24/7 to hire 1,000 more by next April.

Aug 27, 2002 -- 24/7 Customer, a provider of Customer support service and solutions will add about 1000 people by April next even as it plans to branch out to Hyderabad and Kochi by investing close to $ 10 million this year.

The company is setting up a 250-seat centre in Hyderabad by investing about $ 5 million which is expected to be operational by early December, said Mr. T.S.Hariharan, Vice President, Quality and Training. 24/7 Customer.

The company is also setting up a campus in Kochi, which is expected to be operational by early next year. It plans to have about 250 seats in the first phase and add another 250-300 by May next year. The company has signed a Memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Kerala Government with this regard.

"We are in the process of identifying the land and the campus would come up in an area of 5 acres," he said. However, the company has the first right of refusal for developing the campus in additional 10 acres, he said. The company plans to invest $ 5 million in Kochi, for which it may go in for a bridge-loan from financial institutions, Mr Hariharan said.

24/7 Customer at present has some 800 people working out from its Bangalore centre. The Hyderabad and Kochi centres would also act as redundancy centres, he said.

The company plans to divide its operations into different practice groups such as sales and customer services, technical support and back office processing. The Bangalore centre would handle sales and customer services, while the technical support and helpdesk services would be handled out of Hyderabad and the back office processing, which would be initially limited to document processing, would be handled out of Kochi centre, he said.

24/7 Customer plans to offer ERP software support from its Hyderabad centre. It has already bagged a leading ATM manufacturer as client for its tech support services.

Meanwhile, the company has strengthened its marketing set up in the US and has opened about four new offices.