Atos Syntel launches global delivery centre in Tirunelveli

Chennai: After a wait of almost six years , Atos Syntel, a provider of information technology (IT) services and a division of French multinational Atos, opened its new global delivery centre (GDC) in Tirunelveli’s Gangaikondan IT special economic zone (SEZ), on Monday.

Inaugurating the first building on their 100-acre campus in the IT park, Atos Syntel said the GDC has a capacity to host over 2,300 engineers to deliver digital solutions to their global clients.

It will recruit 500-800 people to the centre in a year’s time with an emphasis on hiring the region’s local IT talent and scale it up gradually. “The GDC will be an integral part of our delivery centre network, and our teams here will deliver services to help our customer on their digital transformation journeys,” Sean Narayanan, SEVP & head of business and Platform Solutionsand member of the Atos Group General Management Committee, told TOI.

“The Tirunelveli centre augments our existing centres in Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Vadodara. This inauguration reinforces our commitment to growing and scaling our footprint in India,” he added.

As the first large IT employer in the Tirunelveli district, Atos Syntel’s presence in the ELCOT-promoted SEZ, is expected to generate employment opportunities for local talent, and is being viewed as a catalyst for more MNC captive centres to set up down south. HCL Tech in Madurai and Zoho Corp in Tenkasi are the other large IT product and services companies in the vicinity.

Like its other offshore centres, Atos Syntel plans to deliver end-to-end digital services from the Tirunelveli GDC, and said it will kick-start operations with projects across the retail, logistics and Banking and Financial services industries.

The company credited the region’s reputation as an educational hub and a large and rich pool of qualified local engineers as a key reason for picking Tirunelveli to set shop. “We look forward to scaling our operations with active support from the local ecosystem of business, academia, and government,” Narayanan said.

Announced earlier in 2013, Syntel’s plans to commence operations at Tirunelveli have been stuck for years owing to various bureaucratic roadblocks and for want of permissions and approvals. In the absence of local opportunities, the region has also witnessed the large scale migration of educated and skilled youth to metros.

“We hope the launch [of Syntel] will revive the potential of IT in Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Kanyakumari, and other adjoining districts,” M. Vijayakumar, MD, Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited (ELCOT), said.

The design of the campus -established with “significant” investment- is said to be inspired by local culture with emphasis on employee-friendly architecture including a ‘’courtyard planning,” where social spaces integrate with work zones.