Aegis, a global outsourcing services company and part of the ฟbn Essar Group, has reinforced its strong commitment to the South African market by unveiling an ambitious growth plan for the region.
Aegis, which entered South Africa in 2009 with the acquisition of CCN Group, has created 500 new call centre jobs since then. Buoyed by the encouraging response from customers, the company is now well on its path to ramp up its presence many fold by investing INR500m over the next few years, which would result in creation of 5,000 additional jobs.
Aegis Global Academy, the higher education division of Aegis, plans to launch its acclaimed Institute of Customer Experience Management (ICEM) in South Africa shortly. ICEM is an initiative by the company to bridge industry-academia divide by training future managers for the service sector.
"We are delighted to be delivering on our promises and are enthused by the response we have received from our customers. We have already invested INR200m over the last one year and added 500 new jobs, and are on track in our plan to invest INR500m in South Africa, which would lead to creation of an additional 5,000 jobs," Aparup Sengupta, MD and global CEO, Aegis, said.
"Despite a challenging economic environment, which has resulted in the sector reporting flat lining, we have delivered growth. We are very bullish on the future and have received very good traction from new customers, particularly in the insurance and telecom space," said Aegis BPO Holdings senior vice president, Kobus van der Westhuizen.
Westhuizen said that in order to address the employability concern, Aegis Global Academy's ICEM would be launched shortly to address the skill shortage. ICEM partners with leading B-schools like Cornell University and Indian Institute of Management – Indore and other industry partners like SQ Centre and COPC. Aegis Global Academy's ICEM is a centre of excellence that arms students with both the academic skills and work experience they need.
"The academy demonstrates that it offers a very credible curriculum and accreditation. It's also an extremely effective model because students live, study and work on the campus, which has been shown to be a super efficient way of developing skills. It's what we call a 'pyjamas to production' environment," said van der Westhuizen.
The impending launch of the Aegis Global Academy's ICEM has also been welcomed by industry association BPeSA. "It is wonderful to see a company in the industry showing that it is prepared to put its hands in its own pockets for skills development," said BPeSA CEO, Bulelwa Koyana.
