PwC to recruit 2,000 for Kolkata centre

KOLKATA: Pricewaterhousecoopers (PwC) plans to create more than 2,000 jobs over the next three years in a brand-new service delivery centre in Kolkata which went live this month.

It has already recruited more than 650 people in this facility, which is the first of its kind captive delivery unit within PwC’s global network.

PwC has floated a new entity for this facility - PricewaterhouseCoopers Service Delivery Center (Kolkata) Pvt Ltd - which is jointly owned by PwC in India, Australia, Canada, UK and US. This company will perform backoffice operations and analytics for PwC’s offices and clients across its global network.

“This new company will have unlimited expansion capabilities with investments flowing in from the five global PwC entities that have jointly floated it,” said Ambarish Dasgupta, executive director at PwC India and member of the board at PwC Service Delivery Centre. He was addressing a press meet here on Friday.

“While PwC India has been doing similar back-office operations for the last 5-to-6 years, expansion opportunities under that entity have been limited . The new entity will slowly take over all back-office operations which are undertaken by PwC India,” Mr Dasgupta said.

PwC Australia’s partner Sumanth Prakash, who has been appointed as MD and CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers Service Delivery Center, said such a multi-country investment within the PwC network is the first of its kind.

“The quality of work done by this facility will be the best of its kind, as there would be huge opportunities for collaborative working between the PwC firms in the five investing countries ,” said Mr Prakash.

PwC’s decision to make fresh investment in Kolkata is largely based on the huge success of the quality of work PwC India has been doing in the city and the quality of manpower available locally.

“It’s true it was a difficult thing to push global leaders about investment in Kolkata. But their multiple interaction with the government and human resource here changed their minds. And certainly, Kolkata has proved its mettle in PwC’s global network with the existing operations,” said Mr Dasgupta.

While PwC plans to rent some space in South City Pinnacle and DLF IT park in the Rajarhat-Salt Lake tech belt to immediately scale up this captive unit, it eventually plans to shift this to a company-owned campus at Salt Lake.
“We have around 1 acre besides the existing PwC India office at Salt Lake, where this global delivery centre can come up. But this will take sometime for construction,” said Mr Dasgupta.

PwC India, at present, employs around 6,500 people and has operations spread in nine cities. The company is also looking to beef up its India headcount and has earlier indicated that it will scale it up to around 10,000 people by 2012.