per cent annually.

Jain said the company was operating in India since 1987 and had 25 domestic customers including Maruti, HPCL and Madhya Pradesh State Electricity Board.

"There are fortune 500 customers who have been working with us for years. It is for the Indian companies to woo them and it is for them to compete with us in the same area," Cole said, when asked whether Accenture would compete with Indian firms like Infosys to bag customer contracts.

PTI